ranking the yoshi series

it’s been a while since i’ve done a series ranking, so i thought i’d review the main yoshi series. it only consists of five entries, two of which have unusual control schemes, and three of which consist of unusual structures, but i finished the series not too long ago and i should probably write this up before the two new entries yarn yoshi for wii u and yoshi’s new island for 3DS come out next year. i wasn’t able to find anyone who’d beaten all five entries, so i’m on my own for this one. a-here we go!

the yoshi series
as ranked by geozeldadude

1) it should come as no surprise to anyone that at the top of the list is super mario world 2: yoshi’s island originally released on SNES. the game is a frequent member of “best games of all time” lists and has a firm place on my list as well, for good reason. the game improved on super mario world and offered up several new game mechanics (carrying babies, swallowing enemies, and throwing eggs), a previously seen character in his/its first substantial role, a wholly satisfying amount of variety, fun enemies, memorable bosses, tons of collectibles for completionists, and a distinctive art style. unlike other games in the series, this entry hit that ideal sweet spot where it wasn’t too easy but also wasn’t frustratingly difficult. a well-loved classic, and the only contender for the top spot of this list.

2) next on my list is yoshi touch & go. released as part of DS’s launch, the game uses the DS’s unique touchscreen and microphone controls. i played it much more recently, though, and the game is very enjoyable even now that the novelty of the DS’s controls has been lost. the game combines two distinct experiences, one featuring baby mario falling from the sky and the second, more-substantial section featuring yoshi in his usual role of babysitter. against the odds, the game successfully pulls off the feat of fitting a platformer into an arcade (i.e. high-score chasing) style game, and although it includes all the modes you’d expect (score attack, time attack, etc.), each has a different feel. the controls feel good, and the game is easy to get into but takes time to master. it’s a worthwhile challenge to top all the default high scores, and this was a surprisingly fun experience and a definite highlight for the series.

3) in third i would have to put yoshi’s island DS. the game was the first true sequel to yoshi’s island, and although many felt it suffered in comparison in every way, i enjoyed it overall. it cribs too much from the original, although the addition of multiple babies other than baby mario does give the game a unique twist. the dual screens are not used very well and the difficulty in the last stages is more frustrating than fun (mostly because checkpoints become much harder to come by). the game isn’t a classic for the ages, but it has its moments and definitely ranks higher than the other two remaining entries in the series.

4) in a distant fourth is yoshi’s story for the N64. like yoshi’s island DS, yoshi’s story suffers when being compared to the original, yoshi’s island, and upset many fans when it was first released for what appeared to be an extremely short length given its high price. for those who looked closer it became apparent that although, yes, you could beat the game very quickly, to experience the full game you’d have to beat the game at least four times, and it would almost certainly take players more attempts than that since to gain access to all the stages you have to track down “special hearts” hidden in previous levels. the game feels like an early attempt by nintendo to offer up an experience that could be both easy and more challenging, and it achieves that by allowing the user to choose among available levels. this unique mechanic is memorable and there is some platforming fun to be had overall (not to mention a new take on the storybook art style of the original), but even aside from being misunderstood by the majority of people who played it ultimately the game fails to provide the thrills of the best of the genre.

5) at the bottom of the list is yoshi topsy-turvy for the GBA. along with the novel motion controls (achieved by the cartridge’s built-in accelerometer), the game was unique in that it was mission oriented (e.g. collect a certain number of coins, defeat a certain number of enemies, etc.). although the controls may have been amazing for the time, i found them to be more annoying than fun, and the game was too reliant on its mission-based structure to sustain the player’s interest as opposed to all the things that make a platformer really fun and enjoyable. definitely the low point in the series’ history.

so that’s the list! the series has managed to pack in a lot of variety into just a few entries, and although it’s had more downs than ups i’m hopeful that the next two entries will elevate this series’ reputation. here’s hoping! and to end, here’s a classic yoshi comic from nintendo power. yoshi yoshi!

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don’t expect to be babied by yoshi’s island DS

the last game to cross off my list of main yoshi games was yoshi’s island DS. this is the fifth game in the main series, and the first one to be content to be a true sequel (of the original SNES title) rather than explore a unique game structure. the game was developed (co-developed?) by artoon, who was behind the repetitive away: shuffle dungeon, also on DS, and at first i was skeptical that they could create a quality nintendo platformer, let alone on the level of the original, which is one of my favorite games of all time. however, once i got past the first world i found myself enjoying the main unique feature of this game for the most part, namely the new baby-switching mechanic. there are five babies in total, including mario, each with different abilities, and because you can only switch babies at certain points you’ll invariably end up having to backtrack to get the right baby for the situation. the most egregious example is the baby coins: there’s one in each level, but it only be picked up by a specific baby. some of the babies feel a bit underused, but overall their inclusion is a nice change and does a good job of justifying the sequel.

