Getting Dizzy: Let's Play Yoshi's Island

Hey guys! It's time to look at a personal favorite: Super Mario Advance 3: Super Mario World 2: Super Mario Bros. 5: Yoshi's Story 0: Yoshi's Island. While it's generally well regarded, it also seems to cause a lot of confusion: Is it a "main" Mario game or a spinoff? Did Donkey Kong Country spit in Yoshi's Island's drink or something? I'll definitely share my thoughts about its place in the Mario franchise and among mid-90s platformers.

But first, introductions!

Story Music Box (I like how it stops and needs to be wound).



This is a story about baby Mario and Yoshi.










But Yoshi can't figure it out. Yoshi decides to talk to his friends.



quickly dispatches his toadies when he discovers that he missed the other baby!



Will these two children ever reach their parents safely?

Let's see!

For anyone who hasn't heard, word is that after the success of Donkey Kong Country, Miyamoto was asked to bring the pre-rendered look to this game. He was supposedly offended by this, and in an act of rebellion, created the hand-drawn style the game's known for. I don't know whether this opening scene is a holdover from a time when the entire game was going to have a similar style, or if it was always something intended for viewing only, but it's a cute little video. The way the sun gradually rises and the flexibility of the characters is cool to see. For the game proper, I'm happy with the look we have, but it's a nice addition.

Yoshi's Island




Well, we have our title screen, and what a title screen it is! We get a nice, rotating view of the island, giving us a view of Yoshi by his house (the same "four trees, one canopy" structure as seen in Super Mario World). We also get a preview of what we have to face...sorta. We get a path through the first castle through flowers, a path to the second castle through...bigger flowers, then trees and water, then large pines, and finally the fifth castle sits on a cloud among the mountains.

The accompanying tune is one of the best in the game, opening with ambient island sounds before a peaceful melody gradually seeps in.

One thing that's great about classic games is how you jump straight into the action, with no need for

Yoshi Start Demo

Wait, a second intro?!



They are all in an uproar over the baby that fell from the sky.



The bond between the twins informs each of them where the other one is. The Yoshies decide to carry the baby to his destination via a relay system. Now begins a new adventure for the Yoshies and Baby Mario.

If you're nitpicky like me, you may want to know (or already know) that the plural of "Yoshi" would be changed to "Yoshis" by the time of Yoshi's Story. In fact, I think it was used off and on before this game.



See? GBA version!



With that, it's most definitely time to get going!

Touch Dizzy, get fuzzy

Get Dizzy effect should be added to every game.

I demand it so.

Training Course Another great transition from the previous track.

Alright, we're in control now, and it's time-



We get a quick spiel on the controls, then we're off.




This is just a little tutorial area, with four basic Shy Guys as the only things resembling hazards. Still, we learn a lot about the game from a handful of screens. First of all, we get a "hands-off, at least at first" approach. The only text boxes that are forced upon us explain the basics of health/damage: get hit, Baby Mario starts floating away, and that timer in the corner will start counting down. If it hits 0, we die. We can extend the timer by collecting stars. It's pretty succinct and will offer a little more detail the first time we actually get hit.

There are a couple other message blocks that briefly explain eating enemies/making eggs and flutter jumps, but we don't need to hit those. And that's it! Compare that to what we can actually do at this point: spit enemies out at different angles, throw eggs, ground pound, flutter multiple times in one jump. There's not much use for most of that here, but we can do it all right from the start, and we're free to figure that out ourselves.

The level design itself also shows some deviation from previous Mario platformers. The flat terrain and right angles that still characterize Mario games today have been largely replaced by a more irregular, "natural" landscape. Even the Shy Guys wander in little bursts, stop to rest, and occasionally look back and forth, rather than mindlessly patrolling right to left. The art style already distinguishes the game from its Mario brethren, but touches like this truly make the island feel like a different location than the Mushroom Kingdom. There's still plenty of familiarity, but with a twist.

Oh, and for some reason the tutorial stage makes a point to highlight blocks that grow when you hit them to help you reach higher areas, even though there are about five of them in the entire game.

We've reached our map screen now, and it's accompanied by a very catchy tune. With each new world you reach, the piece builds with more and more instrumentation. It's one of the more memorable aspects of the game, and really helps drive home the sense of progression.



It is a little unfortunate that the map doesn't offer the choices that SMB3 and SMW did, but at least we get both portraits of the stages and some visual representation of the Yoshies' route. We can even scroll ahead to see the entire world.



The GBA adds a map showing all of the game's castles, but for some reason they choose to portray the stages inside one world as lined up on a perfectly straight path. Which kinda undermines the whole observation I was making about the game distinguishing itself from other Mario games. The map features are also more faded out, which I'd guess has something to do with the system's lighting issues. GBA version, if you didn't have six exclusive levels, you wouldn't have been invited.

We can also see our score displayed whenever we're on the map screen, as well as tinker with controls. The only thing we can really adjust is how we throw eggs: either press the button once to prepare, then a second time to throw, or hold to prepare and release to throw. Hold/release is easily my preference, but it's usually tradition for me to jump straight into the first few levels out of reflex before remembering to change it. But the game even has a solution to that! That's for later, though. Right now, it's time to most definitely, for real, start the actual, true game.

This game is on the very short list of "first-party Nintendo side-scrolling games I never really got into." I'm interested in seeing you show it off.

