Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, released in Japan as Super Mario: Yosshī Island (スーパーマリオ　ヨッシーアイランド, Sūpā Mario Yosshī Airando^?)^[1] is a platform video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System console. It was released on August 5 1995 in Japan, October 4 1995 in North America and October 6 1995 in Europe. A port was made for the Game Boy Advance. While featuring Nintendo's trademark Mario character, the game's innovative graphics and gameplay differed from all previous Mario games in that players control various Yoshi dinosaurs rather than Mario himself, who appears as a helpless infant. As Yoshi's Island is the prequel to The Mario Series, it is chronologically the first game where Mario, Luigi, Bowser and Yoshi appear. It itself has a sequel on the Nintendo DS called Yoshi's Island DS, which was released in 2006.

Gameplay

Yoshi's Island made Yoshi the main playable character for the first time in a Mario game. Yoshi has a 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.

Yoshi can collect eggs during their travels. These eggs follow Yoshi along until they are 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. Special eggs can be acquired: yellow eggs, which create a coin when they hit an enemy, red eggs, which create two stars, and special flashing eggs, which produce a red coin upon hitting an enemy. Eggs, which begin green, will turn yellow, then red, after bouncing off walls. The third time an egg hits a wall, however, it is destroyed. Rarely, one can find Fat Shyguys who, when digested, create giant green eggs, which are lobbed, instead of thrown. they create a quake when they hit the ground, turning all enemies on the screen into stars. On a few levels, duck-like creatures (called Huffin' Puffins) can be acquired; these travel a short distance before returning to Yoshi. Generators exist for Green eggs, which create an egg for each time you bump into it. Similar boxes, only yellow and red, transform into a single egg of their color, rather than generate infinite numbers. Up to six objects can follow Yoshi at a time (only 3 giant eggs), 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 toadies capture Mario and the player loses a life. The timer will slowly regenerate back to the original ten seconds and can be extended for up to 30 seconds by collecting stars or passing through the Middle Ring (which grants a bonus of 10 stars, and turns nearby enemies into stars that can be collected. Some traps, however, such as pits, spikes, and lava, can kill Yoshi instantly.

Yoshi also has the ability, at various points in the game, to transform into different vehicles. At these points, a bubble containing a graphical representation of the vehicle floats and upon bursting it, Yoshi becomes that vehicle. Vehicles include a helicopter, which enables him to fly; a racing car which has stilts for suspension (allowing for avoidance of the enemies up ahead in those sections); a submarine, which can fire homing torpedoes at the aquatic enemies; a train, which has to be navigated along tracks on the wall whilst avoiding the enemies who can move while the train is active; and a 'Mole-Tank', which allows the player to dig through dirt. Whilst in these forms Yoshi has limited time to reach a block at the end of the section, and leaves baby Mario behind. If he runs out of time before getting where he needs to, he will be transported back to where he started. If he reaches the block at the end of the section, baby Mario is transported to Yoshi, who transforms back and the game carries on.

A limitedly-appearing alternative form is that of Super Baby Mario. At certain points in the game, Yoshi grabs a "Super Star" and withdraws into a large egg while the player controls Baby Mario, who dons a cape. Super Baby Mario is gifted with abilities like fast running speed and flight, but the transformation only lasts for a short period before reverting to Baby Mario riding on Yoshi's back once more.

At the end of each level, the player 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 there is a chance for a mini-game at the end of the level.

100 points is the perfect score in each level. If a perfect score of 100 is achieved in all 8 regular levels of a world, a secret level will appear, as well as a bonus level where the bonus games (from getting a flower at the goal of each level) can be played over and over for numerous items and extra lives.

There are 6 worlds in Yoshi's Island. World 1 is a field theme, World 2 is a forest theme, World 3 has a jungle theme, World 4 has several mixed themes, but all levels are in twilight, World 5 has a snow/sky theme, and World 6 has a wasteland theme.

