pretty super contra III

next up in the contra series for me was contra III: the alien wars for SNES. [back to back SNES games? what's the world coming to??] like many other franchises that originated pre-SNES, contra 3 really feels like a leap forward, with a huge improvement in the graphics and sound. the core gameplay is as solid as ever, although my enjoyment of the game was hampered by the lack of a 30-man code (which, completely mystifyingly, was in the original japanese release but was removed for the north american release). the game’s options allow you to set your lives to be up to 7, and as a series first it includes three levels of difficulty.

aside from this significant handicap (although perhaps this is just konami’s way of telling us we’ve gotten to expect too much coddling from the other contra games), the game unfortunately has a few other issues as well. there’s an impressive number of boss and sub-boss battles, but some of them require far too much “try and die” playing; the last boss is a particularly egregious example. the game also includes two top-down levels, which have never been a strong point in the series for me, and they’re similarly dull here. there’s also a stage that takes place on motorcycles that is a great idea that could’ve been better executed.

despite this niggling, the game is a definite classic. there’s a lot of variety within each level and the additions to the gameplay are great, and the game features numerous set pieces, including navigating rails with one arm and shooting with the other; all the weapons are wholly worthwhile (now featuring bombs, the new flamethrower, and the ability to switch between two weapons); and the co-op gameplay is as much fun as ever, although, again, the enjoyment is hampered by the game’s difficulty. the action gets pretty intense, although there’s rarely any slowdown. all in all this is an SNES classic that, despite its difficulty, is a definite high point for the series. looking to the future it seems that many of the subsequent releases were less than impressive, but it will be interesting to see how the series has evolved.

shoot up these contra III links:
- the look back at sydlexia.com sums up the game well: “[T]oday’s games are designed to be beaten; Contra III was designed to beat you. And it *will* beat you, over and over again.”
- entry at strategywiki.org
- entry at wikipedia

dated chrono trigger

i haven’t been motivated to play anything even remotely taxing for a while, but hopefully i’m over my summer slump. this week i finally “finished” a game that i’ve been slogging through off and on for ages, the original chrono trigger for SNES. over the years i’ve realized i’m really not much into RPGs in general, but as one of the most lauded games of all time i felt compelled to check it out. as you might have guessed, i clearly didn’t love the game, and although i grew to quite like “the other” mega-popular SNES RPG classic, final fantasy 3 (i.e. FF6), when i played it a couple of years ago, the needle of my interest in chrono trigger rarely moved past mere tolerance.

the ardent devotion for the game among its legion of fans (evidenced by any number of reviews, such as this one at nintendolife.com) may in part be due to simple nostalgia and in part to elements that can only be appreciated by fans of RPGs, but jeremy parish’s look back on gamespite.net (in which he posits that the game combines the best elements of the FF and dragon quest series) does a good job of providing some historical context and highlighting the game’s innovations.

first off, the revamped ATB battle system takes the system from FF6 and adds combo attacks on top of it. the game is so mindlessly easy overall that i didn’t even bother with combo attacks until late in the game when i actually had to start strategizing during battles, and in retrospect i should’ve at least tried each of them out. the game auto-levels the characters you’re not currently using, so i probably also should’ve experimented with the other characters and combinations instead of just sticking to a core group as i usually do (in my case, crono, frog, and marle). the seamless transition between dungeon crawling and battling is very well done and keeps the game moving forward, but the much-touted claim that “random battles are optional” since you can see the enemies onscreen and choose to engage or not is completely false for the majority of the latter parts of the game where literally every battle you fight is a mandatory surprise attack. likewise, exploiting the enemy’s physical positioning when choosing your attacks is completely underutilized.