Flower Garden




Here's our first stage! In addition to the Shy Guys, we have Piranhas. The wild island variety simply grow naturally, appearing as tiny flowers from a distance, and growing to dangerous size as you approach. Depending on their placement, they can be pretty troublesome, requiring an egg or projectile to kill. They take up a lot of space, and if they manage to eat you, they keep you trapped for a relatively long time, while forcing you to drop your eggs (usually right behind the plant). There are also Crazee Dayzees. Contrary to their name, they're quite mellow, just skipping along. It is interesting to note that right at the start we have enemies with different gaits, and that react differently when spat out. It can be hard to see in that screen, but the Dayzee emits visible music notes. They're just for flavor here, but they will have a minor gameplay function a bit later.

In the meantime, we get a couple more lessons on making and throwing eggs. It may not be a catchy stage name, but at least it was advertising correctly. There's still a lot about these particular actions that the game leaves unsaid, like how we can spit out enemies (it can be much more direct for hitting certain targets, plus it conserves ammo) or how we can lock the egg aiming reticule. We don't need to know either of those things right now, and the game will eventually spill.



Winged ? Clouds take over for ? Blocks. They take a projectile to trigger, but they can have all kinds of effects. Most commonly, they dish out stars that extend our countdown timer or provide platforms that allow us to access new areas.

Here are the other elements that make up our stage score. Yoshi's Island doesn't keep score like traditional Mario games. Instead, we can get up to 100 points in each stage. 30 of them are from our timer. It will recover up to 10 as long as we have Baby Mario secure, and we can extend it to 30 by collecting stars. Another 20 are in the form of red coins as seen above (the first appearance of red coins). They're hidden among ordinary coins, but they have a slight tint to them that helps them stand out if you get a chance to look carefully. Often you'll be moving fast through an area and won't be able to make the distinction (the GBA version applies this tint randomly to red and ordinary coins, removing this aspect). Then there are flowers. There are five of them in each stage, and they're worth 10 points each. Collecting all five will also give you a 1Up, but we're already in the age of extra lives as common as candy, so that hardly matters.



Get past these Piranha Plants, and we enter a little underground area. This is our introduction to "Chomp Rock," a tool that's mostly there to show off some newfangled sprite rotating skills. It's still pretty darn useful, though, serving as both a portable stepping stone and a steamroller to use against enemies.



We also get introduced to two enemy types that can carry collectibles: Fly Guys and the hilariously named Baron von Zeppelin (really overselling a mostly harmless smiling balloon there). Fly Guys can cause collision damage and need to be attacked to obtain their payload. Zeppelins will burst harmlessly on contact and give you what they're carrying. We'll meet more frustrating variants of both of these later, so it's nice to have an introduction where they're simply a bit out of reach.

Then there's this tulip. Feeding it an enemy will cause it to spit out several stars. In this case, the flat ceiling makes rebounding an egg into it relatively simple. But lobbing an enemy toward it is the most reliable way to reap its reward, something you'd only discover by experimenting at this point.



Back above ground, we're introduced to another feature. This pipe will produce Shy Guys until we have a full set of six eggs. The cloud above it basically guarantees that we'll fall below that amount our first time through so it can demonstrate how it works. Go inside, and we'll only find an empty room. The Shy Guys will spawn there too if we need them. It's one of the game's many details that aren't necessary, but serve as tiny rewards for our curiosity.



The clouds can produce several different types of platforms, just for variety's sake.



Just in case we haven't figured out the red coins, the game explains them to us as we collect the last ones in the stage. Then we can steamroll through the last stretch of the stage with another Chomp Rock.



The level concludes with Shy Guys that can do flips, just for fun!



With that, we reach the GOAL! and can pass Mario off to the next Yoshi. We also see one more purpose of the flowers. For each one, we improve our chances of accessing a bonus challenge.

Goal and Score



And here we see our score. One aspect of the game that's kind of annoying is the "all or nothing" philosophy. We can unlock one additional stage in each world (plus the opportunity to play a bonus challenge infinite times) by getting a perfect score in every stage. But miss one red coin, and you have to go through and get that coin, plus everything else again. I personally think the extra stages serve as a great reward for 100 percent completion, and it's certainly a satisfying game even if you never play them. But I can see why people would be annoyed with having to re-collect all of the stuff they can easily do because they missed one difficult collectible.

The latter two screens are from the GBA, and this is one case where it makes an improvement. It will keep track of your cumulative world score, and give rewards of increasing value for hitting different milestones. It starts out with extra lives, but it will unlock the infinite bonus much sooner than the SNES version (I believe 600 points per world will do it). The items won from said bonus games can be very useful in getting perfect scores. Furthermore, it takes 800 points to unlock a world's extra stage, just like the SNES version. Except the GBA version adds one additional stage to each world, unlocked by simply beating the game with any score. This gives you a margin of error of 100 points per world, which is very reasonable.

Bonus Game This tune is very easy to overlook, but it's so fitting.




The end-of-stage bonus challenges are games of chance that allow you to win items, extra lives, or both. Although they're modeled on various gambling games, only one of them can have a negative impact on you. I'll spotlight the items once I've accumulated some and can demonstrate them.

Flip Cards may not be the most profitable of the bonus games, but it is the most intriguing. It's completely luck-based, with you simply overturning tiles and seeing what you get, but it plays on the psyche more than the others because you can quit any time. For instance, it would have been really smart of me to quit as soon as I overturned that +20 Star item (it immediately adds 20 to your timer, basically guaranteeing you a perfect score in that category and erasing the fear of taking a stupid hit late in a stage). You can keep any item you overturn if you quit. If you get a Toady, that gives you nothing, but it doesn't penalize you either. Hitting Kamek will kick you out of the game with nothing. If you save Kamek for last however, it kicks him out of the game and gives you 10 lives, plus everything you turned up.

There's a lot of explaining to do early. Future stages will be more focused on the creative level and enemy design.

Alright, what's up next?



