CLASSIC GAMING
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
Developer - Nintendo
Publisher - Nintendo
Genre - Platformer
Year of Release - 1995
System - SNES

Many people may remember the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or SNES, with a fond heart.  A system that despite having a slow start into the 90's 16-bit era, became the best selling console of its time, but only after SEGA pulled out to focus on the 32-bit generation.  Nintendo however are a company that for the most part see themselves right to the end of an era of gaming history, as you may well see in this review.
But of course all good things must come to an end. And the SNES had to end as well. However, the SNES had a swan song to perform, an interactive aria for the loyal fans and late newcomers to stumble on upon and be rewarded for at least showing up.  And in my opinion, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island was one of the most beautiful swan songs to experience.


Story - Yoshi's Island, officially the fifth of the Super Mario game series, is considered to be the first game of the entire Mario saga chronologically by its unusual beginning which have since then become a constant topic for Mario fanatics of the famous brothers' true origins.
You're not going to expect anything complex from a Mario game this early on.  The story is, like the charm of Super Mario, simple, as the opening sequence shows in a strange nursery tale fashion.  Two babies known as Mario and Luigi are being taken by a stork to their parents. Kamek, the Koopa Wizard, foresees the twins to become the ruination of the Koopa Empire, of which he is correct.  So he attempts to kidnap both the babies, failing to do so when he only managed to take Luigi away, as Mario is upended and dropped into the ocean accidentally.
Thankfully, a green Yoshi, the child-like dinosaur species of the islands, saves the baby and so gathers with the rest of the Yoshi clan to reunite the baby with his brother, with baby Mario pointing the way by the powerful bond of brotherhood.  The game takes you through 8 different worlds, each world with their own 8 levels, inhabited by a mini-boss in a fortress and the main boss in a castle, whom Kamek imbues powers unto in order to stop your little adventure.


Gameplay - The gameplay is the same with Super Mario World, except for having more moves.  Yoshi can run, jump, flutter jump (a short hover ability over distances), swallow enemies to make eggs, use the eggs to hit switches or other enemies, and of course, butt stomp.
The controls are quite easy since it's the SNES after all, and a few skills are made when playing the game. For example, eggs can ricochet off walls, so sometimes you have to utilise this to hit things you can't normally hit.  There is also Yoshi's shapeshifting ability that is only seen in this game.  Special bubbles with a vehicle inside change Yoshi into that vehicle for flying, burrowing or just travelling through uncharted lands.

The health gauge is just as annoying as ever but with a different manner.  One hit dislodges Baby Mario from his back, who immediately starts crying and a timer counts down as to how long it takes before he is kidnapped by Kamek's goons and you lose a life. If Yoshi is hit without Mario on his back, he is merely disoriented for a second or two, but that can be enough time for poor baby Mario to get kidnapped.
Another interesting thing of the game is the level scoring system. In the levels are red coins, flower faces and stars. If you obtain all of them, you get 100% for the level, an achievement that may well give benefits later. The number of stars to obtain is directly related to the timer for Baby Mario's safety before kidnapping, which make for a more challenging time to try and complete the level with a perfect 100% score, which is really an optional part of the game.


Graphics - The graphics are the most noticeable thing of this game.  Yoshi's Island is an adorable montage of childish colours and marvellous shading that not only brings out a simplistically coloured beauty as much as a child's imaginative drawing does, but it also lends itself to the sheer fantasy of the world, ranging from the lushly green jungles to the dark walled barely-lit castles.  It is from the very beginning like some elaborate working from a talented imaginative nursery school, ranging from the bright chocolatey-brown hills with green mint grass tops, pure crayon blue oceans with scuttley white clouds and small rings of islands, right down to the cartoony-block grey and black shadings of castle walls.
Although the graphics show a surprisingly simple view, it is a very rich view and shows quite some depth and span across the island world that certainly keeps you wide-eyed even a little while playing with marvellous shading.


Music - Koji Kondo has never left the Super Mario series since its beginning in the mid 80's, and he still keeps his sound freshly the same. It is the same repetitively pop-happy to silly-spooky music you have heard before, yet it is different enough to feel trademarked to the game alone. It's nothing special, quite simple toybox music that fits the moods of the levels exactly.  The plains have a simple walk-along happy theme, the jungles have a more tropical beat, and the castles have the spookier and slightly orchestral theme.
However, the true gems out of all the songs are the theme music to the game (which is a very appropriate cheery calypso beat fitting the tropical feel of the island you see at the start of the game), and the final battle (which is so sparsely different from everything else in the game since it changes into rock music from the very moment you hear the first synth-guitar riff).  It's no Final Fantasy, but you'll still smile at the music as it plays in your head as a series of little jingles.


This was one of the last games for the Super Nintendo before the Nintendo 64 became the truest focus of Nintendo's developments.  But Nintendo nevertheless show the sheer loyalty they give to their characters, their endearing fans, and also to their endearing console by making this swan song, a fitting end to the 16-bit era, a memorable generation of gaming.
This game is one of the fine examples that Nintendo always keep giving the fans what they want, and even though it was normal for everyone to just move onto the next system when it came out and to focus on that, Nintendo did give their beloved SNES one last push, one last finale with Yoshi's Island.  And since then, it has become one of the most memorable platformers in the history of videogames.  So memorable that Nintendo honoured the game with a re-release on the Gameboy Advance in 2002 under the name Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3.

Final's Final Review - 10/10

Yoshi's Island was the shit back in the day