aside from the battle mechanics which i found less than engaging (which i’ve come to realize is pretty much the sole determiner of whether or not i’ll enjoy an RPG since you spend 90% of an RPG battling), the game is also known for its sidequests, multiple endings (which personally didn’t interest me much at all), and completely novel “new game +” mechanic in which you can carry over all your stats, equipment, and items of a completed game to a second playthrough. i didn’t investigate the latter elements at all, and although the game lets you attempt to beat the final boss early on it seems pointless on a normal playthrough since your characters aren’t going to be at a high enough level. i completed only a few of the obvious sidequests since apparently many of the others require you to fly around and track down what new areas have appeared and then trigger certain events by using certain characters. as i’ve come to realize is often the case, the final dungeon is a dull, drawn-out affair, and i was exceedingly annoyed that the final boss is so much more difficult than the entire rest of the game, so much so that i refuse to grind to finish the game and have set the game aside indefinitely.

this isn’t to say that i didn’t enjoy the game in general, to some extent. the music is quite good and the graphics are memorable. the time travel hook is unique, although, again, the past-future causality elements are somewhat minimal, which makes me interested in trying and comparing the well-received recent DS RPG release radiant historia which seems to more fully use time travel as its central mechanic. i found the characters and the story to be reasonably engaging, although even given the fact i played this game in fits and starts the story seemed to be presented in a piecemeal fashion.

so it seems this is another classic that i found to just be dated. glad i can finally cross this off my list, and hopefully i’ll be working my way through the last handful of all-time classics i have left sooner than later.

time for some chrono trigger links:
- the two main sources for info on all things chrono trigger are the entry at strategywiki.org and chrono.wikia.com. the former includes a nice summary of all the endings, a guide to all the characters, and a table comparing the names in the original vs the DS releases, while the latter includes a nice page on the enemies with sprites.
- speaking of the DS rerelease, IGN has some good information on the added multiplayer monster training features

boosting through the original f-zero

i’d been trying to get motivated to spend time with the original f-zero for SNES for ages. i’d really loved f-zero GX when i’d played it a few years ago, but although i had tried out the SNES version a few times it really hadn’t drawn me in. i finally gave it a fair amount of time recently, and although it’s technically impressive and for the most part i enjoyed the “beginner” and “standard” levels of difficulty (the exception would be the suddenly much more difficult final track of the last cup, called “fire field”), i came away just being frustrated by the difficulty. which is a bit odd, since i thoroughly enjoyed GX, often cited as one of the hardest games of all time.

it’s quite possible the mario kart series is to blame, since with those games it’s not too hard to win even with a few mistakes and if you really screw up there’s still a chance that you can make a comeback with a much-needed item. there’s a high probability that i’ve gotten “softer” and more impatient in my old age, but i think a better explanation is that the difficulty in f-zero just seems unfair in some crucial ways. videogamecritic.net’s review is a bit overly harsh in general, but i have to agree with him that the “pinball physics” is the main thing that makes the game incredibly frustrating. the extreme bounciness of your vehicle is problematic when running into walls just due to careless driving, even when using the heavier machines, but when that’s coupled with the aggressive CPU drivers at the higher levels who will purposely drive into you the entire game becomes annoying. on top of that the slow drivers who just get in the way also drive more erratically at these levels of difficulty and will suddenly swerve into your path so that avoiding them becomes more a matter of luck than skill. ugh. the higher levels also emphasize having to pass rival cars more, which again just leads to random messy pileups more often than not. the key feature that GX includes (and that apparently originated in its predecessor, f-zero X) is the ability to attack other vehicles so that you actually have protection against the other drivers instead of solely having to react to their jostling and hope for the best.

on the plus side, the game, like GX, does give a great sense of speed and the framerate is silky smooth. it features some hazards that GX didn’t have, and the track layouts in general are pretty interesting and have a good amount of variety. the visuals, made possible by the much-touted mode 7 effects, are quite good for the SNES era, and extremely impressive considering it was a launch title, although some of the sound effects, including the acceleration sound, are rather grating. it’s also quite an impressive debut for a series that, although it hasn’t seen a lot of action recently, i’ll be continuing to work my way through. that definitely won’t be for a while, though; even though f-zero X is much more like GX than the original, i’m definitely going to have to take a long break before climbing back into the blue falcon’s driver’s seat.

