My Ex-Girlfriend, Yoshi's Island DS
by Toby Jones, illustration by Madeline Queripel
The most exciting E3 of my life was in 2006. Not that I was there, of course, I was merely an art school freshman hunched over a blurry live-stream. This was the E3 where the Wii was officially announced and all its big games (Mario Galaxy, Wii Sports, Metroid Prime 3, etc) were shown for the first time. I was interested in all these things, but for me the most thrilling new piece of software shown was a DS sequel to my favorite game of all time – Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. I saw the brief clip and decided then and there to finally purchase a DS.
Of course, I later learned that Yoshi's Island DS was actually being developed by a third-party entity called Artoon, best known for the "Blinx" series. Much of my excitement immediately disappeared, replaced mostly by hope that it wouldn't be complete garbage. And it wasn't- most reviewers gave it a positive write-up and the collective gaming consciousness seemed to generally accept the game as a worthwhile sequel before completely forgetting about it.
I responded with shrugged shoulders, at the time calling it "the re-animated zombie corpse of Yoshi's Island". In the three years since its release, the game has been sitting quietly on my shelf, staring at me. Occasionally I would walk past and briefly meet its glance, which was sort of like crossing paths with a jilted ex-girlfriend. You know, that girlfriend who you dated because she sort of looked like a girl you were actually attracted to.
"I'm sorry, Yoshi's Island DS, I really wish I'd been able to like you like that."
Time and the general public may be able to forget Yoshi's Island DS, but I cannot. One night when she looked at me with those sad eyes, wishing I could love her, I decided to give the sorry cartridge one last go. A less tactful fellow might refer to this as a "pity fuck". I wanted to get to the bottom of what made this game, which consists of ostensibly more of my favorite game, somehow a disappointment. There was even a sliver of hope in me that I'd find what IGN and Gamespot saw in it and enjoy myself.
I never did. While it is a respectable facsimile of the Yoshi's Island Experience, the DS sequel still seems to lack the indescribable essence that makes the original so special. Most of the joy in Yoshi's Island came from how every level is filled with brilliant new ideas, but whenever YIDS tries to bring something new to the table it just comes off as awkward.
A good example of this is an level that seems like any other, but if you enter a vaguely hidden area you are met with an interlude where you ride in a kangaroo's pouch. This sounds like fun, maybe even something the first one might do, until you notice that the design of your animal buddy doesn't fit into the aesthetic at all. Far worse, it's hardly even animated- the movement is so minor that it basically looks like floating clip art. I counted, and the sprite literally has about four frames of animation. MAYBE five. For the sequel to a game whose entire visual style is based on looking lively and hand-drawn, this is upsetting. In fact, the whole game's style seems to take a couple of steps away from the original's distinctive style and toward generic 2D sprite-dom. There are a few really nice and sketchy backgrounds, but overall it really misses the opportunity to use the superior hardware evolve the visuals of its predecessor.
Even the most highly touted new feature, the ability to switch between multiple Yoshi-riding babies, adds little to the experience. One would expect this to bring a degree of strategy to the proceedings, but it mostly just amounts to seeing a certain obstacle and grabbing the appropriate baby. In some particularly unfortunate instances, the “strategy” is just being lucky enough to guess which baby will be needed before even seeing the next section. In other words, this addition mostly just makes the game more complicated without making it any more enjoyable. Well, Baby DK and Baby Wario's cries are pretty amusing.
The levels are long. Some of them are really long. Even stages that present interesting ideas (such as a pirate ship) often overstay their welcome. A good contrast would be Super Mario Bros. 3, a game where most levels are refreshingly brief despite the fact that many present an entertaining new gimmick. It's a game with enough great ideas that it never needs to linger on one of them. Another problem with the lengthy levels in YIDS is that as they seem to get more punishingly difficult as the game goes on, and by the fourth or fifth time you play through a level it can feel like it takes an hour. It's essentially an issue of quantity over quality.
In this ill-advised hookup with my homely ex, I found that I enjoyed myself most when I was able to trick myself into believing I was with the one I really loved. In fact, the time when Yoshi's Island DS was most fun was when I played it a moment after going through a couple levels of the original. It didn't take long for me to be reminded that I was playing an inferior creation, but for a couple of wonderful minutes it felt like I was really getting more of the game I love so dearly. The game also functions pretty well if you're not giving it all of your attention – for example, try turning the (bland, so so bland) music down and the TV on.
...And so Yoshi's Island DS has returned to my shelf, where it will sit and wait for me to desperately mine it for value again someday in the distant future. It's not a purchase I regret, though. The more support this game gets, the more likely it is that I'll get a cel-shaded 3D Yoshi's Island sequel for Wii, developed by EAD Tokyo, with pointer control for throwing eggs. Hey, a man can dream.
