Yoshi's Island
- For the GBA enhanced remake, see Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3.
| Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island | |
|---|---|
| box of Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island | |
| Developer(s) | Nintendo |
| Publisher(s) | Nintendo |
| Director(s) |
|
| Designer(s) | Takashi Tezuka |
| Artist(s) | |
| Platform(s) | Super Famicom / Super NES |
| Release |  August 5, 1995 October 4, 1995 October 6, 1995 |
| Genre(s) | Platform game |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (titled Super Mario: Yoshi Island in Japan) is a platform video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Super NES console. While featuring Nintendo's trademark Mario character, the game's innovative graphics and gameplay differed from all previous titles in the Super Mario Bros. series: Players control various Yoshi dinosaurs rather than Mario himself, who appears as a helpless infant.
In 1998, Nintendo released a semi-sequel titled Yoshi's Story, which received mixed reviews for losing the charm of the original and for being too childish.[citation needed] The original Yoshi's Island re-appeared in 2002 (with easier to unlock bonus stages) as Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3 for the Game Boy Advance. The first true sequel, Yoshi's Island DS, was released on November 13, 2006 for the Nintendo DS. Unlike Yoshi's Island, it now features Princess Peach, Donkey Kong, Bowser, and Wario as babies.
Story
Template:Spoiler The game begins with Baby Mario and Baby Luigi being delivered by the stork to their parents in the Mushroom Kingdom. Kamek the Magikoopa senses that the brothers will cause great trouble to the Koopas in the future, so he attempts to kidnap them. Kamek captures the stork and young Luigi, but Mario (along with Kamek's map to Bowser's castle) falls to the ground and lands on a Yoshi's back. The Yoshis decide to protect Baby Mario and rescue his brother, along with the captured stork, who knows who the boys' parents are. Along the way, they must fight through Kamek's creatures and the hostile inhabitants of the island. Kamek appears several times, using his spells to make normal enemies grow to monstrous sizes to become bosses.
Eventually, after a long tiring adventure of getting attacked, speared, eaten and cursed, the Yoshis make it to the Koopa Kingdom (World 6), and Green Yoshi infiltrates Kamek's castle. Inside the final chamber, Kamek pleads with Yoshi to hand over Baby Mario, but the noise awakens Baby Bowser. Baby Bowser complains that Kamek woke him up, and proceeds to attack him before flattening him and casually kicking him offscreen. Noticing Yoshi, Baby Bowser demands a ride on the "gween donkey", and attacks when Baby Mario won't get off Yoshi's back. When Yoshi defeats Baby Bowser, Kamek uses his magic on his master, and makes Baby Bowser grow to monstrous size. Even larger than the full-grown Bowser, Baby Bowser destroys the majority of the castle as he grows too big for the room. Baby Bowser is eventually defeated, when the spell breaks and he collapses on the ruins of the roof. Kamek quickly scoops up his young charge and flies away into the night, shouting that they'll be back someday. Yoshi then finds the captured stork, along with Baby Luigi. Both are set free, and the siblings are taken to their parents. Template:Endspoiler
Graphics
The game uses the Super FX 2 microchip to create sprite scaling and polygon effects that are relatively advanced for a Super Famicom/SNES game (a preliminary version of the boxart featured the Super FX 2 logo). The game also used the SNES' capability of parallax scrolling.
The game's unique graphical style is said to have resulted from a conflict with Nintendo's internal evaluation committee; impressed by the recently released Donkey Kong Country, which sported pre-rendered graphics, they ordered the game's producer, Shigeru Miyamoto, to move the visuals in this direction. Shigeru, who did not particularly like Donkey Kong Country, instead altered the graphics to look as if they had been drawn with crayons and felt-pens and resubmitted it to the evaluation committee, who admitted their mistake and passed the game. Some of the cut scenes do, however, show pre-rendered graphics, done in a rather different form that looks more like the gameplay graphics.
Gameplay
Yoshi's Island made Yoshi the main playable character for the first time in a Mario game. At the beginning of each level, Baby Mario is passed between different-colored Yoshis. All the Yoshis have the same range of moves, such as stomps and tongue-licks. If the player holds down the jump button the Yoshis pedal their feet furiously in the air to achieve a floating effect; this allows them to stay airborne for a couple of seconds and gain a little extra height. This floating maneuver may be performed multiple times if necessary.
Yoshis can collect eggs during their travels across the levels by utilising their unique metabolism to instantaneously digest enemies that they had swallowed. These eggs follow Yoshi along until they were thrown. Many of the game's puzzles involve bouncing eggs around the levels or skimming them over water to hit distant enemies or objects. In addition to eggs, Yoshi may also collect keys to open locked doors. Finally, duck-like creatures (called Huffin' Puffins) exist in a few levels; these travel a short distance then return to you. Up to six objects can follow Yoshi at a time, whether they are eggs, keys, or Puffins.