zoomin’ past some f-zero links:
- review at nintendolife.com
- some maps at vgmaps.com
- PDF of the manual at replacementdocs.com
- entry at wikipedia
- coincidentally, f-zero is also currently an entry in the ongoing series of polls i’m running to highlight some of the greatest games of all time. check it out here.

pac-attack attacked

it feels like it’s been a little while since i’ve played a pac-man game. actually i’ve played a few off and on, but i haven’t sat down and “finished” one in a while. one game that i’ve come back to several times but finally sat down and spent a concentrated amount of time with was pac-attack, as it appears as part of pac-man collection for GBA (a SNES version was also released, and a version also appears as a bonus (in a remade version) in pac-man world 2 for gamecube and other platforms). this is the third game of that set of four that i’ve played, and of the four it’s the one that suffers least from being scaled down to the GBA’s tiny screen. unlike the other three games in the collection which are based on the classic maze-based pac-man gameplay, pac-attack is actually a tetris-esque puzzler and as a result doesn’t have to rely on a tiny zoomed-out perspective or a board divided across multiple screens.

i haven’t played much of the other versions, but on the GBA the game looks great and not painfully small. lest you think it’s a mediocre tetris clone, let me be quick to say that the game is actually one of the better tetris-based puzzlers, and for me ranks closely behind the classics panel de pon (aka tetris attack) and puyo puyo. despite it being similarly addictive, the game isn’t nearly as immediately gratifying, and the pace of it feels slower, in part due to the fact it doesn’t really have any combo system. instead, the game provides three-character blocks which consist of all blocks or all ghosts, some combination of ghosts and blocks, or a pac-man plus two blocks, and its main objective is to line up a trail of ghosts and then unleash your pac-man to gobble them up and cause the subsequent falling blocks to form rows. since a block containing a pac-man comes regularly (every fifth block), when forming long chains of ghosts part of the task is to discard the pac-men you don’t need while not screwing up the big score you’re creating. also, it seems a bit counterintuitive, but eating a long chain of ghosts doesn’t seem to net you a lot of points; rather, your focus has to be on the blocks falling into place into rows after you’ve cleared the ghosts. this obscured objective definitely makes the game harder to get into. also, the strategy for placing the blocks is itself more like games such as pipe dreams where blocks have functions as end pieces or middle pieces (in this case, of a string of ghosts), and again, having to think about these uses of the blocks while positioning them does make the core gameplay more of an effort than most others.

still, once you absorb the nuances of the gameplay the game is quite fun. but even though the gameplay is solid and satisfyingly challenging, even after playing for many enjoyable hours the game just doesn’t quite reach the level of the greats. like games like wario woods, pac-attack is fun but the mechanics are just a bit too fussy. nevertheless, i enjoyed my time spent with it and feel my skillz definitely have room to grow. i achieved a high score just shy of 500,000 so i’ll definitely be picking it up again at some point to at least break that barrier.

attack of the pac-attack links!
- entry at wikipedia
- review of VC SNES version at nintendolife.com
- the game’s apparently actually based on a game called cosmo gang the puzzle. the game baku baku by sega that followed pac-attack by a few years features somewhat similar gameplay.

the grandaddy of mario RPGs

i’d mentioned earlier this year that i had been stuck on pokemon gold for ages because all the copies of the game i had had dead batteries. similarly, i was prevented from playing the original mario RPG, super mario RPG: legend of the seven stars for the SNES until i finally took matters into my own hands and replaced the battery myself.

i’d played the paper mario game for gamecube, so playing mario RPG was a definite step back. the game originated the subsequent spin-off series’ action commands during battle, but despite getting to play as certain members of the mario universe for the first time (although there is one painful omission), the rest of the game played out with very few surprises. as i’ve found with the other mario RPGs, it always feels a bit weird and unnatural to have characters other than the familiar ones we know and love from the classic platformers, although for this game square did a pretty good job of coming up with a host of new enemies and side characters that integrate well enough. i’m not a fan of mini-games and sidequests, but the game made them tolerable by keeping them in the background for the most part. and the general level of easiness of the game (with the exception of the beginning, which is actually a bit harder than you’d expect) ensures that level grinding is never an issue. as with other RPGs although you do get 5 characters to play with, there’s really never any motivation to use the two you don’t want to, although it is nice that the characters you don’t use level up the same as if they had participated in battle.