Well, this looks peaceful enough. There's even some nice artwork to admire.




Oh crap...!

I think this is the moment I first fell in love with the game. You have a familiar enemy that already has a reputation for being a toughie, completely re-imagined. Gameplay-wise, it seems brutal for the second stage, but it's a lot more intimidation than actual threat. You see a Chomp jump from the background, hear its approach, see a shadow appear on the ground, and finally it comes smashing down. They also only destroy certain chunks of ground. Aesthetically, it's just awesome, from the "in-universe" warning sign, to seeing them roam peacefully on plateaus in the distance, to seeing living cannonballs with teeth blowing craters into the ground around you. Who expected something like this the first time playing? It's like the first Banzai Bill in Super Mario World, cranked into overdrive.



Once we leave Chomp country, we see the very first poundable posts. The game hasn't actually told us about ground pounding yet, and this is basically the first time in the Mario franchise you could do such a move (although it is sort of an evolution of the Spin Jump). Bull Wario could do it in Wario Land, but that was pretty much only for combat, not for manipulating the environment like this. There's no reward for pounding these posts, but it does give you a taste of what you can do.



We get introduced to a lot of the game's elements in a very short span. The flippers serve as one-way gates. The Middle Ring saves our progress in that stage, adds 10 seconds to our timer, and turns (most) onscreen enemies into stars. Pretty nice! There's also a (small, occasional) bit of strategy in terms of when to trigger one. Finally, we have this sponge...dirt...stuff. We get a Shy Guy-spawning pipe and a refresher on egg-tossing in case we somehow passed that up in the first stage (this is technically the first point you need to be able to throw eggs to progress).



And with that, dramatic scenery change! Here's a concept the New SMB games love: tunnels hidden in the walls! We get a small network here without much of note inside. We do learn that finding any tunnel will reveal everything onscreen, even something we can't currently access.



This is a bit hard to convey secondhand, but one of my favorite aspects of the game is just how comfortable and versatile Yoshi's controls are. The game advises you not to go jumping off this ledge, but you can easily leap, grab a few coins, and make it back. Whether you're in a relatively non-threatening, secret-hunting segment, or in some of the later, tougher stages, you can (almost) always bound around the screen freely and easily. (Also, the "clouds casting shadows on the water" background is one of my favorites of the game's many great backgrounds).



The game takes a moment to explain what items are. I will too, eventually!



And now we get our first vehicle transformation, plus a little explanation.

I'm not the biggest fan of the vehicles, and this is a poor first impression. As I said, Yoshi's so versatile and a joy to control, so putting limitations on that seems unnecessary. This feels like one aspect of Donkey Kong Country that they did try to imitate, and I'll take animal friends over these any day. They will be used better later on, but this first segment has a few problems.

First of all, we have a limited amount of time before we're kicked back to the starting point. There's a block we must reach to change back to our normal form. Secondly, there are several collectibles, and they're scattered throughout the area. Thirdly, the chopper has some very loose controls. You can get up to a good speed and maintain it while making slight adjustments, so following a winding trail of coins feels appropriate, but then they throw valuables completely off the trail. You can see this when they guide you through a tunnel, then reveal there's stuff beneath it, or when they send you at a wall, only to show you have to approach from beneath to get the stuff.



Finally, they steer you toward the block, but there's one last tunnel beyond and above it with some red coins in it. I would also say those last two red coins before the pipe are not cool, but driving through the tunnel to the left with the chopper (or having your curiosity piqued by the purple block and jumping up into it as normal Yoshi) will reveal them.

Basically, it feels like the chopper is made for speed/obstacle course segments, but it's being used in a wide open "search nooks and crannies for goodies" segment. In fairness, you get as many tries as you want, but it just seems sloppy to get kicked back to the beginning when you're in the middle of rooting around. The timer, controls, and the nature of this area all combine badly. Change any one of those elements and it'd probably be fine.



The home stretch basically hands us our last flower (also demonstrating that they can be inside winged clouds) and red coins, throws one last Chomp at us, then we're done. The Fly Guy toting a 1Up is like this game's version of the 1Up shroom. It will appear briefly, often at the far side of the screen or behind an obstacle, then laugh and fly away. It's a nice reward for quick reflexes/accurate shooting. And it's completely non-essential, so there's no need to worry about having to restart a stage if you miss one...

What would be two different stages in SMB3 or SMW is a stage with two completely unrelated segments in YI. Although there are many better stages in the game, it is very telling of the game's nature. Chomp country is classic Mario sidescrolling action, more advanced than what we've seen before. Chopper exploration is like a predecessor to Super Mario 64's 100 coin or 8 red coin stars.

YI is often branded a spinoff, but I think the Super Mario World 2 moniker is accurate: It's the platformer in the Mario franchise that came after SMW and before SM64, and it shows. This particular stage has a very clear divide between its action and exploration, but later stages will do a better job of blending them together.

This LP is taking the game apart, looking at each bit, and explaining how it all fits together into the thing as a whole.

It's like a cross-section diagram of a complex machine in LP form, which is a delight.

Why thank you!



Calling back to a Super Mario Bros. tradition, we begin our first cave level above ground. There are even Piranha Plants on the scene just like the one in the pipe at the conclusion of every SMB1 underground/water stage.

Underground Theme This is one of the game's stronger tunes, and it really matches the setting nicely.



Well, it didn't take long to run into the cave's namesake. The rock is harmless to Yoshi, but it does make a dynamic entry into the cave. Also, there ARE mushrooms on the island, but not the kind you may be expecting.



