***Note that I'm attempting to mitigate any further controversy by avoiding more opinionated claims like "best platformer ever," "best SNES game ever," or "best Nintendo game ever." Although you would not be wrong for believing any of those. Yoshi's Island is that good.***
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Islandis the best 2D platformer ever. Nothing else has it beat at what it excels at. It's the all-time standard of 2D platforming and represents the fiendish capabilities of Miyamoto and Nintendo. 20 years later, nothing has surpassed or even matched this work of perfection.
- Level design: It's the most important element of any platformer. And Yoshi's Island is special in that no level in the game feels repetitive, drawn-out, or the same as another. Each stage offers some new mechanic, some new enemy; it's all unique and distinct. Even the Donkey Kong Country games, Super Mario Bros. 3, and Super Mario World have stages that feel like retreads of other stages, or stages that were too long for their own good--that's not the case here. I can't think of a single stage in this game that could have been trimmed down for the sake of fun: it's all fun. All of it. Even collecting shit for 100% is fun.
- Gameplay: Impeccably tight controls; masterful physics; complex combat abilities (Yoshi's tongue, ground pound, and egg throws, not to mention the abundance of power-ups, give the player more combat options than any Mario platformer to date). These are the elements of Yoshi's Island which are most commonly praised. But I think this game is truly special in its handling of damage. See, Yoshi doesn't really take damage upon hitting an enemy: instead, he loses Mario, whom he has a maximum of thirty seconds to retrieve before it's game over. In 1995, this "death" mechanic was revolutionary in a period where every sidescroller up to that point made use of either a life bar or one/two-hits-and-you're-dead approach. While environmental hazards like lava, falls, and spikes still kill Yoshi, the requirement to retrieve Mario in the allotted time upon colliding with an enemy forgives a simple mistake--provided you can actually navigate an area's hazards in time to retrieve Mario. And in later stages, that's easier said than done. This mechanic is utterly brilliant, as it actually changes the flow of gameplay upon getting hurt, placing an additional requirement on the player.
- Artstyle: It doesn't need to be said, but I'll say it anyway: Yoshi's Island is the best-looking game on the SNES. It's still one of the best-looking 2D games ever. Miyamoto garnered notoriety for expressing disgust with Donkey Kong Country's pre-rendered backgrounds, and he responded by giving us a game with a stylized, hand-drawn aesthetic that set a precedent for future games. I have trouble believing this game came out in 1995--it seems so ahead of its time visually.
- Music: It's great; there's not much more to be said. Personally, I place DKC1 and 2 above Yoshi's Island in this regard, but it's very close. What I will say is that the soundtrack compliments the visual style exceedingly well, better than Super Mario World or the DKC soundtracks compliment their visual styles.
With all these in mind, it's no wonder why Yoshi's Island is the best in its genre. It's also no wonder why the "sequels" to Yoshi's Island failed: there's no perfecting perfection.
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