Yoshi's Island is a game I've talked a lot about on this blog before, so like with Super Metroid, it's a bit tough to figure what I can really add to the conversation here. Yoshi's Island is probably the cult classic Nintendo game, a brilliantly designed, jaw-droppingly beautiful, and aggressively charming game that hasn't aged a single day.
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island was a unique departure for Nintendo at the time. Instead of making a standard sequel to one of their most beloved SNES games, they made a prequel starring Yoshi instead, and it was a brilliant move. Though I grew up with the Wii, Yoshi was always my favorite Mario character, so discovering that he starred in a beloved platformer of his own was awesome to me as a kid. And frankly, I think the original Yoshi's Island manages to stand above any 2D Mario made before or since because it stars Yoshi. This is a game that doesn't have to conform to any conventional Mario tropes and feels dramatically different, weirder, and more interesting as a result. The level design feels different, the movement feels different, the tone feels different, and of course, the art direction feels very different.
I can't really talk about Yoshi's Island without talking about the visuals. This game was made to show off the capabilities of the SuperFX chip and man, does it show them off. Yoshi's Island goes for a painterly style that still looks so fresh and vivid to this day, to the point that I still find new things to appreciate the more I play. I adore the cartoony character designs, the lush and bold color palette, the gorgeous backgrounds, the natural use of sprite scaling and rotation, and the way every object looks like it's physically painted with brush strokes. I still think this original game is the best-looking Yoshi game, hell it might even be one of the best-looking games period, it's just that timeless.
As far as gameplay is concerned, I don't think not enough people really appreciate how well Yoshi feels in this game. Yoshi's movement in the first Yoshi's Island is incredibly weighty and momentum-driven, you can really fling yourself across a stage with well-timed flutters and it just feels really nice and satisfying. Satisfying can also describe the game's central mechanic: Eating and tossing eggs. As a kid, I remember being skeptical about having to time your egg throws rather than actually being able to aim projectiles yourself, but nowadays, I love this decision. Nothing feels better than being able to pull off a perfect toss, let alone the times that you manage to nail a precise ricochet. The one other facet of Yoshi's Island gameplay is, of course, the health system. Yoshi is invincible, but getting hit causes you to drop Baby Mario, and if you can't catch him before the timer ticks down, you enter the fail state. This is easily the game's most divisive element since getting hit will cause Baby Mario to start wailing until you catch him and it's very grating. Honestly, I agree, I despise Baby Mario's crying, but it's something that just never dampened my love for this game. Besides, the actual concept of the health system itself is still very creative and well-executed, and it says a lot that other games like Halo took direct inspiration from it.
Yoshi's Island also has some absolutely stellar level design, it's frankly everything I look for in platforming stages. On one hand, Yoshi's Island is filled with fun, inventive, and satisfying linear obstacle courses that'll have you hopping across spinning platforms, ski lifts, giant balloons, disappearing platforms, rafts floating atop lava, all the while dodging giant maces, falling walls, falling icicles, firebars, and some of the biggest Bullet Bills in the series. There's some fun transformations for Yoshi that give the game a bit of a variety, and the castle levels even like to toss in some pretty sick-looking 2.5D elements using the SuperFX chip. But on the other hand, Yoshi's Island's stages are also incredibly explorative, filled to the brim with hidden nooks and crannies and cleverly tucked away collectibles. And there's a lot of collectibles at that. 20 Red Coins, 5 Daisies, on top of ending a stage with your countdown at the max makes for a grueling but immensely satisfying 100% completion that'll force you to fully master and learn each stage to the fullest. For someone who's as much of an exploration buff as I am, Yoshi's Island is an absolute dream to complete.
And then there's the bosses. This might sound crazy, but I think Yoshi's Island quite possibly has the best lineup of boss fights in any game ever. As I said, Yoshi's Island is very much a showcase of the SuperFX's capabilities and nowhere is this more apparent than in the boss fights. From sprite scaling to sprite rotation, to impressive 3D-ish imagery, each and every boss in Yoshi's Island uses the SuperFX to the fullest to craft a fight with a heightened sense of scale, while also being incredibly fun to defeat in their own unique ways. The highlights for me have to be the tug of war fight against Roger The Potted Ghost, fighting Prince Froggy from inside his stomach, skipping eggs across the surface in (or straight-up skipping) the fight against Naval Piranha, the climactic aerial battle against Hookbill, and of course, the technically mind-blowing antigravity fight against Raphael The Raven. But even those fights don't even come close to topping the incredible fight against Baby Bowser, which is equal parts difficult, cinematic, and shockingly intense to this day.
Oh yeah, as for the music, it's very good. I'd definitely say Yoshi's Island ranks up there with Super Mario Sunshine and Majora's Mask as one of Koji Kondo's best works. It's upbeat, charming, ridiculously catchy, and knows when to get serious. On one hand, we have the lovably adorable Flower Garden, Map, and Athletic themes. On the other hand, we have the haunting Castle theme, the tense Boss theme, and the jarringly metal Baby Bowser theme. You wouldn't expect Yoshi's Island to have some killer rock tracks, but it just made me wish Kondo had done even more of them.
Overall, Yoshi's Island is incredible. I don't think it'll ever be a game I don't absolutely adore. I love its beautiful painterly visuals, fluid movement, exploratory approach to level design, and its massive bosses, and it pretty much solidified Yoshi as one of my favorite video game characters of all time.
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