Unlike other platform games in the Mario series, the player's character can be attacked an unlimited number of times by most enemies without harm. Whenever Yoshi is hit by an enemy, Baby Mario flies off his back, floating around the level in a bubble and wailing loudly as a countdown timer begins. If the countdown reaches zero before Yoshi tags the bubble, Kamek's servants capture Mario and the player loses a life. At the beginning of each level, the countdown timer begins at ten; the player can add time to the countdown to a maximum of thirty by collecting stars in each stage. If Yoshi rescues Baby Mario by touching the bubble when the countdown is less than ten, the timer is slowly replenished back to ten as long as Mario remains on Yoshi's back. Some traps, however, can kill Yoshi instantly, such as pits, spikes, and lava.
At the end of each level, the player jumps through a 'roulette' ring and the level is scored. The player earns points based on three criteria:
- Every star, remaining on the countdown timer is worth one point. Up to thirty stars can be collected.
- Scattered among the coins in each level are twenty special red coins; each one collected is worth one point.
- Hidden throughout each stage are five flowers; each one collected is worth ten points, and for every flower collected you have another flower displayed on the roulette ring.
100 points is a perfect score in each level.
If the roulette stops on a flower, the player plays a game to earn lives or items. Six different games are available, ranging from a scratch-card-type game to a memory-matching-type game.
There are 6 worlds in Yoshi's Island. Worlds 1 and 2 have no particular theme. World 3 has a jungle theme, World 4 has a mountain theme, World 5 opens with a snow theme before taking to the mountain peaks and the skies, and World 6 has a dark cave-like theme. In both the SNES and the Game Boy Advance versions, there is a short stage before the player starts World 1 that the player must get through (and will never be played again unless a new game is started, but in the GBA version, it appears as the last area of a secret level). In the Game Boy Advance version, if the player presses select, at the top of the screen it will say "World 0-0".
In the SNES version, there are nine stages in every world: eight regular stages and one unlockable extra stage and a free bonus stage to play for free, accessed by scoring a perfect 100 points in each of the world's regular stages. In the Game Boy Advance version, however, a new "secret" stage was added to each of the six worlds for a total of ten stages per world and 61 stages in the entire game (including stage 0-0).
This game marks the debut of Poochy, a happy dog-like character who will let Yoshi ride him — in effect making Baby Mario riding Yoshi riding Poochy. Poochy shows up in later games, such as this game's sequel Yoshi's Story, as well.
In a secret room in 5-4, accessed by defeating a Chain Chomp with the item 'POW block', there was a ChatterBox (a talking face box that, when hit, provides a message) containing a "top secret" hint that the player must (hold the "select" button while pressing X twice, Y, B, and A). This was to be done only on the level/world selection map. For Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3 Gameboy Advance version: (Hold the "select" button while pressing L twice, B, A, and R).
Reception
Upon release, Electronic Gaming Monthly hailed the game to be one of the best games of that year and others considered the game to be an instant classic. GamePro gave the game a 4/5 rating. In Japan, the game sold well and numerous merchandise such as a soundtrack CD and t-shirts were sold. However, in North America, the game was less successful than hoped. The most likely reason for its low sales figures was the introduction of the 32-bit generation along with the shift of focus away from the Super Nintendo towards the Nintendo 64.
Yoshi's Island proved to be a critical and commercial hit in its Game Boy Advance version, Super Mario Advance 3: Yoshi's Island, which was released in 2002, at the peak of the handheld's success.
Spin-offs
Aside from the critically panned semi-sequel Yoshi's Story and the recently released Yoshi's Island DS, the game has seen two other spin-offs: Yoshi Touch & Go for the Nintendo DS and Yoshi Topsy-Turvy for Game Boy Advance. While unrelated in basic gameplay, the characters and graphic style are heavily based on Yoshi's Island.
Yoshi's Island - the physical location of Super Mario World 2 's action - is also used as the backdrop for the popular Super Nintendo and Game Boy puzzle game Tetris Attack.
Several of Yoshi's moves that debuted in Super Mario World 2, such as the Ground Pound and Egg Throw, have been used by him in the Super Smash Bros. series. In a recent trailer for the upcoming Super Smash Bros. Brawl, a stage heavily based on the version of Yoshi's Island portrayed in Super Mario World 2 was shown.
External links
- Template:GameFAQs
- Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island at MobyGames
- Speed Demos Archive - Speedruns (Another speedrun)
| Main series | |
|---|---|
| Spin-offs | |
| People | |
| Related | |