We're formally taught the ground pound at last (if you were wondering, these message blocks do have text that explicitly spells out moves. I just figure the pictures are more interesting to look at). It still isn't technically necessary. It just lets us keep the rock for a while longer. This game is the definition of laid-back, very gradually teaching its mechanics. First we have posts that are a curiosity, but nothing more. Now we want to keep the rock and find out what's in the crate, but we don't NEED it.

Incidentally, the crate contains stars to extend our timer. Most of them do. We can also shove them around. It's usually pointless, but it's a key mechanic to a couple levels.

The game's in no rush to teach us everything, but it really packs in the lessons when it does. That sponge-dirt stuff was in 1-2, but we had no opportunity to ground pound it. Here we learn that we can destroy it if we do.

As a final aside, there are TWO distinct fungal platforms in the same cave...



We have our next variant of a classic Mario enemy, this time the Nipper from SMB3. They tried to jump up and bite you if you passed over them there. Here, they turn their mouths forward, so they can be stomped on, or beaten just about any other way. Their hopping gait and the uneven cave floor are the only things that make them a minor threat. They're typically just Chomp Rock fodder.



Now that we've actually had time to throw some eggs and see what it feels like, the game reminds us about the different control options.




This middle area is another great (if rather "first-world simple") example of proto-Mario 64 blending with Mario World. The cave opens up into a few different paths, and there are enemies and goodies to find in all of them. It's laid out in such a way that we can send rocks rolling down each path. While we had to struggle with controls as a chopper, here we have the speed of a sidescrolling platformer while engaging in a red coin hunt.



There's (slightly) more than meets the eye with Nipper. They'll sometimes rain down from the sky in spore form, blooming into their familiar stage once they hit the ground. Eating their spores will make a satisfying snack, but gives you no egg and nothing to spit. Do you want to clear them out or do you want the ammo?



And now it looks like the terrifying Baron Von Zeppelin is up to a new trick: carrying items that are more valuable than coins. Simply touching them will burst them if you can get high enough, or you can shoot them down.



The key will open the locked door to this hut we saw earlier.



Ugh, not this one.




The huts lead to mini-games that you play against an enemy called Bandit. They're different games than the end-of-stage bonus challenges, but they're used to earn the same items. Most of them are fun little diversions. This one is lame. It's Hot Potato. The problem is, you basically have to memorize how big the balloon gets before it pops, then just hang onto it until a second before it does so. Bandit will be very quick to ditch it when it's getting close. There's also no way to expedite the game, so you have to wait it out, win or lose. I'm also pretty sure you can only win 1-3 lives in this one, and that's not worth it at all.

More lessons with sponge-dirt! We can ground pound it from above, and bash it from below. They also like to hide clouds with stars within them.




I love this sequence. There's just so much packed into about two screens.

A) There are invisible clouds that appear if you pass over out-of-the-way areas.

B) Switches can trigger secret passages.

C) Look, we can make a long, tilting platform without breaking it up into several objects close together! (Also, something about being aware of your weight and physics and stuff. But look at these sweet graphics!)

This hidden room only contains ordinary coins; you don't need it for 100 percent. It's a classic Mario bonus area. But all of the above will be important soon enough.



For the last stretch of the cave, we roll the rock up a hill to clear out the enemies, then have to jump on and spring off it as it's rolling down. There's nothing stopping us from trying as many times as we need to, and if you're not out for 100 percent, you can just move on. It's a non-threatening challenge to test our timing in ways that we'll need later.



Finally, we pop back outside a closing sequence that's more of a cooldown than anything.

Next time: Pantsing!

This is excellent analysis. You're really doing this game justice.

It's so beautiful...

I'm really enjoying this look at the game.

I just hope you're up to a full game of this (heck, I hope I am too).



Yoshi's Island remains true to the Mario style guide of referring to mid-world boss areas as "fortresses" and end-of-world ones as "castles," but it's cool and laid-back and whatnot, so it calls them Forts.

Castle & Fortress You can hear some Song of Storms in this one.




We begin in a suspiciously non-threatening corridor, where we have some new toys to play with! Yellow egg blocks will simply turn into yellow eggs when hit, which produce a single coin when they break open. (Incidentally, ordinary green eggs will turn yellow after rebounding off a surface. They turn red after hitting a second surface and produce two stars when they break, which can be handy in a tight spot. If you have an area like this, with parallel surfaces, you can actually let an egg fly, then use your tongue to recollect it, stocking up on yellow or red eggs if you please.)

If we can get the buckets to spill, they'll send money scattering. Hit them directly from below, and they'll fall offscreen with their payload.




Ahh! Attack of the polygons! This is more the game showing off than anything else, but it is pretty amusing. Maybe I'm pushing the point too much, but it again feels perfect in between the Ghost House hijinks of SMW and pianos coming to life in SM64. Also, while Yoshi getting flattened, drifting downward, and recovering takes a big chunk off the clock, there are no enemies or other obstacles in sight, making retrieving Mario easy, and you haven't had a chance to extend the timer, so you'll automatically recover the lost seconds.



This game is just packed with details! Any other time, you'd think nothing of rotating spike bars of doom. But YI shows you the plight of the lower-class laboring Shy Guys who make this happen!




Here we have the fort's namesake. The Burts can't be eaten or killed with ordinary jumps. Unlike the Piranhas, who are also resistant to those attacks, they're very mobile, and with two of them onscreen, they'll strive to springboard off each other. It's nice that we get a chance to observe them before going in to fight. We also get an ample reward for defeating them: three stars apiece.

Incidentally, even though the castles are much more like classic Mario in terms of surfaces being straight lines, they're still far from uniform. Check out that segmented bridge with several segments worn down or cracked.