the biggest drawback for me was the annoyance of having platformer-type stages thrown in every once in a while. while i thoroughly enjoy platformers in general, the isometric view more often than not makes it frustratingly difficult to tell where ledges, etc. actually are supposed to be or how far you should jump, and there’s way too much “try and die” gameplay involved. ugh.

not much more to say. i’ve already checked out some of the other mario RPGs, and although i’m finding them on the whole to be only marginally more interesting than the average RPG, they do tend to be packed with charm and that special brand of nintendo whimsy. i’m really looking forward to seeing my main man ‘uigi team up with his older bro and delving more into the paper mario series as well, so perhaps i’ll be pleasantly surprised.

mario’s RPG links:
- themushroomkingdom.net has a good section on the game, including details on the nintendo cameos and a comparison of the japanese version.
- speaking of the nintendo cameos, here’s a link to a video of the link cameo and the samus cameo.
- PDF of the manual at replacementdocs.com
- random site with a nice compendium of secrets in the game
- entry at mariowiki.com including a list of all the psychopath skill quotes
- entry at wikipedia.org

street fightin’ man

although i’ve played a few of the spin-offs, i’ve never actually played the classic, original street fighter II in the arcade. one of these days i’ll have to track down a machine, but in the meantime i did the next best thing, which was to play one of the three versions of the game that hit the SNES. it was a bit confusing to figure out which SNES game corresponds to which arcade version, but once again wikipedia proved to be quite helpful with its listing of all of the various ports to home consoles. although i usually like to start with the original version of a game, in the case of SFII i figured the differences aren’t that significant, so i skipped over SFII: the world warrior and SFII turbo (aka hyper fighting) and dove into the version i had on hand which was the third and final release for SNES, super street fighter II: the new challengers. as with SFII turbo, in this game the four bosses are playable and there are selectable speeds, and it had several other additions, most notably the inclusion of four new characters (in particular, cammy who went on to become a series staple), as well as new colors for all the characters and the usual moveset tweaks.

having played previous SFII spin-offs i didn’t have to spend any time mastering the usual special attacks (although i fondly remember the time spent learning how to do a hadouken way back when). i spent most of my time with the classic ryu, and although i was familiar with his moveset and some of the other more well-known SFII characters, there were plenty of characters that i’d never really encountered in other games before. in particular i’d never really played against the bosses before, and although balrog and m. bison were pretty straightforward, vega and sagat required a bit more study. i didn’t play enough to really pwn the game and learn combos, and i somewhat missed the flashy super attacks that were added later, but i enjoyed the trip to the past and at some point i’ll definitely have to work my way through the sizable roster. there’s definitely no underestimating the impact SFII has had on the history of gaming, though, and even though capcom continues to churn out sequels year after year (which i have little to no interest in, not being a huge fan of fighters in general) it’s nice to go back and appreciate where it all began.

some street fightin’ links:
- review at vc.nintendolife.com
- entry at strategywiki.org including movesets
- PDF of instruction manual at replacementdocs.com
- random list of “10 things you didn’t know about street fighter II“, including info on the great boss-name switcheroo
- good series retrospective at eurogamer.net, including info on the original game, the little-known numberless street fighter
- first in a series of combo strategy videos from youtube that seem to have been put out by capcom way back when
- there’s a huge supply of SFII fanart and cosplay online, but two particularly worthwhile links are: this guy’s collection of “sesame street fighters” (which includes “pig li” and cookie monster as e. honda) and a ridiculously cute baby chun li

super kirby

i seem to be continuing to relive my previous year of gaming. last year i played kirby’s adventure for NES, and at that time i was somewhat pessimistic about my future with the series, although my first foray into kirby super star for SNES offered a glimmer of hope. the game is eye-catching, with bright, vibrant colors, and it provides a somewhat wider variety of gameplay than previous kirby games, thanks to its 8ish (depending on how you count) distinct sections.

