When you've made a game described as perfect itÂ’s never an easy task to follow it up in a sequel. I sympathise for Shiguru Miyamoto, the brains behind Nintendo's biggest brand- Mario. The recently released Mario Sunshine had the legacy of Mario 64 before it, and no matter how great Sunshine is, there's always going to be those saying its nothing in comparison to Mario 64.
Yoshi's Island may have the same problem. It's the sequel to the infamous Super Mario World, the game most people hold in their hearts to be the best platformer ever. Those are big footsteps to follow. Luckily, Yoshi has quite big feet. Like Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island is a snes port. It came out in 1995, towards the end of the life of the snes, when everyone was excited about the next gen stuff like the psone and Saturn, so it might not have received as much attention as it should have. I personally can't remember. I was too busy playing it. Though Yoshi's Island was dubbed with the subtitle Super Mario World 2 back in 1995, and now it's called Super Mario Advance 3 on the GBA, the game is actually a prequel to all the Mario games. The story, never the "pulling factor" of Mario games, is about baby Mario and Luigi's stork delivery to their parents being rudely interrupted by those ever nasty Koopas. Luigi is kidnapped midair while Mario falls on top of a bewildered Yoshi, who gathers with the rest of his species to get Luigi back and get the brothers to their rightful home.
This journey takes place across six worlds with 48 levels with each Yoshi carrying Mario on their back. So as you may have guessed by now, for nearly all of the game, Yoshi is controlled. If you remember his original moves in Mario World, they're all there, Yoshi can still rope in enemies with his tongue, but now he can do a heck of a lot more. He can hover in the air while he jumps for a little while, making the more dangerous jumps of fate a little easier, butt stomp like Mario did in Mario 64, and when he sucks in enemies Yoshi can either spit them back out to use them as a projectiles or have them turn into eggs, a maximum of six will trail Yoshi wherever he goes. This is one of the best features of the game, press the R button on the GBA when eggs are present and a crosshair will turn up and move up and down. Press R again and Yoshi will fire an egg which can hit almost anything, enemies, coins, switches, item clouds, breakable walls etc. If the egg hits a solid wall, it'll bounce right off and rebound about for a while before it breaks. This ingenious feature is used so cleverly in the game, you'll begin to prefer using Yoshi over Mario completely.
Another aspect about Yoshi, with the exceptions of falling off screen, touching spikes and lava, he can't die. Instead when Yoshi is hit, he gets stunned and baby Mario falls off his back and floats around unprotected in a bubble. A countdown timer begins and if it reaches 0, the Koopa's will come and whisk Mario away, This counter starts off at 10 seconds but can be increased to a maximum of 30 by collecting little stars dotted around the levels. This is an inspired idea, but the game itself isn't too difficult in the first place, having the countdown going up to 30 seconds makes it a rare event for Mario to be kidnapped. As for the 48 levels, each of them is a 20 minute case of pure joy and clever design. Not only to play, but also to look at. Despite the game being seven years old, it's one of the best looking 2D games out there, even today. The "hand drawn" crayon style of the game and wonderfully drawn sprites and backgrounds would fool anyone into thinking this is cutting edge GBA graphics if they were in ignorance of the games actual age.
The original cart had the FX2 chip in there too allowing all the effects you'll see in the game. One example are these huge bow wow chomp things you see in the background, as soon as you run past one you see them zoom off into the air, only to smash through the ground near you a second later. All these effects but one which used to fuzz out the screen when Yoshi ate a "fuzzy" is intact in its original form. The only complaint along with the missing "fuzzy" effect I have of the GBA port is sometimes when there's too much happening on screen, some slowdown is experienced, and this happens quite often. This does seem to get in the way of the action and really breaks up the fun. In each world, there are two bosses and boss castles/fortresses. As usual, Nintendo shines its ingenuity when it comes to brilliant boss encounters, finding that one weak point and exploiting it is always an exhilarating experience. The other stages consist of jungles, snowy hills (complete with blizzards and skiing!, puzzling maze like caves, forced scrolling levels to test your platforming skills, and a host of others.
As well as this, when Yoshi touches certain power ups he can change into a vehicle for a limited amount of time. Shooting across the sky as a helicopter or racing along the ground as a car is unbelievable fun, and for those who miss controlling Mario, touch a "star" power up and see what happens! Within each level are a host of secrets which if found, reward Yoshi with red coins, sunflowers or stars, which at the end of the stage give Yoshi with a score out of a hundred. Completing worlds with 100% will open up new levels so it's a great incentive to increase lifespan. This is a nice touch since a lot of Mario fans may be disappointed at the fact that Yoshi's Island has about half the levels Mario World did and isn't as challenging either. There's also a host of sub games, some of which would have been perfect for multiplayer use. Nintendo obviously don't agree with me on that point, the multiplayer option in Super Mario Advance 3 is only the same Mario Bros arcade game that came with Super Mario Advance 1 and 2. It is there as an extra, but it feels very cheap to get the same game three times. It's difficult to name any Mario game in history that doesn't have catchy music, the type you'll hum even when you're walking on a busy street in public. Yoshi's Island is no different. There are only a handful of tracks but they'll stay in your head. Yoshi also has some new sound effects not present in the original snes game. They increase the "cute" factor of the game.
Basically, back in 1995 I had real difficulty describing Yoshi's Island to my friends. All I said to them was "best 2D platformer ever!". Maybe I should have kept this review to that one line.
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