I wasn't particularly sold on Mario Strikers: Battle League at launch. I was the ideal candidate in many ways. Strikers is in the mix for my favourite GameCube game, I love arcade sports titles, and football is my favourite sport. The camp cheesiness of it all only sweetened the deal, but the final game was just too empty. I gave it three out of five stars, putting me on the lower end of review scores, and it still feels a little high. The game was perfectly competent, but there just wasn't anything to it. No story mode, no real progression, online was impossible during the review period, and there just felt like no real point to any of it. Since turning in my review, I've picked the game up twice more for a few online games, but instantly put it back down. Now Princess Daisy is in the game, I'm diving right back in.

There are a few reasons why Daisy's addition matters, so I'm going to get the silliest one out of the way first - I really fucking love Daisy. Princess Daisy is my favourite Mario character by so far that the rest do not even register. Birdo is a trans icon and Waluigi is neat, but after that, meh. For how extraordinarily well known Mario and his considerable supporting cast are, the characters themselves haven't made much of an impression. Most people could recognise at least five Mario characters, and even casual players maybe double that, but do we like any of them? You're into video games enough to be reading a fluff article about a mid-tier sports game on the Nintendo Switch, and I bet you couldn't even name your favourite. No, you can't say Mario.

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Sure, I like the others enough. It's cool when the weird little guys come out to play. What's that? You're a turtle skeleton whose skin has rotted off? Neat, let's play tug of war! The upcoming Mario movie will also likely change my feelings on characters, either for the better (Anya Taylor-Joy's Peach), the worse (Chris Pratt's Mario), or the who-the-hell-even-knows (Charlie Day's Luigi). But for now, the boisterous, tomboyish yet still feminine Daisy is my runaway favourite, and it's great to have her in the game.

Onto some more serious points, Strikers launched with a roster of ten characters, of which only two were women. I'm not sure if it's worse that Daisy isn't in the top ten Mario characters or that she isn't even the second woman, but I shouldn't have to choose. There should have been more women and Daisy should have been involved. She's a very important part of the series and it feels insulting and just strange to leave her out in favour of lesser lights. Daisy might have began as Peach-but-not, but over the years she has developed a major personality - one that speaks to girls without being girly. Daisy's symbol is a flower and she wears a dress, so she's hardly destroying gender norms, but she offers a rough and tumble alternative. While Rosalina, the game's other female player, was developed as an original character, she feels much closer to Peach in look and personality than Daisy does. It's a Mario game with just two girls and both of them are Peach.

Then there's her power-up. Every player in the game has their own special shot that's extremely difficult to stop, and Daisy's is a rabona. On the 'let's be fun and silly' hand, a rabona is the coolest power-up in the game and I can't wait to use it every time. On the 'actually it is a rather big deal that Daisy was frozen out' hand, it again does something to address the gender balance. Back when Princess Peach had her own game, her powers were based on emotions, because all girls know is charge they phone, feel emotional, and lie. In Strikers, Peach has the power of simpery - her power-up will manipulate men into falling in love with her and obeying her every command by scoring an own goal. It fits Peach's design as the feminine ideal in Mario's lore, but it's a little lazy when you only have two women in your game. Rosalina's saw her kick the ball into space, a reference to her Galaxy origins, but it's especially satisfying that Daisy has the best technical finish in the game right now. Roll on Pauline and the Karel Poborsky chip.

Daisy coming to Mario Strikers: Battle League is great for me personally, but it also feels like correcting an issue that never should have existed in the first place. She's the first add-on, which at least has some prestige, but she's arriving with tertiary character Shy Guy so it's not a glowing endorsement. We'll always have Mario Golf: Super Rush, I guess.

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