It’s time to look at a Yoshi game I didn’t know much about. Thanks to the Gamestop deal it was effectively one of the 3 free games so no harm either way. That being said…it’s just not very good. This game has no story and the 4 modes it has have identical gameplay. There’s really nothing to do here because it’s like playing a Mairo Party title that effectively only has 1 minigame. How long is that really going to last you when you think about it? A single game can work if there’s a lot of effort behind it or it’s simply addicting but I’m not sure if this one really seals the deal on that. At the very least I didn’t find it all that entertaining at all and grew bored of it pretty quickly. This is definitely one of Nintendo’s weakest games.

The gameplay is divided into two phases. The first phase has you falling through the air as Baby Mario. The idea here is to grab as many coins as possible while avoiding enemies. Once you’ve fallen 1000 feet then your stats are used to determine the equipment for Yoshi in the next phase. The way to stop yourself from bumping into enemies is to draw clouds in the sky that you use as borders to steer Baby Mario while also blocking off the enemies. That’s really the only controls you have but it can be tougher than it sounds. Due to how the DS has 2 screens and all, you have to time the blockades really well or they will flat out miss the target. If that happens then things aren’t going to go all that well for you. You can keep retrying until you succeed of course but the gameplay is rather slow so it takes a bit.

The second half has you riding a Yoshi who automatically walks forward. The idea here it to throw eggs at enemies in front of you before you bump into them. Remember, a single touch will result in your destruction so you really do need to keep away. Also remember to build a bridge of clouds underneath you so that you don’t fall to your doom. It can be tough to multi task on everything but this mode works pretty well. Every enemy you hit also extends the timer on the level. The idea is to get as far as possible as there is no end. The only level with an end is Time Attack where you get to save Baby Luigi.

So that’s it, this is the extent of the game. The modes here are Score Attack, Challenge, Survival, and Time Attack. They all have the exact same gameplay though so there’s just not much to this. Additionally there is no way to skip the Baby Mario stuff. I feel like that would have gone a long way to make the game more fun since the Yoshi gameplay, while not perfect, is a considerable improvement. I can at least see myself having a little more fun there. The game just feels incredible rushed though. Couldn’t they have at least given us more stages or different ways to play? A very quick story or arcade mode would have done the job just fine and then there would not have been any kind of issue. That would have been absolutely fantastic so it’s a shame that it didn’t work out.

The graphics are okay though. It does look about as good as a normal Nintendo game. There’s not a lot to base this on because the gameplay is so limited but what we do have is fine by me. The character models are on point and the enemies look like how they should appear. The backgrounds are nice and it’s pretty nostalgic to see the sprites everywhere. The soundtrack is pretty forgettable but I wouldn’t say it’s bad either. It just doesn’t have the pop you would see in a more mainstream Nintendo title.

Overall, I just feel like this game was incredibly lazy. I feel bad for anyone who bought this day 1 and then immediately ran out of things to do. You can “conquer” the game within an hour. By that I mean getting your name in the top 10 leaderboard for each minigame. At that point it just depends how much you like the game so you can replay the modes over and over. The point of a game like this is to have you constantly try to get better and better so that your score goes high but it depends on how much you like the game. Usually there are a ton of minigames so you have a lot of options but in this case there’s only one so if you don’t like it then you’re sunk. It’s kind of hard to see why Nintendo would phone in a game like this. I’m confident they could make a better version of it for mobile now if they really tried. Ah well, maybe next time. In the meanwhile I highly advise you not to get this game. Even if Yoshi’s the main character, it’s just not worth it.

Overall 3/10