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The most exciting E3 of my life was in 2006. Not that I was there, of course, I was merely an art school freshman hunched over a blurry live-stream. This was the E3 where the Wii was officially announced and all its big games (Mario Galaxy, Wii Sports, Metroid Prime 3, etc) were shown for the first time. I was interested in all these things, but for me the most thrilling new piece of software shown was a DS sequel to my favorite game of all time – Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. I saw the brief clip and decided then and there to finally purchase a DS.
Of course, I later learned that Yoshi's Island DS was actually being developed by a third-party entity called Artoon, best known for the "Blinx" series. Much of my excitement immediately disappeared, replaced mostly by hope that it wouldn't be complete garbage. And it wasn't- most reviewers gave it a positive write-up and the collective gaming consciousness seemed to generally accept the game as a worthwhile sequel before completely forgetting about it.
I responded with shrugged shoulders, at the time calling it "the re-animated zombie corpse of Yoshi's Island". In the three years since its release, the game has been sitting quietly on my shelf, staring at me. Occasionally I would walk past and briefly meet its glance, which was sort of like crossing paths with a jilted ex-girlfriend. You know, that girlfriend who you dated because she sort of looked like a girl you were actually attracted to.
"I'm sorry, Yoshi's Island DS, I really wish I'd been able to like you like that."
Time and the general public may be able to forget Yoshi's Island DS, but I cannot. One night when she looked at me with those sad eyes, wishing I could love her, I decided to give the sorry cartridge one last go. A less tactful fellow might refer to this as a "pity fuck". I wanted to get to the bottom of what made this game, which consists of ostensibly more of my favorite game, somehow a disappointment. There was even a sliver of hope in me that I'd find what IGN and Gamespot saw in it and enjoy myself.
I never did. While it is a respectable facsimile of the Yoshi's Island Experience, the DS sequel still seems to lack the indescribable essence that makes the original so special. Most of the joy in Yoshi's Island came from how every level is filled with brilliant new ideas, but whenever YIDS tries to bring something new to the table it just comes off as awkward.
A good example of this is an level that seems like any other, but if you enter a vaguely hidden area you are met with an interlude where you ride in a kangaroo's pouch. This sounds like fun, maybe even something the first one might do, until you notice that the design of your animal buddy doesn't fit into the aesthetic at all. Far worse, it's hardly even animated- the movement is so minor that it basically looks like floating clip art. I counted, and the sprite literally has about four frames of animation. MAYBE five. For the sequel to a game whose entire visual style is based on looking lively and hand-drawn, this is upsetting. In fact, the whole game's style seems to take a couple of steps away from the original's distinctive style and toward generic 2D sprite-dom. There are a few really nice and sketchy backgrounds, but overall it really misses the opportunity to use the superior hardware evolve the visuals of its predecessor.
Even the most highly touted new feature, the ability to switch between multiple Yoshi-riding babies, adds little to the experience. One would expect this to bring a degree of strategy to the proceedings, but it mostly just amounts to seeing a certain obstacle and grabbing the appropriate baby. In some particularly unfortunate instances, the “strategy” is just being lucky enough to guess which baby will be needed before even seeing the next section. In other words, this addition mostly just makes the game more complicated without making it any more enjoyable. Well, Baby DK and Baby Wario's cries are pretty amusing.
The levels are long. Some of them are really long. Even stages that present interesting ideas (such as a pirate ship) often overstay their welcome. A good contrast would be Super Mario Bros. 3, a game where most levels are refreshingly brief despite the fact that many present an entertaining new gimmick. It's a game with enough great ideas that it never needs to linger on one of them. Another problem with the lengthy levels in YIDS is that as they seem to get more punishingly difficult as the game goes on, and by the fourth or fifth time you play through a level it can feel like it takes an hour. It's essentially an issue of quantity over quality.
In this ill-advised hookup with my homely ex, I found that I enjoyed myself most when I was able to trick myself into believing I was with the one I really loved. In fact, the time when Yoshi's Island DS was most fun was when I played it a moment after going through a couple levels of the original. It didn't take long for me to be reminded that I was playing an inferior creation, but for a couple of wonderful minutes it felt like I was really getting more of the game I love so dearly. The game also functions pretty well if you're not giving it all of your attention – for example, try turning the (bland, so so bland) music down and the TV on.
...And so Yoshi's Island DS has returned to my shelf, where it will sit and wait for me to desperately mine it for value again someday in the distant future. It's not a purchase I regret, though. The more support this game gets, the more likely it is that I'll get a cel-shaded 3D Yoshi's Island sequel for Wii, developed by EAD Tokyo, with pointer control for throwing eggs. Hey, a man can dream.
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