A fun sequel to Super Mario World, but that baby needs to shut up!
User Rating: 7.9 | Super Mario: Yoshi Island SNES
Instead of making another straightforward platformer with a predictable evolution of the crisp graphics of Super Mario World, the developers decided to make the game in a cartoonish, colorful presentation that may or may not please fans. They also eschewed a standard damage system for a crying baby. More on that in a second. Yoshi's Island is a prequel to all the Mario games - it takes place when mario and luigi were babies, and a stork was dispatched to take them to their parents, but was intercepted by Kamek, baby Bowser's caretaker. Luigi was kidnapped and mario landed in a Yoshi village, and they decided to let him ride on their backs on a quest to get luigi and bring the twins home. So that's where the crying baby comes in. Each time yoshi is hit, baby mario floats off in a bubble and you must reach him before a timer runs out. All this while, mario is bawling loudly. This really gets annoying. Your timer defaults at 10 seconds, but you can collect stars to increase it to 30 seconds. Yoshi still can swallow many enemies, but there are quite a few he cannot. For this, you must master the game's system for shooting eggs. You press A, and a target begins moving up and down in an arc. To shoot, you simply line up the target with whatever you need to bash, and hit A again. Yoshi has 6 worlds to fight through, each with 2 bosses and a secret bonus level awarded for collecting all the flower bonuses, red coins, and having a full count of stars for each normal level. There are also a few sections where yoshi transforms into various vehicles with different capabilities. The game's stages are usually more complicated than a standard left to right scroller, and involve going up, down, and through doors. There is also the occasional labyrinthine bit. Yoshi's Island is a fun game, but lacks the replayability of the previous mario games.
