Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (1995)

All this Mario talk reminded me that I need to finish SMW 2. I booted it up for the first time ever about 4 months ago and was really taken back by the change in art style. I don't know much about the mario lore or release order but this reminded me a bit of the paper Mario art style (from what I've seen of paper Mario anyway).

I was also kind of surprised by the 3D looking assets and animations in some sections? Does this game utilise a 3D chip on the cartridge similar to how Star Fox does?

And I know how mario, especially in the galaxy games, can utilise some outside the box mechanics, but transforming into a helicopter was really unexpected

Some time ago, in July, some Grouvee members said that they dislike this game, and, now that I'm replaying, I'm starting to understand why.

Don't misunderstand me, I mostly like the game, but it has a major flaw: it's a pure platformer and a collection platformer at the same time, and both parts get in the way of the other part.

As a collection platformer, you have to explore the map, find secrets, examine the area... As a pure platformer you have to jump, evade enemies... And why both parts doesn't work together? Because of the checkpoints. There is just one checkpoint. If the game was just a pure platformer that wouldn't be a problem, because you should have to repeat the jumping zone and nothing more. The problem is that you have to repeat ALL the exploration every time you die, and that makes the game too frustrating when you die a pair of times in a level, even if those areas are not difficult.

So I think the game should have more checkpoints, in order to not repeat huge exploration areas, or simply keep your collectables when you die. That would make the game way more funny.

Started today (yes, I started two Mario games the same day). I don't play this one since my cousin lent me the cartbridge a lot of time ago... DS wasn't even released, so I don't touch this game since a lot.

First three level 100% completed. Controls are fine and graphics are wonderful. Will this one be better than the first Mario World? Maybe.

Beat but did not unlock any bonus levels. I mostly got scores in the 80s or 90s, a few 100s, a few 60s and one 30 something. I do not care about collecting but many of the puzzle elements about how to get the collectables were mildly entertaining. I appreciated how many new mechanics were added over Super Mario World 1 so as not the make the gameplay the same, but I do consider SMW1 the better game; hard to put my finger on why exactly but the more immersive level selection certainly helps. Just feels like Yoshi's Island lacks some of the charm of the previous game.

I am not a fan of platforming were failure results in death. I used save state scumming to erase all deaths and ended up with over 160 lives. I liked the resource management of eggs and the throwing. There were also Kirby elements from spitting enemies as projectiles and special breath power ups. The air treading helped with platforming but I still failed quite often; just seemed like Yoshi was a little awkward to control sometimes. The timer mechanic to get Mario back was a great alternative to health, but I did not like how Yoshi was stunned upon taking damage. I did find the invincibility frames after the stun occasionally useful for getting tricky collectables. I never bothered with the inventory items and did not like the silly mini games; especially the QTE balloon tossing. While not difficult I kept having to translate my PSP buttons to SNES. The story could have been better and less kiddy, but I guess it makes sense given the ages of the characters. What does not make sense is why each stage has a different Yoshi. How are they getting ahead of the Yoshi carrying Mario and why can't the same one carry him for more than 1 stage? I think the different colored Yoshis should have had different mechanics and encouraged replaying stages with other colors.

9.0/10

It's time I finally get around to sharing my thoughts on Yoshi's Island, which I played through for the first time in recent months. In this game you get to play as Yoshi Dinosaur, who has a greatly expanded moveset following Mario World. It took me some time to get used to the floaty sine wave-ish jump, but I ended up liking it. It also took some effort to get the hang of the whole triangle-angle egg-shooting mechanic -- but that ended up being really great too. All in all it's a fun game to play. It always felt like just the right level of gradually-increasing challenge for difficulty, and it had a lot more meat to it than I expected. Plenty of levels, and they seemed much longer than the ones in Mario World.

What stands out most though is the game's art design. Everything looks like it was drawn in crayon, it's amazing. I love it when games own their unique aesthetic and go all-out with it. On top of this, enemies grow into huge bosses, all sorts of platforms and such are spinning, and the entire environment can be affected in cool-looking ways that I don't think I've seen in any other 16-bit game (those fuzzies). Honestly, playing this game made me feel sad that the age of 2D sprite-based platformers died off shortly thereafter. If the SNES had even just a couple more years to work with in Nintendo's spotlight, I can only imagine what cool games we could have gotten. (Luckily we would eventually get indie devs making cool and experimental 2D platformers, but it sure took a while!)

Most of my "negative points" for Yoshi's Island are small quibbles, all except for one thing... I. Hate. Baby Mario! I absolutely can not stand that loud and obnoxious crying every damn time Yoshi gets hit. So painfully ear-grating. It can not be emphasized enough how much that uuWAH uuWAH uuWAH made me want to stop playing. Luckily I played this on Switch Online, meaning I could rewind each time I got hit... But that felt like cheating (part of the game is quickly retrieving Baby Mario when he goes flying off in his bubble), so I tried to just deal with it. If you play this game on an emulator, I strongly recommend getting a mod that removes the crying! That will be how I play if I ever go back to this one again.