 Super Mario Stryker's Battle League football is finally here. But where is Daisy? Daisy fans, noting that their favourite character has been left out of the game's initial starting lineup, are hopeful that she will be added to the game at some point after launch. At the time of making this video, nothing has been confirmed. Instead, Rosalina appears to have taken Daisy's spot in the starting roster of characters for the game. But why? This isn't the only recent time that Daisy fans have been disappointed. There had been hopes that Daisy would be added to Super Mario 3D World when it was ported to the Switch, but alas, she was nowhere to be seen. Only Rosalina appears as an unlockable character, as in the original Wii U release. There are plenty of potential reasons for Daisy's absence from Battle League football at launch. To better understand Nintendo's mindset with choosing Rosalina over Daisy, we need to understand why Daisy was included in the Mario sports series in the first place, and indeed, why she was created for Super Mario Land on the Game Boy. Daisy, unlike Rosalina, was not created by the primary Mario team. The original Super Mario Brothers on the Nintendo Entertainment System was the work of Nintendo's Research and Development 4 team. Spearheaded by Shigeru Miyamoto, the self-proclaimed father of Mario, who to this day works hard to shape the way that the Mario brand is portrayed across Nintendo's empire. Super Mario Land, though, was created by Research and Development 1, the team headed by Gunpai Yokoi. This team was primarily responsible for the development of the Game Boy, which is why they were tasked with developing a portable Mario game. As we noted in our video on the origin of Wario, R&D 1 resented working on Super Mario Land and being forced to make copycat Game Boy games based on already popular NES titles. They felt that they weren't able to fully flex their creative muscles and show off their own software skills. According to gaming historian David Sheff in his book on the origin of Nintendo, within an R&D group were many teams which were pitted against each other. The teams in the groups working mostly on hardware tried to outdo the others in the virtual miracles they came up with, and the software teams competed to make the greatest games that had ever been seen. When making their own Mario game, R&D 1 didn't want to simply copy what Shigeru Miyamoto's team were doing. They created their own unique world. Sarasaland. Sarasaland. Sarasaland. Sarasaland. Or however that's supposed to be pronounced, complete with its own enemies, and a unique princess, Daisy. After Super Mario Land, the team at R&D 1 quickly moved on to a sequel that featured no princesses at all, and by the time they got stuck into their Wario Land games, it was clear that nobody was interested in revisiting Daisy at all. She should have faded into obscurity. Then though, came Mario Power Tennis. For this Nintendo 64 game, an outside developer, Camelot, was tasked with creating a tennis game that was populated with Mario characters. There was just one problem. At the time, there weren't a lot of Mario characters that were humanoid. The first few characters for the tennis roster were obvious, Mario, Luigi, Peach, Wario, and Bowser. But who else could be included? A Goomba can't play tennis, doesn't have any arms. The team went through a few other options, such as Monty Mole and Womps, brand new enemies from Super Mario 64. With the design of the game and its animation system though, these characters didn't have the right body proportions to fit the gameplay. So the team at Camelot did the logical thing and asked Nintendo for suggestions. They were given two, Birdo and Daisy. In both cases, Camelot had absolutely no idea who these relatively obscure characters were. However, they did the job in rounding out the roster. Their only reason for inclusion then was to provide filler for the game. Taking things even further, Camelot created a brand new character, Waluigi. Daisy quickly became a regular face in the Mario Sports series, appearing in Mario Strikers and its sequel. She has, however, never been included in a main series Mario Platformer. The closest she's got is Super Mario Maker. But then, Sonic the Hedgehog and Pac-Man are also in that game. So it's probably not canon. She also shows up in Super Mario Run. In the time since the release of the last Mario Strikers game, Nintendo has added a few more humanoid characters to the Mario canon, most notably Rosalina. While Nintendo's research and development teams no longer compete in the same way they used to, it's notable that Rosalina was created by the Mario team and has appeared in multiple main series Mario Platformers. This likely affects her level of prominence in the Mario series as a whole. By the time you watch this video, there's every chance that Daisy may already have been added to Mario Strikers' Battle League football. But if you've ever wondered why she didn't make the cut for the starting line-up, this may provide some small slither of insight. As for the moral of the story, it's worth looking at how distraught Daisy fans have become at her absence. To a certain extent, we've all felt like a Daisy at one time or another. The third wheel, the awkward extra, the forgotten friend, not as popular or interesting as the cool kids. Daisy though has a passionate fan base who are genuinely excited to play as her in every game she appears in. Just like Daisy, you have people who are cheering for your success, who care deeply about your triumphs, and who cry with you when things go wrong, or if that's not your social circumstance at the present, you can have that in the future. You are and can be more important to those around you than you realise.