Glen Atwell
Shaun InguanzoSuper Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (Review)
December 23rd 2006 00:42
Players: 1
Genre: Platform
Developer: Nintendo
Platform: SNES
Year: 1995 (USA), 1995 (PAL)
Yoshi's Island is a bit different to previous Mario titles. First of all, you are not rescuing the Princess. Second, all the major Mario characters are babies. Baby Mario and baby Luigi are delivered via a stork to their parents in the Mushroom Kingdom, when Kamek the Koopa tries to kidnap them (as he somehow senses they'll be trouble to koopas in the future -- yes, this is a prequel of sorts).
Kamek fails in his kidnapping attempt, dropping the babies on Yoshi's Island. The Yoshis decide to try and return baby Mario and Luigi to their parents. As Bowser is also a baby too at this point, Kamek is the main villain in this Mario incarnation.
There are many changes in Yoshi's Island while it remains a platform game. For the first time Yoshi is the main character, and the character can be attacked numerous times without failing the stage. However, whenever Yoshi is hit by an enemy, baby Mario flies off his back and somehow floats in a bubble around the screen while a countdown timer begins. If Yoshi doesn't touch the bubble in time, Kamek ends up kidnapping baby Mario and you fail the stage. Something notable about this: The wailing of baby Mario is incredibly annoying and really encourages the player to try to get him back as soon as possible. This was something they added in after the original playtest.
Other new gameplay elements involve how the Yoshis can approach stages. Different coloured Yoshis have special skills of their own, but all of them share the ability to collect eggs behind them (by eating enemies and other objects). What do they do with these eggs? They can fire them at enemies or at objects to activate them. Hovering in the air is yet another skill of all Yoshis.
Perhaps the most interesting visual component of Yoshi's Island is the art style. Nintendo opted for a crayon-effect for this game, which was a nice change from the standard style.
At the time, Yoshi's Island was probably my favourite Mario game before I became sick of the relative sameness (I have this thing with a need of variety) of the games. Although the baby wails and the general childishness of this addition, I rather liked the gameplay and playing as Yoshi as opposed to Mario.
Score: 8/10
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