Despite being billed as Super Mario World 2, Yoshi's Island really stands as its own unique kind of platformer.
Yoshi's Island is a platformer set in the general Mario universe. Despite being billed as Super Mario World 2, it really stands as its own unique kind of platformer. While Mario fans will undoubtedly see many similarities between this and your standard Mario games, what is different is equally noteworthy.
For starters, Yoshi's Island's art style maintains the cartoonish cheer of Mario games but has a charming handdrawn look that's all its own. The sound design too is quite nice w/ catchy music and wonderfully musical sounding effects. Despite the limits of its hardware--be it the original SNES or GBA--this game has style by leaps and bounds over most games being produced then or today. It is simply a wonderful game to see and hear.
(Note: I played this on a 3DS XL and a normal 3DS. It looks great on the regular 3DS but is absolutely breathtaking on the 3DS XL screen.)
It's no slouch in terms of gameplay either. While its handdrawn and cartoonish look might have you expecting something well-polished but simplistic, the control here is actually quite deep. In addition to the expected ability to move and jump, Yoshi can also snatch up enemies w/ his tongue and swallow them. Nintendo has always had an eye for the surreal so instead of these enemies, Yoshi magically converts them to eggs which can then be thrown at other enemies of used to collect items. There are also several enemies and powerups which can be eaten to give Yoshi special abilities and all of this is used to good effect throughout Yoshi's Islands six diverse worlds. Additionally, Yoshi can float at the end of his jumps. In fact, he can do so many times on each jump. This gives the platforming a slower and more deliberate feel than in a typical Mario game and can make for some interesting solutions to various platforming sections Yoshi encounters.
Another unique element is that Yoshi is practically invincible on his own. There are a few obstacles that kill Yoshi instantly and he can fall down a pit or off an edge and die but most enemies cannot harm Yoshi himself. Instead, they knock baby Mario off his back who then floats away in a bubble. You have a set amount of time to get him back before he's carried away and Yoshi loses a life. This will be something Sonic the Hedgehog fans will enjoy as the feeling of chasing down an errant baby Mario reminds me quite a lot of chasing down that one last ring in Sonic after you've been hit. It's a unique approach and it makes Yoshi's Island feel a bit forgiving than the Mario games of an era where you can really only get hit by enemies a couple times before dying.
That is not to say Yoshi's Island is a walk in the park. There is lots of challenging platforming here and while the game can be beaten relatively easily if you just want to play straight through, players have the option to attempt to collect red coins and flowers in order to unlock bonus levels and just to challenge themselves. This is a feature pretty common to Mario games and enables a sort of chose-your-own-difficulty approach that works quite well.
My only real complaints about this game is that the levels are a bit long for some handheld gaming sessions. Yoshi's Island does offer a sleep mode which mitigates this to some extent but, really, it works simply because its so good that it's worth trying to find a good solid chunk of time to sit down and play a level. Also, as I find to be the case w/ basically every Mario game released since Super Mario Brothers 3 on NES, when you run out of lives, there is virtually zero negative consequences and, besides, extra lives are so easy to come by they are largely irrelevant. The one time it makes a difference is if you run out of lives after a checkpoint has been reached in a certain level, you have to start over from the beginning. Of course, any gamer worth their salt can get twenty free lives in about ten minutes in Yoshi's Island so it just adds some annoying backtracking if you are just trying to play through.The game would stand as a perfectly reasonable challenge even w/o finite lives so it is hard to justify having that mechanic at all.
These few small problems aside, the gameplay on Yoshi's island is virtually flawless. It has a unique feel and tight controls and is really just pure joy to play. It is probably the best of the Super Mario Advance series and one of the best games available on GBA period--or any other Nintendo console for that matter.