Unlike other games in the Super Mario Bros. series that allow a player to "warp" ahead to higher levels, Yoshi's Island was the first game in the series that requires the player to play and complete all 48 regular stages in order to finish the game. In addition to these, there are 6 challenging bonus levels—one for each world, which can only be unlocked by achieving perfect scores on all of the world's levels. In the Game Boy Advance version, a new secret stage was added to each of the six worlds.

Plot

A stork carries two babies across the sea, but the evil Magikoopa Kamek emerges, and steals Baby Luigi, and Baby Mario falls onto an island in the middle of the sea, called Yoshi's Island, home to all Yoshis. He lands on a green Yoshi, and Mario and the rest of the Yoshi gang must journey through the game's six worlds to rescue Baby Luigi and the stork back from Baby Bowser and Kamek.

Presentation

The game uses the Super FX 2 microchip to create sprite scaling, polygon effects, and pre-32-bit computer effects called "Morphmation" (in American commercials) that are relatively advanced for a 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.^[2] Miyamoto, 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 more cartoon like and resubmitted it to the evaluation committee, who passed the game. At one point the game even draws inspiration from Vincent Van Gogh's painting The Starry Night. ^[3] Some of the cut scenes do, however, show pre-rendered graphics, done in a rather different form that looks more like the gameplay graphics.

The game's American commercial seemed to be a remade Monty Python gag; a rather rotund man in a restaurant eating voraciously and getting fatter by the second as the voice-over narrator explains all the details of the game, until he claims that he's "full", to which the narrator asks if he had "enough room for one more bonus level?" The man eats some frosting off his finger, to which a dripping sound is heard. He looks down, uttering "uh oh...", and promptly explodes all over the other patrons of the restaurant, with the SNES' then motto "PLAY IT LOUD" written in semi-digested food. A few months later, an edited version appeared, with the spontaneous explosion taken out (the sound effect is still heard, with the patrons looking off-camera in curiosity) and "PLAY IT LOUD" written in what looks like green slime.

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 4.5/5 rating. Yoshi's Island sold 4 million copies.

Yoshi's Island proved to be a critical and commercial hit in its Game Boy Advance version, Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3, which was released in 2002, at the peak of the handheld's success. With its captivating game play and unique graphics, Yoshi's Island is renowned by Nintendo fans as one of the most memorable games to appear on the SNES. It has a 94% critical ranking, based on 5 reviews. Screwattack.com put it 9th on the 20 best SNES games ever, and even called the final boss battle "epic".

Sequels and Spin-offs

The semi-sequel Yoshi's Story was released for the Nintendo 64 and featured similar gameplay, but is generally considered to be of a lower quality^[4]. The series has seen two spin-offs: Yoshi Touch & Go for the Nintendo DS and Yoshi Topsy-Turvy for the Game Boy Advance. While unrelated in basic gameplay, the characters and graphical style are heavily based on Yoshi's Island.

Yoshi's Island DS, released on November 13, 2006 for the Nintendo DS, is the most direct sequel and incorporates many of the same gameplay aspects. Unlike Yoshi's Island, it now also features Princess Peach, Donkey Kong, Bowser, and Wario joining Mario as babies.

Yoshi's Island, the location of Super Mario World 2 's action, is also used as the backdrop for the popular Super NES 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 Super Smash Bros. Brawl, a stage heavily based on the version of Yoshi's Island portrayed in Super Mario World 2 was shown.

Game Boy Advance version

Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3 was ported by Nintendo R&D2 to the Game Boy Advance with some added features.

The game featured no changes to its basic formula besides that voice samples from Yoshi's Story were used and the music was redone.. There was one major addition, however: six new levels called "Secret levels" could be unlocked after beating the game.^[5] If a player beats the game and gets 100 points on all 60 levels in the game, a secret ending will occur. ^[6]

The original version had 21 red coins in More Monkey Madness (Extra 3), but the remake only has 20.^[7] There was a red coin under a Tap-Tap - if the player performs a Ground Pound on the Tap-Tap's pillar once, the player collects it. This has been removed from the remake.

Like its two predecessors, Super Mario Advance 3 had generally positive reviews, with selling 1.6 million copies in the US, however most critics thought that Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2 was a little better.^[8]

References

External links