although i quite enjoyed the game and definitely rank it above kirby’s adventure, i still don’t quite see the appeal of the series as a whole. the design is quite good and kirby continues to be as wuvable and huggable as ever, but once again the game’s lack of difficulty makes the game feel rather feeble overall. as with other kirby games, oftentimes you can just float past the opposition, and although this game introduces a huge arsenal of flashy moves there really isn’t any need to master more than just a few basic ones. this game also includes “helper” characters for the first time whereby you can recruit enemies (or a second player) to accompany you; fun, but their presence ultimately just makes the game even easier. judged as a platformer the level design continues to disappoint as well. this review from zentendo of its DS remake sums up my feelings rather well:

As is the case with other Kirby titles (and the SubSpace Emissary in Brawl), the level design here is mostly uninspired and seemingly random. So many points in the game feel inconveniently put together so they don’t flow very well … Kirby’s main problem — as it always has been — is that enemies feel like fodder more than adversaries and the levels and controls just don’t have the precision, fluidity, and expert pacing that more superior platforming titles (like the Super Mario games) demonstrate.

the game does offer up a bit more depth in the form of treasures and special powers to seek out, but i didn’t have much motivation to spend more time with it. one thing that struck me while playing, though, is how much of the game reminded me of the smash bros. series, including kirby’s new movesets; the boss fights, particularly a boss that is pretty much exactly like master hand; and “the arena”, a mode very much like the all-star and boss battles modes. a cursory search online didn’t turn up much on the comparison, although i’m definitely not the only one who thinks so because on a smash bros. wiki it says that “It is believed that the combat mechanics of Super Smash Bros. are based off that of Kirby Super Star” and that “In many ways, Kirby Super Star may be considered a prototypical Smash“.

anyway, it’s hard to fault the game too much, though, as i’m sure it’s perfectly fine for younger players. still, it doesn’t look like the series is going to end up ranking among my favorites anytime soon. but there are still a lot of kirby games to play, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

kirby’s super links!
- entry at wikipedia
- once again rainbow resort provides a great site, including maps and audio.
- 8-part comic about the game at brawl in the family
- IGN compiled review scores for every kirby game
- video of every ability. also, here’s a video of a samus cameo. apparently there’s also a mario cameo, but i haven’t found a video of it.

uwao, aooh! ragin’ and dancin’ through final fantasy 6

in recent times i’ve realized that i’ve become really, really bored with turn-based RPGs, so much so that the thought of taking on another one becomes rather disheartening. i’ve cast enough fir1, lit2, and cur3 spells to last me a lifetime. but final fantasy III for the SNES (a.k.a. final fantasy VI) is another one of those games that’s so universally praised that i knew i would have to play through it at some point, so despite not having finished FF2 (i.e. FF4) i finally forced myself to sit down and start in on it.

and it actually wasn’t so bad. in fact, i’d even say that the first half kept me reasonably well engaged. having avoided reading anything about the game the climactic event that occurs at the 1/2way point was fairly surprising and pretty notable. there were also a few distinctly memorable events, such as the opera scene and celes’ “leap of faith”. the characters are entertaining, and it’s interesting that each has his/her own special abilities, although rather too many of these specialized abilities are pretty much useless.

the second half was less interesting, however. this nostalgia-avoiding reminescence at gamespite.net puts most of the blame of the second half on the game’s espers mechanic, which enables any character to learn magic:

“[I]t’s hard to really care about the characters once you get so far into the game. Until the World of Ruin, the characters are all distinct in some manner, each with their own skills and the little bit of magic they’re able to learn. … the characters in Final Fantasy VI lack significant distinction as they all eventually become walking death-machines, each with the same magic. Their individual skills, so useful at the outset, are frankly useless in comparison. After a certain point, it’s just hard to care about making a unique team anymore; all of the characters’ original traits are soon destroyed by a broken magic system where anyone can learn anything.”