Here's a classic Mario stunt: running on top of the screen. There are only ordinary coins to be had up here, but we do get a preview of the first half of the fort (and can even skip it with no resistance if we're not after goodies).



Well, that was a clear set-up.



This one is slightly less obvious, since you'll likely be making a running jump from the previous platform. There's hardly any safe room to stand on the platform, so it's best to just keep moving, going back for the red coins after springing the trap if you've missed them. Lava's on the short list of things that will kill Yoshi outright, so avoiding it is the priority.

When you hit a cloud that makes a path forward, the camera will follow the path, giving you a look ahead. This instance reveals something lurking in the lava...



Yep, it's a Blargg! While they've been radically redesigned since SMW, they have the same basic function of peeking from the lava, then lunging at us. With plenty of room to operate, it's hardly a threat.



But what if we had to balance on a seesaw and dip down to grab a flower? (Answer: Still not much of a threat. It couldn't even bother to show up in this shot). We've already had our seesaw training, so this shouldn't pose a problem.



Seriously dude, it's not working. I've had to go out of my way to get hit by this guy.



There's a locked door and Shy Guy spawning pipe ahead, but this pipe clearly extends to the bottom of the screen.




Sure enough, there's an actual room down here. However, it doesn't contain our key, just ordinary coins. These guys are interesting, though. There are similar enemies in SMB2 and SMW, but here they have a very fluid "flare-up" animation. This is also the only place in the entire game that they exist. (Except on the GBA, which makes use of a lot of the rarer enemies in its exclusive stages).




The key lies in a pot of flowers on the other side of the lava pool. Here, we meet the Gargantua Blargg. Like with the Chomps, this is a lot more about intimidation and "cool" factor than difficulty. The Blargg will rise fully out of the lava before (slowly) advancing forward, and there are several platforms to help us clear the lava. With Yoshi's flutter jumping (for folks who may only know of this maneuver through Smash Bros or the New SMB games, you can hover consecutively as many times as you like, though you'll gradually lose height with each one), even newcomers should have no problem crossing.

I think this sequence's real purpose is an early highlight of just how agile and easy to control Yoshi is. He has a sense of inertia, but with the flutter, you can easily reverse an errant jump.



We're on the home stretch now, and just a couple of Burts stand in our way.



Well, there's also this room, the first of many "kill everything and win a prize" rooms we'll come across.



We've hit the boss door, and they're really generous about making sure we're topped off. In addition to the Burts, we have a Middle Ring, and a cloud that contains stars. Boss battles in Yoshi's Island aren't particularly difficult, but if you want 100 percent you basically can't take a hit during them.




Kamek arrives on the scene, and after a magical power-up, Burt stretches and squashes his way to giant size.

Mid-Boss It's not the most threatening music, but the mid-bosses aren't the toughest group around. I feel like it's one of the game's less appreciated pieces.



Oh, and say what you will about the GBA version, but at least Burt keeps his hands out of his pants there.



There's not really much to say about Burt. He's typical warm-up boss material. Five eggs will do the trick. He's a huge target, and all he does is jump across the room. You can hide in the divots if you run out of room, and use the Egg Plant (yep) in the center to recover eggs (remember you can snag them with your tongue). The only thing to watch out for is Burt rebounding off a wall when you hit him. His pants will drop slightly with each hit until...




His embarrassment causes him to careen around the room like a deflating balloon until he dies!



Yay!

Next Time: Autoscrolling and falling platforms, a Mario fan's favorite things.

As it happens complicated autoscroll IS one of my favorite things, for a lame reason: specifically, Suoer Mario Bros. X, the engine/editor the Super Talking Time Bros. used, has really bad bugs with autoscroll, namely that it can't
1. Occur in any "section" (room, of which there are 21 infinitely expandable) other than 1
2. Support a checkpoint, unlike YI I believe
3. Move in any direction other than the one it started going towards; in other words, a straight line
4. Start at any point other than the exact start of the level
5. Even change speeds, so no acceleration or anything like that
tl;dr I shouldn't be on the Internet griping about free games or letting LPs trigger such episodes

Well, I have no objection to any complaints about any game's design in this LP!

Athletic Theme Here's a tune that gets pretty much the exact amount it deserves.




In a stunning twist, we begin by going left! We're also reacquainted with the donut lift, a platform that I believe had only appeared in SMB3 at this point, though "platform that falls when you land on it" was certainly not unique even then. This version is about as fair as you can ask for. They give you ample time to move on or jump, they visibly shake when they're about to fall, and they fall slowly, allowing you to jump off them without screwing up your trajectory.



Even as we go out over a bottomless pit (put that under lava as something that will kill Yoshi), there's a lot of ground to stand on. The trick here is collecting all the goods, which takes relatively quick action so they don't get scrolled offscreen. We also want to be careful of how high we jump, since the slow-falling donut lifts can work against us if we jump up prematurely.



Again, this stretch is a breeze if you're just trying to survive, but we have to be even more careful with jumping if we want the flower. In addition to even lower platforms that WON'T simply let us drop straight down, this Reznor-mobile is moved by our weight, so we need to moderate our speed to avoid running into either edge of the screen.



Remember when I said the Crazee Dayzee's singing had a gameplay function? Here it is. With Yoshi running out of real estate, you may be tempted to take a running leap onto the relatively safe donuts ahead. The music notes give us a fair warning to be cautious, so we don't get cheaply smacked by something on the edge of the screen. Not mind-blowing or anything, but I appreciate it.




You're correct TiKi: YI's autoscrolling stages support both checkpoints and direction changes. This little mountainside climb is pretty simple, but the sheer variety in the terrain and the ease of control make even segments like this fun to play. It may be an autoscroller, but the game's still playing with kid gloves, with a few choices of footholds to use in our ascent. You'd have to really work to fall behind in this segment.




