Let's see.. Pretty sure Peach has her own game on which the entire concept is getting the Mario Bros. out of trouble (the name is eluding me right now, it's on the DS).
She's personally helped save the world more than once (Paper Mario 2 comes to mind).
There are other female characters too.. Timpani from Super Paper Mario has a huge dynamic with the primary antagonist of the game.
And if you look outside of that particular franchise, you'd be remiss not to look at Samus Aran (minus one almost universally panned game with an outsourced plot), arguably the poster child for strong female leads in video games.
Super Princess Peach is quite possibly the worst game to use as an example of an inversion of the trope. Peach's main power is essentially four mood swings called "Vibes"[0]: Joy, Rage, Gloom, and Calm. Granted, Japan isn't known for being very women-friendly[1], but that doesn't mean we should excuse Nintendo for making Peach's debut gameplay center around her being "emotional".
Finding a tiny handful of female protagonists really doesn't change the fact that video games are pretty much a sausage festival, where women are typically presented as helpless prizes to be won or rescued.
Despite what the high-budget video game developers think, video games are not played exclusively by guys. Girls play them too. And maybe we'd like to have some fantasies where someone like us gets to kick ass and save the world, or at least the day, too.
If you're unhappy with the games that exist today, perhaps you could make one that suits your creative desires? (That is essentially how all of the existing games came to be.)
Peach had one game, outside the franchise mainline (hell outside the franchise) 8 years ago. There have been 6 mainline Mario platformers since (and there was a 7th the same year as SSP) (though one of the 6 was the 25th anniversary re-release of AllStars) and in all of them the plot was the same "Peach gets kidnapped, mario goes and saves her"
Yes, the Princess Peach game where she has to cry to save Mario. Vomit.
You know, subverting the trope a little bit (sometimes) is maybe nice, certainly, however, not enough when you use it all the fucking time, to this day.
She's personally helped save the world more than once (Paper Mario 2 comes to mind).
There are other female characters too.. Timpani from Super Paper Mario has a huge dynamic with the primary antagonist of the game.
And if you look outside of that particular franchise, you'd be remiss not to look at Samus Aran (minus one almost universally panned game with an outsourced plot), arguably the poster child for strong female leads in video games.