this is an interesting observation, but not my main complaint. the second half of the game has a somewhat interesting setup where your party is scattered to the winds and you have to find each person one by one and re-recruit him/her. but the bit-by-bit pacing gave the whole sequence a feeling of being just a series of sidequests rather than an actual story, especially since you’re revisiting previous locales. (although the world map’s geography changes, the towns are still pretty much the same.) the writer at gamespite likens this second half to an early version of a sandbox game, and comments that it feels “like a single-player MMORPG in a very empty world”. i’m not quite sure i agree with his assessment, although i do agree with his comment that “after a certain point in the World of Ruin, there’s really nothing left to do but grind for levels, items, rages, lores, and the errata that’s hard to find interesting as an adult.”

i also have some less-than-minor quibbles, such as how tedious it is to collect even a fraction of the rages/lores let alone all of them, and the fact that you have to use so many characters for the final dungeon that you probably never really would use otherwise (and as a result a number of them are probably significantly underlevelled). in the end this was an enjoyable game for an RPG (haha) and although it didn’t become a great favorite i have grown fond of most of the characters, particularly my main man gao as well as mog and umaro. i’m clearly never going to be a huge final fantasy fan, but after this experience i won’t mind playing through more of the main series. i’m definitely on the lookout for more-unique RPGs for the future though. hmmm … foreshadowing … … … ?

finally, final fantasy links. FF RPGs have a zillion links online, but here are a few of the more noteworthy ones:
- this is the FAQ that i found the most comprehensive and useful, although it’s rather bloated.
- pretty good game site at ffcompendium.com including a copy of the game script, lores and rages FAQs, and high-res images of the world maps
- another good game site at rpgclassics.com: has a ton of images, including enemy sprites
- entry at wikipedia
- endings at vgmuseum.com
- PDF of manual at replacementdocs.com

tetris attacked — on the go

just a quick post. i know i said i was going to cut down on the sequels, but i had some games already in the pipeline to finish, one of which was the game boy version of tetris attack. i had played and thoroughly enjoyed the SNES version and was looking forward to trying out the various iterations the game has gone through since its original release in 1996.

puzzle games tend not to vary much, and the original game boy version of tetris attack has even less reason to as (according to the game’s page at wikipedia) it was released pretty much simultaneously with the SNES version. in terms of the trappings and modes the games are pretty much the same. the biggest difference is the size of the well [alert! alert! geek speak ahead. skip to the next paragraph to avoid!]: in the SNES version the well is 6 blocks across and 12 high, whereas in the GB version it’s 6 across and only 9 high. this definitely changes the rhythm of the game, and working your chains vertically becomes less feasible. the difference in the well size will probably require you to adjust your strategy if you were reliant on working in the middle of your stack to make chains like i was. also, perhaps as a way to compensate for the limitations on making chains, it feels like the game handles garbage blocks a bit differently than the SNES version. as in the SNES version, making a line next to a garbage block causes all the garbage blocks to turn into regular blocks, but in the GB version there seems to be a significantly bigger pause while the garbage blocks are popping; this makes it easier to rearrange blocks below the garbage blocks and set up chains based on what the garbage blocks have turned into. this change helps make the game more balanced overall, although it also makes it easier to rebound from getting a lot of garbage blocks. since i haven’t played the SNES version in a while i may be mistaken on that, but that was my impression.

since i hadn’t played any version of the game in a while i had a good time just getting back into it. even though i’d played the SNES version a fair amount i’m still far from being a chain master, so there was definitely plenty of worthwhile time spent just improving my tetris attack/panel de pon skillz. i cleared the regular mode on the hardest difficulty, which was rather on the easy side, before proceeding to the “vs COM” mode. on the hardest normal setting this was definitely more of a challenge, but the game gives you infinite continues so it doesn’t take too much effort. after beating bowser the game challenges you to beat bowser without any losses in the first 7 stages (in which you battle your “friends”, e.g. lakitu or poochy, who have supposedly been put under a spell) and with less than 7 continues in the final four stages (i.e. you can use each of the “friends” you’ve accrued as a continue). this is also more of a challenge and definitely kept me coming back for more.