We turn right and continue our ascent. Fly Guys can taunt us with star-providing clouds as well as 1Ups. There are (almost always) more than enough stars in a stage, so the potential of these being lost isn't much worse than the 1Ups. Now if they did that with collectibles that AREN'T available in surplus...that'd suck.

Also, Shy Guys can disguise themselves with flowers that you can send scattering with a jump. It's the little things.



Only in the home stretch do things begin to get stressful, and even then players that are only out for survival have little to fear. We've had a couple "layers" of platforms protecting us from the abyss before now. We also have to be quick and precise to get the final collectibles. An egg or two jumps will retrieve the flower. With the coins, we need to deliberately let the donut lifts fall, which can get extra-tricky when you're down to one or two (or you can snag them with an egg from the safety of the final ledge).

This is one of the shortest levels in the game, with only the pace of the autoscroll making it take as long as does (which is still not very long). It's a gentle introduction to some of the more intense platforming we'll be facing in the future, it has some good scenery, and introduces what is arguably the game's "signature" tune. That about covers it.

Next Time: We've heard reports that the Shy Guy empire has acquired a new technology that could give them a great advantage in this conflict. We don't know what we're about to face, but we must prepare ourselves for anything.

STILTS?! What chance do we have?



So yeah, with stilts, Shy Guys can't be eaten; you can just push them backward with your tongue. An egg directly at them will take them out, but losing ammo to take out what's normally a source of ammo feels wasteful. Jumping on them will get rid of the stilts, but the stage is very hilly and sometimes that's easier said than done. They're not scary or anything, but they do take a bit of work to deal with. Oh, and their little shoes will shift as they set down and pick up a stilt.



We can use this spring to reach a floating door, but it can actually launch us beyond that, so why wouldn't we check out the cliff above? We get a 1Up for our troubles.



Here's a little sample of the different types of eggs. I already explained yellow and red. A flashing one will produce a red coin, so they're mandatory for 100 percent. There are about five of them in the entire game, so you don't really need to worry about them.

Also, something the game never explains to you is that if you cancel an egg toss (by crouching) that egg will be shuffled to the back of your rotation. It's rarely worth the trouble (which is probably why it isn't mentioned), but red eggs can make for good emergency stars in boss fights (where you can't use items), and there are a couple other types we haven't seen yet. I only realized this recently, and I'm interested to see that there is a hint of inventory management in this platformer (even if you never really need it).



The door with the eggs isn't actually the way forward. We have to take the pipe outside into another cave. This is much darker than the last one...unless you're playing on the GBA. Man, those pre-SP years really did a number on a lot of games, didn't they?



We saw the Lantern Ghosts back in 1-3. I didn't comment then because they're functionally identical to Shy Guys (even serving in their stead sometimes in the "regenerating ammo pipes"). This is really the one trait that stands out: in dark stages, only their lanterns are visible. Other than maybe YIDS, the only time I think they returned was as a boss in the first Paper Mario (appropriately enough, light played a key role in the battle).



Soon enough we grab a ride and we're back on the surface. That was quick.




We run into the game's second star-spewing tulip, but this time we have no opportunity to rebound an egg inside. Fortunately, these Guys are set up very nicely to strip of their stilts, grab, and lob inside...if you've figured out how to do that. That's also the easiest way to clear out room to reach the stuff they're guarding.



No excuses anymore. The game spills about secret switch passages, and sticks a pair of red coins in this one.



And we have our second transformation. The mole tank is an interesting concept, like a combination of Samus's Morph Ball, bombs, and Spider Ball. Like the latter, it can get confused when switching direction/surfaces, which can be frustrating when you're on the clock. The tint of the red coins is the key to finding them within the time limit. Another strategy is to simply reach the Yoshi block with a couple eggs in tow, then blast your way through the dirt (at least enough to be able to pound the rest).

At last, we reach a point where we need the ground pound to advance. There's a message block waiting to inform anyone who somehow hasn't discovered it yet.



We're back underground, with several mushrooms providing a path over a gap.



Hitching a ride on that red lift is important for two reasons: We see that it's a lot faster than the yellow lift we rode out of the last cave. We're also presented with this, the game's formal introduction to bank shots. There's absolutely no pressure here, with a pipe providing all the ammo we need. (Of course, a seasoned player like myself doesn't need such gifts. I certainly would follow this clearly highlighted shot the first time, not screw it up and then take and present a picture of such a flub).



We just grew a flower on a mushroom in a cave.

Also, there's Fang, playing our Generic Bat Enemy for this performance. Since Yoshi can flutter and doesn't know the meaning of "collision damage," they're not nearly as annoying as many of their cousins across gaming. They're generally a good source of ammo (and occasionally stepping stones) in cavern areas.

We pop up to the surface just in time for the goal.

This is probably my least favorite stage of World 1, so it says something that there are still a lot of concepts and variety packed in here. I like how we jump back and forth between above and underground. Not a bad stage, but we can't linger on it considering what's coming next.



Oh, we finally got a different bonus challenge. This one's not too interesting. We just pick three different tiles, and win 1, 2, or 5 lives depending on how many Marios we turn up. It's kinda cool that there are a few different scratching motions, but I'd usually rather just jump into the next stage rather than click three tiles and wait for a relatively minor reward.



And of course, I fail miserably the first time I attempt it.

Next Time: Touch what, now?

It's the weekend and I'm on a roll! It's the moment you've all been waiting for!



I recently learned that the German localization (which is much more punny with its stage names) calls this level "Lustiges Sporen Drama."

