According to the game's Producer, Koichi Hayashida, Peach was not originally intended to be playable at the start of development, and was intended to be the damsel in distress character as she is in other Mario titles. The idea of her being playable was brought up by the game's producer, Yoshiaki Koizumi, who told the team that Peach should be playable, stating "I think she adds a lot to the sense of competition when you get in multiplayer. You can have different people choosing different characters based on their personality or whoever they like. And Princess Peach is just really a lot of fun to play!"