Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (titled Super Mario: Yossy Island in Japan) is a platform video game for the Super Nintendo console. While featuring Nintendo's trademark Mario character, the game's innovative graphics and gameplay differed from all previous titles in the Super Mario Bros. series: players control various Yoshi dinosaurs rather than Mario himself, who appears as a helpless infant.

In 1998, Nintendo released a semi-sequel, Yoshi's Story, which was panned by critics and had limited commercial success. The original Yoshi's Island re-appeared in 2002 (with new stages) as Super Mario Advance 3 for the Game Boy Advance.

The first true sequel, Yoshi's Island 2, is currently in development for the Nintendo DS.

Story

The game begins with Baby Mario and Baby Luigi being delivered by the stork to their parents in the Mushroom Kingdom. Kamek the Magikoopa senses that the brothers will cause great trouble to the Koopas in the future, so he attempts to kidnap them. Kamek captures the stork and young Luigi, but Mario (along with the stork's map) falls to the ground and lands on a Yoshi's back. The Yoshis decide to protect Baby Mario and rescue his brother, along with the captured stork, who knows who the boys' parents are. Along the way, they must fight through Kamek's creatures and the hostile inhabitants of the island. Kamek appears several times, using his spells to make normal enemies grow to monstrous sizes to become bosses.

Eventually, the Yoshis make it to the Koopa Kingdom, and Yoshi (the green one) infiltrates Kamek's castle. Kamek now resorts to attacking Yoshi directly, but the Yoshis succeed in breaking into the castle. They then have a choice of 4 doors, Number 1 has multiple enemies and hazards. Door 2, all the enemies are related to Shy Guys. Door 3 is the revenge of Tap-Tap the Red Nosed and Door 4 is Baby Bowser's secret stash, which has over 100 coins. Finally, Yoshi breaks into the final chamber. Inside, Kamek pleads with Yoshi to hand over Baby Mario. But the noise awakens Baby Bowser. Baby Bowser complains that Kamek woke him up, and proceeds to attack him before flattening him and casually kicking him offscreen. Noticing Yoshi, who he calls a 'gween donkey', Baby Bowser demands a ride, and attacks when Baby Mario won't get off Yoshi's back. When Yoshi defeats Baby Bowser, Kamek uses his magic on his master. Baby Bowser grows to monstrous size, even much larger than the full-grown Bowser, so much that the majority of the castle collapses as he grows too big for the room. Baby Bowser attacks, but is defeated. As Baby Bowser, the spell broken, collapses on the ruins of the roof, Kamek rushes off with him on his broomstick, shouting that they'll be back. Hopping across the roof, Yoshi finds the captured stork, along with Baby Luigi. Both are set free, and the siblings are taken to their parents.

Graphics

The game uses the Super FX 2 microchip to create sprite scaling and polygon effects that are relatively advanced for a Super Famicom/SNES game (a preliminary version of the boxart featured the Super FX 2 logo).

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. Shigeru, 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 resubmitted it to the evaluation committee, who admitted their mistake and passed the game. Some of the cut scenes do, however, show pre-rendered graphics, done in a rather different form that looks more like the gameplay graphics.

Gameplay

Yoshi's Island made Yoshi the main playable character for the first time in a Mario game. Baby Mario is passed between different-colored Yoshis at the beginning of each new level. All the Yoshis have the same 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 which allowed them to stay airborne for a few moments.

Yoshis can collect eggs during their travels across the levels by utilising their unique metabolism to instantaneously digest enemies that they had swallowed. These eggs (up to six at a time) would follow Yoshi along until they were 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 could also collect keys, which could be used to open locked doors, and duck-like creatures (called Huffin' Puffins) in a few levels, which go a short distance then return to you.

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 a countdown timer begins. If the countdown reaches zero before Yoshi tags the bubble, Kamek's servants capture Mario and the player loses a life. At the beginning of each level, the countdown timer begins at ten; the player can add time to the countdown to a maximum of thirty by collecting stars in each stage. If Yoshi rescues Baby Mario by touching the bubble when the countdown is less than ten, the timer is slowly replenished back to ten so long as Mario remains on Yoshi's back.

At the end of each level, the player jumps through a 'roulette' ring then,the player earns points based on three criteria:

Every tick, or star, remaining on the countdown timer is worth one point.
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 you have another flower displayed on the roulette ring.

100 points is a perfect score in each level.

If the roulette stops on a flower then the player plays a game to earn lives or items, you can play 1 of 6 different games, ranging from a scratch card type game to a memory type game.

There are 6 worlds in Yoshi's Island. Worlds 1 and 2 don't have particular themes, but World 3 has a jungle theme, World 4 has a mountain theme, World 5 opens with a snow theme before taking to the mountain peaks and the skies, and World 6 has a dark cavelike theme. In both Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island for SNES and the Super Mario Advance 3 version of the game, there is a short stage before the player starts World 1 that the player must get through (and will never be played again unless a new game is started, but in the GBA version, it appears as the last area of a secret level). In the Game Boy Advance version, if the player presses select, at the top of the screen it will say "World 0-0".

In the SFC/SNES version, there are nine stages in every world: eight regular stages and one unlockable extra stage and a free bonus stage to play for free, accessed by scoring a perfect 100 points in each of the world's regular stages. In the Game Boy Advance version, however, a new "secret" stage was added to each of the six worlds for a total of ten stages per world and 61 stages in the entire game (including stage 0-0).

This game also marks the debut of Poochy, a happy dog-like character who will let Yoshi ride him — in effect making Baby Mario riding Yoshi riding Poochy. Poochy shows up in later games, such as this game's sequel Yoshi's Story, as well.

In a secret room in 5-4, there was a "top secret" hint that the player must (hold the "select" button while pressing X twice, Y, B, and A). This was to be done only on the level/world selection map. For Super Mario Advance 3 Gameboy Advance version: (Hold the "select" botton while pressing L twice, B, A, and R).

Reception

The game was not as successful as its predecessor (which became a Player's Choice title). This may have been due to the advertising of the game which was made during Nintendo's "Play it Loud!" phase in which product advertising was meant to be shocking or outrageous and had little in connection to the games promoted. In the television commercial, a large man is seated at a restaurant and is shown messily eating several plates of food (sometimes in close up) and his stomach increases in size. When his stomach is full, he eats some whipped cream which causes his stomach to explode, showering partially digested food over other restaurant patrons. It is also possible that the game's success was limited by the story as it did not continue from the Super Mario World story. The graphics also may have limited the success of the game as other Super Nintendo games with similar graphics have not done as well as their predecessors such as Kirby's Dream Land 3. To some, the graphics made the game appear to have been aimed towards a younger audience.

Spin-offs

Aside from the critically panned semi-sequel Yoshi's Story and the in-development Yoshi's Island 2, the game has seen two other spin-offs: Yoshi Touch & Go for the Nintendo DS and Yoshi Topsy-Turvy for Game Boy Advance. While unrelated in basic gameplay, the characters and graphic style are heavily based on Yoshi's Island.

Yoshi's Island - the physical location of Super Mario World 2 's action - is also used as the backdrop for the popular Super Nintendo puzzle game Tetris Attack.

External links

Speed Demos Archive - Speedruns (Another speedrun)

Yoshi games | Super NES games | 1995 computer and video games | Super FX games