Mario and Princess Peach, Mario Power Tennis

A kiss like Yuna and Tidus’ encompasses some of the beauty of a video game kiss—developers can make a crescendo lip-lock look as wondrous as it must feel to the characters. Mario and Princess Peach’s kiss in the 2004 game Mario Power Tennis captures the other great side of video game kissing: it is bizarre.

But, hey, sometimes you need to see a really tall girl kiss a really stout man. And sometimes, you specifically want this kiss to be after the stout man has won a game of virtual tennis, and then he’s saying “Yahoo!” a bunch of times, and then the girl giving him a quick cheek kiss makes him woozy. He recovers quickly, though, and pumps his fists in a celebratory dance, now saying “Yeah!” and jumping up to the sky and, as far as the viewer can tell, staying midair because he’s so happy. Wanting to see this exact scenario would normally create a very complicated Google search, but luckily it all happens in Mario’s Power Tennis celebration scene.

What makes it unforgettable: Peach performs a very virtuous, by-the-book cheek kiss in a GameCube game for children, but I find Mario’s reaction impressively disturbing.