the game got mixed reviews when it came out, with some people saying it was an excellent platformer and others saying it was too close to the first game and suffered in comparison. i found it to be somewhere in between, but what brought it down for me was the difficulty spike in the last fifth of the game. i don’t think difficulty is a bad thing in general, but it seemed somewhat inconsistent since the series has generally been on the easy side, and part of the reason it becomes so annoyingly hard/frustrating is because the levels get much longer with not enough checkpoints to compensate. the other thing people seem to complain about is the “dead zone” between the two screens, and the music, but i didn’t have much of a problem with either. it did seem the expansion to two screens was somewhat clumsy in general, and every time you fall into a pit you’ll have to fall two screens’ worth before you die which got to be quite annoying. as with the original, trying to nab all the useless collectibles (time stars, red coins, and flowers) adds to replayability but really feels like overkill.

glad to have finished the series just in time for the upcoming releases on wii u and 3DS. the latter has a lot to live up to and so far it looks like it may have the same problem of cribbing too closely to the first entry, but we’ll just have to see how it turns out.

don’t be babied by these yoshi’s island DS links:
– comprehensive entry at mariowiki.com including a catalog of all of the enemies
– track from the game that appeared in brawl
– review at nintendolife.com
– entry at wikipedia

yoshi to the rescue in yoshi touch & go

with the exception of the brilliant first title, so far i’ve found the yoshi series to be fairly lackluster. on the surface the next entry on the list to tackle, yoshi touch & go for DS, looked like it was going to be an even shallower experience. unlike the previous three games which are all essentially platformers, this one’s an arcade-style game that features the typical variations, including score attack, time attack, marathon, and vs. modes.

the game was released just a few months after the DS’s debut, and it was clearly designed to show off the new hardware’s dual-screen, touchscreen, as well as microphone capabilities. each mode has two sections: one in which baby mario slowly drops from the sky to the ground and you trace clouds to guide him to safety, and the other in which yoshi, in a more typical platformer fashion, carries baby mario horizontally, swallowing enemies and fruit and chucking eggs to clear a safe path and rack up points. both sections, especially the second, prove to be surprisingly robust, and once you get into the groove you can last for quite a long time in the endless marathon modes, although it doesn’t seem like the difficulty increases noticeably as you proceed within a playthrough. the game does provide a nice balance between the benefits of conserving eggs vs. using them up in order to reach a higher score, and unlike warioware: touched! it’s enjoyable even now, years after the novelty of touchscreen mechanics has worn off.

it’s surprising how enjoyable the game is. although it has only a few modes it will take you some time to beat all the default high scores, and by that time you may have become addicted to the simple but tactile gameplay. it’s unusual to see such a straightforward arcade-style game as this, which makes it a somewhat refreshing experience. it would’ve been interesting to see the mechanics applied to an entire platformer game, but i suppose that niche was more ably filled by the excellent kirby: canvas curse. despite its modest offerings the game was fairly well-received by critics when it was released, and although i wouldn’t say it’s one of my favorite games ever, it’s definitely one of the more compelling entires in the yoshi series that i’ve played so far.

yoshi’s rescued these yoshi touch & go links:
– FAQ/walkthrough
– positive review at videogamecritic.com
– craig harris’s glowing review at IGN
– entry at mariowiki.com
– entry at wikipedia

disorienting yoshi topsy-turvy

earlier this summer i finally finished playing through kirby tilt ‘n’ tumble, a late GBC game and nintendo’s earliest foray into motion-controlled gaming, thanks to its built-in accelerometer. nintendo waited until the end of the GBA’s life span to release its second accelerometer-based game, warioware: twisted!, which i thoroughly enjoyed. this was almost immediately followed by the similarly controlled yoshi topsy-turvy, also for GBA. (incidentally, for all those trivia buffs out there, in the US that game was actually released after its DS cousin, yoshi touch & go, and the very same thing had happened to warioware touched! which was released on DS before twisted!.) also, topsy-turvy has the additional advantage of supporting the original orientation of the GBA (cartridge is oriented the same way as the console), as well as the orientation of the GBA SP and DS (cartridge is upside down).

topsy-turvy, being a platformer, is more similar to tilt ‘n’ tumble than twisted, although the gameplay is very distinct. whereas in tilt ‘n’ tumble you guide the pink puffball through pinball-like stages, topsy-turvy plays like a more traditional platformer and you use the tilting mechanism to activate environmental objects, such as making platforms extend or boulders roll. the pacing is more enjoyable than tilt ‘n’ tumble and tilting to affect the environment doesn’t usually bring the action to a grinding halt the way that it did in that game. also, being able to play on my GBA SP did help keep the motion sickness to manageable levels.

the uniqueness of topsy-turvy isn’t just the controls, however. as with yoshi’s story the game has a surprising structure (not to mention a similar storybook aesthetic). the game includes six worlds, but the number of levels in each world increases from the first world’s three to the final world’s twelve. although you’re required to finish every stage, each stage comes with a mission: eat a certain number of fruits, collect a certain number of coins, get to the exit within a certain time, defeat a certain number of enemies, don’t defeat more than four enemies, and avoid getting damaged by the auto-scrolling screen. at times two missions are combined, and the game taxes you with successfully completing the missions (which earns you medals) for a certain fraction of the stages within the world before you can progress to the next.