all in all this was a nice portable alternative to the SNES version. the graphics, music, and sound make the transition pretty much intact, and although the gameplay ends up having slight variations, it’s still the tetris attack you know and love and it’s very much worth checking out. especially if you’re a geek like me who gets into the minute differences between versions of the same game! lucky for me there are still plenty of iterations of the series to check out in the future. hahaha.

another attack of tetris attack links!
- linked to this before, but still worth noting: nice general PdP fansite
- themushroomkingdom.net has a comparison of the SNES tetris attack to the original, japanese-only panel de pon
- passwords at IGN
- entry at gaming.wikia.com with info on all the characters

yoshi’s super island

i’ve never really been that fond of yoshi, mostly because i found him to be pretty useless in super mario world. i hadn’t been that excited by that game in general when i played it a couple of years ago for the first time, but i figured that its sequel super mario world 2: yoshi’s island, would have about as much similarity to its predecessor as wario land: super mario land 3 had to its predecessor (super mario land 2). so i was keeping an open mind about this, my first game with yoshi in a starring role. (although to be unnecessarily exact, i had played the US tetris attack which starred yoshi and other characters from SMW2).

it turns out i was somewhat wrong about SMW2 being completely different from SMW. it’s true almost all of the surface of the game is completely different. one of the central game mechanics that’s new and radically different in SMW2 is that yoshi (actually a whole slew of ‘em in different colors) is always carrying baby mario around and has to retrieve him whenever yoshi gets hit and baby mario gets knocked off. having to retrieve baby mario gets a little tiresome (especially when accompanied by mario’s yelling), but it does give the game a different feel which is appreciated. (although come to think of it, having to retrieve baby mario is rather like getting knocked off of yoshi and having to chase after him in SMW, although i would argue that that wasn’t really central to that game.) yoshi’s ability to swallow enemies and lay eggs and then throw them is also brand new, and he (i.e. they) also has various unique powerups in the guise of some special fruits he can swallow that give him extra firepower, as well as a few somewhat random transformations. the art style, which was intended to have a crayon-like, “storybook” aesthetic, also contributes to the game’s completely unique feel.

but what actually surprised me was that, aside from all of those many surface changes, much of the game’s platforming reminded me of SMW, only way better. and not only that, but the variety in the stages felt improved to such a degree that it reminded me of SMB3, extremely high praise indeed. SMB3 is chockfull of surprises, and although SMW2 starts off a bit slow (the first two worlds, of six, don’t have much character) and had me feeling like i was going through the motions of playing through yet another platformer, pretty soon the game had surprises at every corner and had me completely hooked. the enemies are well designed and oftentimes funny (and i definitely appreciated the return of SMB2‘s shy guy to center stage), and i especially enjoyed the admirable number of boss battles. none of them were particularly hard, but all of them were entertaining and fun. i was also surprised that elements i’d first seen in new super mario bros. for the DS actually had their origins in this game.

in terms of difficulty SMW2 wasn’t that hard to complete, although in lieu of the alternate routes of SMW instead the designers added tons of useless things to collect and find in every level (namely stars that increase your baby mario timer, red coins, and flowers). item collection does expand a platformer’s gameplay a lot, and the levels are definitely designed well enough that finding all the items isn’t mindless and dull, but finding 45 items in every level was a bit overkill for me. at some point i’ll probably go back and work my way through all the levels again to find all the items, but for now i’ve added it to my list of all-time greats and moved on to my next challenge … and conquest, hahahahaha! i’ve gotten to be a fan of yoshi (and baby mario), though, and am looking forward to trying out yoshi’s story on the N64, even though it hasn’t really gotten great reviews, as well as his other adventures.

coupla yoshi’s super links:
- entry at wikipedia
- good FAQ at gamefaqs
- quite a few yoshi wallpapers at yoshiart.com