The Past and Times of Yore: Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's island, a sublime prequel

Release Date: 26/10/1995
Genre: 2D Platformer
Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Nintendo EAD
Platform: Super Nintendo (SNES)
Players: 1 (2 Player Mini battles)
Classification: E (Everyone)

I have always been and always will be a fan of the original Nintendo and Super Nintendo consoles and games and as I discussed in the first ever Past and Times of Yore post the graphics just seem to be timeless as I would much prefer to see the crisp 2D image of Super Mario World rather the next-gen but pixelated 3D mess of some of the games on the PS1 inc Driver 2 which did look good at the time but have not aged well at all. There are some games I could play over and over again in the Super Mario Bros series on the Super Nintendo and the one I’m about to “review” is no exception. I say review in inverted commas as it’s not really a real review, you can’t review any Mario game this good and make it serious but here goes anyway.

Before Mario and Luigi’s romp over the Mushroom Kingdom in Super Mario Bros. 3 before the whole gang set off in the dreamland of Subcon before Mario and Luigi set out to save the Princess in Super Mario Bros and even before Mario (then known as “Jumpman”) defeated Donkey Kong to save, well the Princess the first time possibly.

Anyway before all of that there was.......

Yoshi

Yes indeed everyone loves a prequel and Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island was no exception. It does seem odd when you think about it, we first encountered Yoshi in Super Mario World where Mario and Luigi apparently meet him for the first time on Yoshi’s Island in Dinosaur Land though it seems they have met before, a long time before.

Mario on Yoshi in Super Mario World

In starting Yoshi’s Island (which is what I will refer to the game as) the opening cinematic is a joy to watch right from the start. With a tune that sounds like it’s playing from a child’s toy it tells the story of baby Mario and Luigi in a storybook style of moving pictures that seemed so damn advanced back then. They are being carried by a stork (in the classic tale spun by parents who were too embarrassed to tell their children where they really come from) when Kamek the evil Magikoopa foresees a great threat in the two brothers in the future of a Koopa Kingdom he does a fly-by on the stork but only manages to steal Luigi while Mario falls to the ground below and lands on Yoshi or more specifically green Yoshi as I guess we’ve known since Super Mario World that Yoshi is technically both a name for character and the species. Green Yoshi then takes Mario back to the other Yoshi’s and they find that Mario knows where to find Luigi by some kind of link between the twins and they all agree to carry baby Mario there by a relay system.

All the coloured Yoshi's in the opening cinematic.

The entire game takes place on Yoshi’s Island which was just the starting area of the previous game, the game opens with a clear view of the whole island which is now much bigger then before though technically the Super Mario World map was never to scale. I was kind of disappointed to see that the world maps was now completely linear where you did one level after the other (not that I had any problem with that) but I did enjoy the variety of the paths and getting the keys to the secret areas you could take on the main map of SMW (Super Mario World) but I guess it makes it simple enough also it . After the initial opening scene the game start with a “practice” level where you learn how to play the game and this does help quite a bit as there are some big changes here compared to previous Mario games.

Map of World 5: The Iceworld

When playing as whichever Yoshi you are you carry Mario on your back and you can run and jump on enemies as usual but this time it’s not your main attack. When Yoshi eats things he can either spit them out or swallow them to create an egg where you can have up to 6 bouncing along behind you, you use the eggs to aim and throw at almost anything with some things specifically requiring you to hit them with an egg to proceed. Yoshi can can perform a very useful “hover” to stay in the air a bit longer and you can also do a ground pound to pound different things inc enemies/poles etc. The controls are fairly easy to manage, I noticed their a bit easier now that you don’t need to hold the Y button to run, you just run all the time. If you get hit by an enemy Mario suddenly becomes encased in a bubble and floats around while a timer counts down and Yoshi has to quickly recover touch the bubble to break it before the timer runs out otherwise Kamek’s toadies come and carry baby Mario away. The amount of seconds on the timer can be added to by collecting Stars which are most often found by throwing an egg at a question mark cloud which burst and they spring all over the place unless your clever and collect them all as soon as they pop out. As well as the “timer” stars there are various other collectibles including Red Coins, and Flowers.

Quick Yoshi! get Mario back!, notice the flower there too.

