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Yoshi’s Island Game Review

Yoshi’s Island is a 1995 platform game published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It’s one of the most unique entries in the Mario series.

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“I banish you to forever twinkle in the heavens, BE GONE!!“

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This game came out five years after ‘Super Mario World’, and judging by the title and promotion, you would think that it’s the direct sequel to the aforementioned classic, but you would be sorely mistaken. Previously, most Mario games in the main Super lineup were different from their predecessor at least to a degree, but this is by far the most authentic and idiosyncratic sequel of them all.

The plot is very silly and cartoony. It’s also problematic in the area of “canon” if there ever was one in this series, debatably so. You play as Yoshi who has baby Mario on his back and they have to save Luigi who was kidnapped by Bowser. In regards to plot and its world, it may be thought of as a spin-off of its predecessor and the prequel to the whole franchise.

Yoshi was present in the previous installment, but this is truly his first real game, and it was a refreshing change of pace as it led to a different enough gameplay as well. You can still jump on enemies and kill them that way, but a better approach is to suck them in with your tongue. When you do that, you gain one egg. These green eggs can be thrown at enemies, but also at the various collectibles when you otherwise can’t reach them, and most importantly to solve some puzzles and dig through certain areas. In short, egg throwing is of the essence here.

There are so many collectibles in this particular game to the point that I personally found it a bit overwhelming. There is nothing wrong with littering your game with these fun coins and cute objects, but the levels overall are overly vast, thus they render getting all of the collectibles almost impossible in certain levels. Red coins are important, but there are also the regular yellow coins, the daisies and those small star-like little dudes that were my favorites.

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This is one of the most puzzle-oriented Mario games, even more so than the second US entry. This change really worked for the most part. The puzzles were easy enough for kids to get through and those like myself who aren’t the puzzle and strategy fans overall. There are many doors in this game, and some require special keys to open, and those parts were the most mysterious and best crafted in Yoshi’s Island. The only issue here was that the levels were sometimes too vast and chaotic, but more on that later.

There is no overworld to be found here whatsoever, which was disappointing, but there are mini-games that mostly center around either luck or memorization. They are slight, but fun and charming. The flutter jumping was introduced for Yoshi this time around, and it really helped things out by giving you some extra boost while jumping over longer distances. Swallowed enemies can also be spat out at others, which was also very well executed. Pounding the ground and some crates was also a lot of fun.

There is one point of the game that even the biggest fans criticize and that is that horrifying cry of baby Mario’s. The gameplay mechanic here is as follows – you get a bubble timer that counts from twenty to zero. The timer starts when you lose the baby by crashing into an enemy and they steal him from you. When it reaches zero, this incredibly annoying and even terrifying cry bursts out of the baby, leaving you always on the edge of your seat and hurrying to get that little crybaby back. For me, the cry was annoying, but it made you rush to get him back, which was a great, necessary choice to imbue some urgency into the whole affair.

Yoshi’s Island consists of 48 levels put into six worlds. The biggest problem of the game is that these worlds do little to differentiate from each other, as in terms of variety, the game is quite inferior to all of its predecessors. This was a shame as the animation is brilliant, but the world building just wasn’t up to the task. The most memorable worlds are the cute and charming first world, the icy one and the last world, which was the most difficult naturally. Those vehicle parts were the most interesting in each world.

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The levels were too vast in the second half of the game, thus making the puzzles over difficult and at times requiring from the player to seek online help, which is never a good sign. The power-ups are also not that present this time around, but the bosses are easily the best in the franchise up until this point in history. The formula was changed in that you get a boss after every four levels, so there is a boss mid-world as well. They are all excellent, difficult enough, but not too frustrating, and also genuinely imaginative in settings and tactics required.

Which brings me to this point – the level design is absolutely incredible in this game. Each level looked amazing, but was also perfectly imagined in the number of enemies, jumps required and so on. It was never too difficult, but also definitely not too easy as it had its fair share of very tough areas to get through.

Yoshi’s Island is by far the best-looking Mario game of this century, probably even of all time. Much has been said about its animation, but I would like to compare it not only to artworks of the past, but also to the animation medium. I love animation, and this one seemed like a genuine animated movie in its entirety, and one that is extremely artistic with a gorgeous color palette, beautiful designs and superbly animated characters.

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They went for a 2D look over the 3D one in the period where there was that shift, which needs to be appreciated as it ended up being timeless because of that. The score, on the other hand, is pretty good, but not as great as its predecessors due to the themes not being as catchy or as memorable per usual for the franchise. The controls are intuitive and most of the enemies, new and old, were excellent while Shy Guys returning after the second game was a wonderful addition.