this focus on missions is unusual for a platformer, and although i never really actually enjoyed that structure i appreciated its pacing: each mission type is introduced one at a time, one for each new world (each world includes the previous mission types as well). the game doesn’t particularly impress when judged as a platformer, though. the graphics are excellent and rival those on the DS, but aside from the motion controls the level design is fairly ho-hum and none of the stages really offer much in the way of a “wow” factor. the game does incorporate some transformations (yoshi transformations were last seen in super mario world 2, but the ones here are completely new) but most of them are more frustrating than fun. the game’s also a bit on the short side (which was fine by me since it wasn’t really keeping my attention) and only includes one real boss battle, although trying to earn gold medals by completing a mission perfectly could extend your game time, at the expense of your sanity.

all in all this was a game that was an interesting entry in nintendo and video game history, but not that much fun. overall i’ve enjoyed the yoshi series more than the kirby series, though, and am looking forward to playing more of the remaining two, both for DS.

orient on these yoshi topsy-turvy links:
– apparently no one’s bothered to write a complete FAQ, but there are a couple of partial FAQs on gamefaqs
– succesfully completing all the missions unlocks some useless bonus modes
– entry at mariowiki.com
– entry at wikipedia

choose your own yoshi’s story adventure

i’ve been meaning to get into the yoshi series more after having played and loved super mario world 2: yoshi’s island. next up was yoshi’s story for N64. whether it was intentionally designed to be so or not i don’t know, but the game feels like an early case of nintendo trying to balance casual vs. hardcore gameplay even way back in 1997, and as with similar, more-recent efforts this attempt was unjustly maligned and misunderstood.

the game has a completely unique premise in that it’s incredibly simple to reach the end of a single playthrough since you just have to find 30 pieces of fruit for yoshi to eat to progress and fruit is plentiful. at a minimum on a single playthrough you’d encounter only 6 levels and two bosses, which includes the final boss. after this initially baffling experience i realized that the game is actually quite clever in its setup: each “page” (i.e. world) contains 4 levels of increasing difficulty, but on a single playthrough you only play one of the four. to unlock all the stages in the next page you have to hunt down hearts that are hidden in the current stage. so already the difficulty of the game is completely up to you since you can choose to play the harder stages (which also means choosing to hunt for all the hearts).

the main challenge of the game is clearly not just in finishing the game, then, or actually even playing through all the levels. the real challenge of the game is to skip all the easy-to-find fruit in favor of yoshi’s favorite fruit, melons, in order to achieve a high score. hunting down all 30 melons in each stage is certainly time consuming, although this is a case where the game’s “challenge” is more about painstakingly searching every corner of a stage (often by stopping to use yoshi’s “sniff-sniff” ability) as opposed to feats requiring actual platforming prowess. this type of monotonous gameplay isn’t particularly engaging, but there are enough more-worthwhile challenges to keep one reasonably engaged. it’s somewhat hard to get too excited about the quest for a high score in a platformer such as this, but putting the attention on the collection aspect gives the game more of a focus.

it’s easy to see why people who didn’t delve into the game at all would dismiss it too quickly, but even after playing through every stage, many several times, my enjoyment with the game didn’t rise to the levels one would expect from a nintendo platformer. yoshi’s abilities are a nice expansion on his/its SMW2 skills (minus the whining baby, fortunately), and there are some nice references to that title, including the awesome huffin’ puffins. there are definitely moments of brilliance, many quite original, scattered throughout as well; highlights include a helpful white shy guy, hidden black yoshis and white yoshis, and levels in which you roll through a hamster wheel and ride on a dragon. but those moments aren’t quite plentiful enough, even with all the new enemies introduced (not many of which, it seems, have continued on, which is a shame as some of them are memorable). the pop-up book art style didn’t grab me, although it’s interesting to compare it to the recent wii release kirby’s epic yarn, which also has an arts ‘n crafts aesthetic. the game has some mini-games scattered throughout that require complete mastery for completing the “melon quest”, and this and other perfection-requiring objectives are a definite nuisance. the game is also notable for introducing yoshi’s love-it-or-hate-it voice (courtesy of composer kazumi totaka), and also including totaka’s song.

all in all this is an enjoyable enough platformer that, while certainly not an all-time great especially by nintendo’s lofty standards, is definitely underrated, especially considering the fact that it’s a throwback to 2-d platforming at a time when 3-d platforming was becoming the new norm. yoshi’s next two outings were similarly experimental, so it’ll be interesting to see how his/its series shapes up.

choose your own yoshi’s story links:
– for a typically damning review, see the review at nintendolife.com, although it’s interesting to note that in the comments readers seem to share my opinion that the reviewer is overly harsh. for a more-complimentary review, see nintendojo’s review.
– mariowiki.com’s page is a great resource and includes a complete guide to all the enemies
– the game has gotten some smash bros. recognition, including a stage in the first smash bros. game and a stage in melee, along with palette swaps in brawl to match the colors of the 6 yoshis featured in this game.
– here’s a FAQ from gamefaqs that lists the locations of all the melons, and reveals what the secret message hidden in the game’s 24 stages is, which is “YOU ARE YOSHI’S GREAT PARTNER”, haha.
– entry at wikipedia

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 around 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