This time around the “goal” is a spinning ring that you jump into and Mario flies through the air onto the next Yoshi in the relay, attaining five flowers in the level results in you being able to play a Bonus Challenge and your score is tallied at the end of the level depending on how many red coins, flowers and stars you collected. Apparently if you got 100% on every level in a world you got to play the bonus level of that world but unfortunately I just wasn’t good enough to get any of them. There are two different kinds of bonus challenges, the ones that are inside the levels themselves and the ones that are won when the flower circle lands on the correct spot, There is a house inside some levels which requires a key to open and in there you fight a Bandit by doing things such as Throwing Balloons or Watermelon Seed Spitting which is lots of fun and uses the new Watermelon item, I also liked the new function of the Super Star that turns Mario into Superstar Mario and he runs around and up walls, glides, floats and is generally invincible. Another new addition to the series is that Yoshi can morph into various forms including things like helicopters and cars using the Morph Bubble, he can also transform into a submarine which unfortunately are the only underwater parts of the game, I found these bits really fun as it changes the gameplay style immensely.

Superstar Mario! notice the eggs are still following him although Yoshi isn't there.

The level design is brilliant as always and possibly even better then SMW, I remember coming across the area where you meet Poochy there is an information box that says something along the lines of “At Nintendo we poured our heart and souls into this game, it is full of secrets, Enjoy!” and that really warmed my heart. They weren’t wrong either the levels are packed full of secrets and tricks and really get you thinking especially with your egg-throwing tactics. It seems that this Mario game has the most number of enemies yet and the special thing is it seems to include a large number of enemies from previous games most prominently the Shy Guys from Super Mario Brothers 2.  I love the 3^rd world in the jungle with all the pestering Monkeys, I also like the new big scary enemies inc. Nep-Enut and Chomp Sharks which add that element of fear to the game.

The giant Nep-Enut, they make quite a scary sound when rising from the water, there's also a Lava-welling version of these creatures called Gargantua Blarggs

The graphics are nothing short of awesome, you can tell by the opening sequence that these graphics were going to be something else and they did indeed push the SNES to its limits. The graphics have a cartoony pastel coloured feel with most backgrounds, text and features drawn from crayon or made out of patches though some features made the game look more than two dimensional. I can remember back then watching the bridges go up and down, running out of the way of the falling doors and jumping along the rolling logs that looked like they were 3D, I remember the crazy drug-fuelled effects of Fuzzy when you touched one of them and the moving platforms in the castle levels and balancing precariously in a log while riding through a lake of lava.

Yoshi touched a Fuzzy and got dizzy. Though the signs are all there that you aren't just dizzy

Unfortunately I do not own the game on SNES and also with my SNES controls being fairly uncooperative I had to use an emulator though this did have an effect on the graphics making them choppy in the parts with the advanced moving 2D graphics (like the intro) but I do remember playing them on SNES in the past and can appreciate what they looked like. Though the good thing about the emulator was I could manipulate the layers of the game and remove backgrounds etc and I noticed that foregrounds had been used to a large extent this time around i.e. flowers in the ground levels and mists in the cave levels.

The flowers in the foreground are a great touch.

It seems old Koji Kondo did it again as the music is his best work as usual, the music is instantly likable all bippy and boppy with that unique sound. I especially like the castle and boss themes and I love how the music is so appropriate to the area, bouncy and happy in the overworld, low and composed in the cave levels, and fast and upbeat in the athletic platform jumping levels which has that excellent ragtime theme. I also love the end level music and the way that the scores dance around to the music once they’ve been completed, the music just seems to work. The sound effects are up to standard for the Mario games all bouncy and poppy, as with the main theme of the game they do seem fairly cartoony but there’s nothing wrong with that, the music and the suit the game perfectly, there’s not much more to say.

The castle levels are a lot of fun and have a great soundtrack.

This game was underrated in my view and I don’t know why as it has all the best things that the Mario games of the time had, great gameplay, variety, music and sound, graphics, and also replayability, you will and would have played this game at least 2 or 3 times as it’s not the kind of game you can just play once. If. Yoshi’s Island is a great game though quite a deviation away from the standard Mario formula, not that that’s a bad thing, and not that I have anything against Yoshi, Yoshi is awesome, it just stops it from being my no.1 game of all time and you can probably guess what that is. If you haven’t played this before, get an emulator (I recommend ZSNES) and goddamn play it and it won’t matter whether you’re a fan of Mario games or not you’ll have a ball, or maybe an egg...

JD

Dancing numbers!