Overworld (aka: Maybe we shouldn't play Flower Garden for every stage that isn't a castle, cave, or pit-heavy).



The first critter we meet in this stage is not a Fuzzy. This guy curls into a ball and rolls around. It doesn't hurt Yoshi, and Yoshi can't hurt it, either (except maybe by egging it).




There's really no reason to hurt them, since they're a lot of fun and very useful to play with. They can bowl through enemies and collect stuff for us. It's a real shame that these guys are very rare.

Much less fun are the smug-looking jerks in the last image. Aside from bowling them over, the most reliable way to kill Tap Taps is by knocking one into others with an egg. The one you hit will survive, but take out any of its comrades that it hits. Their spikes make them jump-proof, and Yoshi's tongue only shoves them slightly backward.



Oh hey, a watermelon.



Eating a melon will allow us to spit several seeds. This lets us plow through dirt, collect items, and attack enemies. They're just as effective as eggs, and you can either fire a spread by holding the button down, or fire single seeds straight forward by gradually tapping. Clearing out the area will eventually reveal the key for that Bandit hut.



This one's much more fun and easier than Throwing Balloons. The cannon at the top of the screen will slowly move back and forth, firing coins. You simply have to collect more than Bandit. Each of you can briefly stun the other by jumping on him. Yoshi's hover and tongue give him huge advantages, however, and allows him to dominate it pretty easily.



Hmm, what's that? I think I'll touch it.

Overworld Theme, Dizzy Version



I don't think I can adequately describe this moment (particularly playing it for the first time and having no idea that this is going to happen). The terrain ripples, the music warps, the background "rolls," colors fade in and out, and Yoshi staggers along with a dopey look on his face. Amazing.



It gets better. You can get dizzy by simply touching a Fuzzy, but you can also eat them. Doing so will make Yoshi go through the same motion as if he were making an egg, but he releases "Fuzzy gas" instead, and the dizziness promptly sets in. With proper positioning, you can actually kill enemies by farting.

The effects will eventually wear off on their own, or immediately if we make it to these pits (the stage generously only drugs us when we're in no real danger). The Mildes "pop" when you jump on them, launching nearby enemies a respectable distance.

But wait! There's more! You may notice that before we encountered the Fuzzies, the stage had sloping terrain typical of the game's outdoor stages. Once we reached the Fuzzies, however, all surfaces were flat and even.



The dividing point is here. This is basically a point of no return, since the only enemies we've encountered are Fuzzies (evaporate when touched), those melon bugs (Yoshi simply sends them rolling when jumping on them), Tap Taps (hurts to jump on them), Piranhas (get eaten when jumping on them), and Mildes (pop when you jump on them).

...Except for one Shy Guy-spawning pipe right before the checkpoint. We can take the Shy Guy into Fuzzy territory, trigger the Fuzzies, spit it out, bounce off of it, and get dizzy in the first half of the stage. Things get...even more trippy.



The terrain-rippling effect clearly doesn't take kindly to slopes.

Just for reference, this happens using the original SNES cartridge. They clearly designed the stage to avoid this, it's just not completely foolproof. They actually altered the terrain in the GBA version to make the wall insurmountable even after bouncing off a Shy Guy.

Anyway, the fun part's over, but there's still a bit of level to go.



These bridges will sag under our weight, or we can simply pound them away to get at the red coins beneath. We're still missing some, though, and this is where the stage takes an unfortunate misstep.



Well, obviously I was supposed to go to the tip of the log and jump straight up to hit something unseen at the top of the screen and obtain a spring to reach a secret area!



This flower will launch its petals in all directions if left alone. You can eat the petals individually, or ground pound to send them all falling downward.




To get a Chomp Rock away from a wall, we need to stand on the far side of it. Doing so in this case will trigger an invisible cloud that's so secret that Yoshi touching it directly won't trigger it. That creates the flower that finally leads us to the last few red coins. Come on, 1-7, you have the most memorable gimmick of the game, why are you being lame like this in the home stretch?

This stage is really just a playground to mess around in. It feels like it'd be part of a hub world in a 3D game. There are obviously the Fuzzies, but even the Melon Bugs and the intro to the watermelon just feels like messing around.

It's just a shame that you're likely to find yourself a few red coins short and wonder where to look. The way they hid the secret room is asking players to make some rather specific, not especially natural movements. It feels like they could maybe hide some 1Ups/ordinary coins up there, but 100 percent items? Even once in there, finding the invisible cloud isn't the most intuitive thing ever. At least the dragonflies and butterflies zooming around give the room some character. It's a fun stage overall, but the end is the most bush-league collectible placement we've seen so far.

Next Time: Yes, there actually is more game beyond Fuzzies. World One's castle is next!

Does anybody else make sure to purposely eat/touch all the fuzzies? I know I do!

That last secret leading to the last red coins is pretty unfair, I agree, but at least it's in the last section of the level. When you get to the end and realize you're still missing something, your first reaction will be to search everywhere on that screen, and maybe you'll get lucky and find the spring. Which only makes it marginally better.

The Chomp Rock bit in the sky is fair, I think. Your natural reaction on seeing a Chomp Rock is to roll it and that'll do the trick.

This is kinda weird to me in the pantheon of Mario platformers I've played because, like Mario Sunshine, I've never beaten it. But unlike Mario Sunshine, I really enjoy this game a lot. I guess it's because I could only rent it for a weekend or two growing up, and that meant even in big marathon stretches, I could only get up to maybe World 7.

Then I got the GBA version, but... I guess the changes in the GBA version were still something I noticed despite not having tons of experience with the SNES version, so I didn't like it as much.

