Yoshi’s Island is one of those games that I would have imagined that I’d have played years ago but it always fell through the cracks. As a result it feels really retro to be playing this one because it’s just from such a different time. This was back when Nintendo really did not hold back on the difficulty. Some of these levels are really quite hard but never in an unfair way. Your platforming skills will simply be tested in ways that you wouldn’t have thought possible.

The story is fairly basic but with one little twist that was nice. Basically babies around the world are being kidnapped and this includes poor Luigi. Fortunately the stork is able to save Mario and quickly locates Yoshi so that they can team up to save the world once again. These two are no strangers to mixing it up with the likes of Bowser and so they quickly get ready for this. What they don’t realize is that King Bowser has come from the future as well to really complicate matters. Dealing with two fierce opponents may be a bit much and then we have Wario as a wild card.

Right off the bat I can appreciate the wide character roster here. At least for a Platformer this feels pretty big. You can use Baby Mario, Peach, Wario, DK, and even Bowser at one point. Each character has their own special abilities while riding on Yoshi and this even affects your running speed. Additionally Mario has the ability to grow his cape while using a power star and you temporarily control him instead of Yoshi. It’s clear that Nintendo was really working hard to ensure there was a whole lot of depth to the gameplay. It’s certainly doing more than the original.

That said, more isn’t always better. How much you enjoy this game will really come down to how much you like playing as all of the characters. If for any reason you do not like playing as them, then you will probably miss the standard Yoshi gameplay. As its core the gameplay still has many of the same elements like running through the levels and getting past all the obstacles but then you use the character specific items like DK’s climbing to get past different barriers in the level.

I mostly stuck with Mario as his basic gameplay is the most comforting but the game does force you to switch on many occasions. So get used to playing as everyone. Like I said before the difficulty is also quite high so don’t think that you will just be sleep walking through this adventure. No, you’re going to have to really put in a lot of effort. Stock up on as many lives as possible in the first few worlds. I nearly didn’t spend enough focus on that since I figured lives wouldn’t be important but the difficulty really spikes starting with world 4. I had around 65 lives by that point and ended up with less than 20 by the end.

There are a lot of check points in the game which is good but some of the jumps and timings are really intense. It’s fun to see how creatively Nintendo added this difficulty while preserving the basic concept of Yoshi not having a health bar. You die if you fall through a pit, touch lava, or let your baby get away from you for a long period of time. The latter is the easiest way to die so just be careful where you’re at when you take damage.

For the most part the bosses are all really easy though as even the final boss moves fairly slow and only has a few different attacks. I suspect that it is harder to balance a boss than it is for a level which explains the huge disparity between them. So at least that’s one part you don’t have to worry about, for the most part you will be blowing the bosses away with ease. For the levels, you just have to keep going at them over and over again until you’ve found a way to win. Over 90% of the challenging parts are just about execution though so you don’t have to worry about solving puzzles or anything like that. Just put your best foot forward and you’ll be fine.

The graphics are pretty solid here. Again it has a very nostalgic kind of vibe to it with the looks and designs really being classic Mario all the way. It’s an easy game to enjoy visually and the soundtrack is also good. A solid array of themes even if I can’t point to any one theme and say that it’s an all star. They all work well within the context that they appear in which is good enough for me. Nintendo typically always does a good job on that front so I’m not surprised.

There is also a formidable amount of replay value here. The main campaign is fairly long with 5 worlds of 8 levels each but then each world has 3-4 bonus levels as well. Then you have the collectibles and there are a ton of those to grab in each level. We’re talking massive Yoshi coins as well as red coins. It will take a very long time to achieve all of those so that will add more than a few hours to your total docket.

Overall, This is a very complete Yoshi game. It holds its own with the classic Mario titles although I will always prefer the Mario gameplay over Yoshi overall. Nothing wrong with Yoshi’s but Mario’s tends to be more fast paced. Here you do often have to wait for things to get set up. The worst are the auto scroller levels but that is true for any platformer title since the movement is so slow. You should definitely check this game out if you are looking for a good challenge. I can definitely guarantee that you will find one here. It’s the kind of game that you really can’t underestimate.

Overall 7/10