I agree, I didn't mean to be hard on that. I do think it's a little weird that some of the invisible clouds are triggered just by passing over them, while others need you to pass a different object over them.

Let's take out our first castle!



Another polygon sighting! The exact point that it stops being safe to stand on is a little murky, but there are only a couple of these rolling platforms, and "jump a lot to stay near the top" is a good rule of thumb.



I failed to get a shot of the little lava bubbles that jump out of the lava, but if Yoshi eats one, he can spit three bursts of flame (but they're usually found in areas where nothing is vulnerable to fire).



Well, we see two flowers very early. We can easily drop down to grab one (and some reds), but we'll need to advance to get at the other.



This fish is basically a progress halter. It's virtually invulnerable, and it can't really hurt you unless you're in a dangerous environment. I like enemies like this, since they tend to mesh with the level design very well. Also, waterfall on Yoshi's head!



If we can avoid the stream and hitch a ride with the support ghost (at least that's what Brawl calls it), we can reach this nook to the right, picking up a couple reds and some stars. For some reason, the GBA version puts a room in between the two, having us run through an uneventful tunnel. We can also use the ghost to reach a nook on the left (netting the flower we previously saw) and another near the ceiling of the ghost's room.



On ground level, the GBA version changes the Shy Guy-spawning pipe into a non-functioning pipe, and adds a room (beneath the tunnel) with a Shy Guy pipe within. This is one of the more bizarre changes. It has no real positive or negative impact on the game and it can't really be chalked up to hardware differences.

Now we enter the meat of the stage: a huge room full of these flippable platforms. Without flipping any, we can't really get off the ground, and can only head right.



And we run straight into Bandit! This is the first one we've seen that doesn't want to play mini-games with us. One of the game's more memorable enemies, Bandits are resilient and can cause big problems. They'll actively attempt to snatch Mario right off Yoshi's back and run away. They take a full complement of six eggs to kill (giving coins with each hit), or three stomps (giving three coins upon death). A single ground pound will do the trick, but there's some risk/reward at work there. Bandits are very fast and tend to slide when changing direction. It's easy to miss by a hair, which essentially hands the baby off to Bandit with a head start.



We can freely flip the green platform, but we're still barred from that vase and the territory above those one-way flippers on the right side.



We eventually make it up to his red switch.



Flipping it allows us to cross over, but the one on the ceiling needs to be flipped spikes-up again for us to proceed.



This gives us access to the right side of the room, but we can't get to the door, and even if we could, it's locked.



Flip the red spikes down and head toward the bottom, however, and we can reach the flower pot and the key inside.

It's not especially complex or anything, but I like navigating big puzzle rooms while keeping a healthy emphasis on platforming. Plus, it provides ample room to deal with a tough new enemy.



The final room is free of threats, reds, or flowers. It only introduces us to the arrow lift. These will rotate in place until we land on them, at which point they slowly drift in the direction they're pointing. We can adjust by jumping straight up and allowing them to rotate. The game doesn't tell us that we can simply snag them and carry them. It's useful for expediting travel.



The upper right corner of the room has a hidden cloud that leads to a hidden passage, which itself directs us to check out the upper right corner. It's a lengthy process for a 1Up, but it does call attention to corners serving as frequent hiding places for invisible clouds.



With that, we enter the boss chamber, and we're walled in.



Oh hey, it's...an enemy we've never seen before.

Kamek does his thing, and Salvo jumps back into the ceiling.

Big Boss (As many of the commenters noted, the drum and bass intro is only present for bosses that have extended/dramatic intro scenes, namely the World 3 and 5 bosses. The GBA version lacks that sense of timing and plays the full version for all of the castle bosses. A pushover like Salvo is likely to be dead before the main thrust of the tune even starts.)




Then oozes back down to great visual effect. (Oddly, Salvo decides it's not quite big enough, so it just grows slightly more after plopping down).




Salvo's even easier than Burt. It will hop around the room aimlessly, harmless to the touch. Hitting it with eggs will cause it to shed mass (mostly in the form of more slime critters, which we can use to replenish ammo). If we completely clear the room of slimes, more will drop from the ceiling. The slimes are the only real threat in the fight: try not to be under/near Salvo when it's getting hit.

Another thing to watch out for is when Salvo does that writhing action in the second screenshot above. It will nullify any egg attacks, but really it's just a stall.

I think the key takeaway from this battle is the awesome, fluid animation effects at work. But gameplay-wise, I think it's about getting a grasp of how eggs rebound and ricochet. A single well-placed egg can really whittle Salvo down.



Upon taking the final blow, Salvo will launch off a bunch of mass, then evaporate. I've heard rumor that it can kill itself by landing in that lava pool, but I've never ever seen it done.

Salvo's really here for looks more than anything. I can't recall anything else like it, visually, in YI's contemporaries. Even the background, with glowing lantern lights, adds to the mood. I feel that even a minor change like adding a lava pool on the left side of the room too would go a long way toward making this fight respectable, while still being reasonable for a first-world boss. Oh well. It looks cool and paved the way for bosses like Rogue Legacy's Herodotus.



With our triumph, we get a rather nifty iris out, then we get to tally up our scores.



Yay! Note that Extra 1 and Bonus 1 are now open. (But I'm still going to save the extra levels for after the main game).



Just a clear look at all of World 1's portraits in full color.




Then the Yoshies blow Salvo's castle into oblivion! Hooray?




Incidentally, Bonus 1 is Flip Cards, and I finally managed to win it! Doing so amusingly flushes Kamek from the game itself, and awards us with 10Up (which is an amount I can actually appreciate).

Next Time: The map theme gained a new instrument, and the Yoshies grew happier.