If you grew up with the Nintendo Game Boy Advance, chances are you played one of the many fantastic NES and SNES ports, including Super Mario Bros. 3, Donkey Kong Country, and Super Mario World. But the game that stuck out the most to me, even to this day, is Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario Advance 3.
Yoshi’s Island was originally released in the Super Nintendo Entertainment System as Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island in the year 1995 on August 15th in Japan and then October 4th in the US. Keep in mind that in this article I will be referring to both the GBA port (released in 2002) and the original on the SNES as the same game, Yoshi’s Island. This is because I played the GBA port as a kid and the two games are nearly identical. The GBA version just adds in updated sound effects such as Yoshi’s voice clips and adds in a few extra levels.
I’d like to imagine what went through gamers’ heads leading up to those fateful days in 1995 with the original game. Because despite technically being a sequel to the immensely successful and beloved Super Mario World, this game does things drastically different. First of all, it is a prequel of all things, ditching the princess saving narrative completely. An infant Mario and Luigi are carried by a stork to their parents. Kamek, the chief minion to baby Bowser, attacks the stork and snatches Luigi while Mario plummets to his doom. Fortunately, he manages to land on the back of a Yoshi. Now the entirety of the Yoshi clan must work together to rescue Luigi and the stork so that the two brothers can ultimately be delivered to their parents.
The second way this game differs from its pseudo-predecessor is in its gameplay. Instead of going through a variety of obstacles towards an end goal under a time limit like in Super Mario World, Yoshi’s Island takes a more relaxed approach. The focus is less on getting to the end of the level and more on exploration and finding every secret and collectible. You don’t die in a few hit’s either. When you get hurt, Mario flies off your saddle and forms a bubble around him. You have to catch him before the timer ticks down or else Kamek’s helpers will hear Mario’s cry and snatch him up.
I’m sure a lot of gamers in 1995 were turned off by this game, and even gamers today. Instead of getting more of Super Mario World, they get a less challenging experience. But for a casual, collect-a-thon platformer, Yoshi’s Island is perfect. This is, in my opinion, the most finely crafted game that I have ever played.
Nintendo’s philosophy has always been that great games don’t need to be complex. That even the most simple of mechanics can provide a ton of depth. This game is one of the best examples of this philosophy. The accessibility of the gameplay allows for anyone to play it however they like. Do you want to just rush through the level as fast as you can? Do you want to uncover every last collectible? Do you want to challenge yourself with secret hidden levels? The difficulty comes with how much you want to be invested in the experience, and the game rewards you for it.
This accessibility comes with the perfectly integrated mechanics. I have never played a platformer with this level of depth and fluidity in how you control your character. Yoshi can do a flutter jump, which allows him to hover in the air for a little bit allowing for greater movement and accuracy in jumping. Yoshi’s basic attack is his tongue lick from Super Mario World, allowing you to quickly slurp up enemies and items and throw enemies back at other enemies. The ground pound allows you to dig through loose soil as well as stamp down pegs. The most important ability, however, is the egg throw. When Yoshi slurps up an enemy, he can then turn it into an egg and target something with a linear reticle that changes its trajectory angle automatically. This is the main method of attacking enemies and hitting special clouds to get through the level and uncover secrets. The reticle comes out and changes trajectory quickly, allowing for quick combat. And the ricocheting eggs allow for more depth in puzzle-solving and combat. All of these abilities are so well integrated into the core gameplay that they feel second nature. They’re not just a tool that you have to learn how to use or guns with wildly different playstyles to get used to. They become extensions of your body, and are natural as using your hands.
All 54 levels (60 in the GBA version) are all phenomenally designed. Most levels go into the categories that you are accustomed to in most platformers such as an ice level, cave, and a cloud level. But each level has its own distinct design and mechanics. In one level, you may be sliding down a snowy slope on skis. In another, you may be climbing on rotating pegs over lava. And in another, you may be running away from a giant chain chomp. Although, many of the levels use the same mechanics and environments, they use them in such different ways that the game never feels repetitive. No one level sticks out; each one is equally enthralling. And the new levels on the GBA are equally well crafted.
What adds to this enthrallment is the well-crafted secrets. Many early 90s games had secrets hidden all over the place, with no coherent way of finding them, but not in this game. Through clever use of design and subtle hints in the background, we can deduce where the extra red coins and stars are hiding. And much like the rest of the level design, the secrets never get repetitive, no one puzzle shares the same kind of method and solution. This is what makes the collectibles so great to chase after.
Despite the lack of challenge initially, it is perfect for this type of game. The mechanic of having the baby fly off after getting hit allows for much greater flow through a level than if you just died after a few hits. It creates a great feeling of tension as the countdown gets lower and you just barely can reach baby Mario. It’s just like the constant tension of caring for your own child. There are still instant death spikes and bottomless pits aplenty as you get deeper into the game. The game does a great job of easing you into the game and its mechanics. And a lot of the later stages and especially the secret stages provide a great deal of challenge.
The graphics still hold up to this day. The game takes on a very vibrant and colorful aesthetic, almost as if it was drawn with colored pencils and felt pens. Each type of level had its own distinctive tone through the colors and music. The advancements of the Super FV chip in the cartridge for the SNES game allowed sprites to stretch and squash, allowing for memorable bosses such as Slavo the Slime, which oozed through the level and got smaller as you cut through it with your eggs.
Speaking of bosses, all of the enemies are memorable. The overall cutesy aesthetics is also applied to the design of all of the enemies, making each on charming and endearing. All the enemies have varied and surprisingly complex AI for a game made in 1995. My favorite enemies are the monkeys. They can shoot watermelon seeds, climb vines, and even steal baby Mario from your saddle. But you can’t just jump on them and be done with it. No matter how many times you jump or even ground pound them, they don’t die unless you jump on them once and kick them off the screen by walking into them. They even struggle to stay afloat when you knock them in the water. Never have I hated an enemy so much but also felt so bad for pummeling and killing them.
So does this game still hold up today? Absolutely. Not only does it hold up well even by today’s standards, but there’s nothing that has even come close. Even when Nintendo tried to make sequels to the game, although some of them were a step in the right direction such as Yoshi’s Island DS, none of them could capture the spirit and quality of the original. That’s because the mechanics, design, and variety of Yoshi’s Island is perfect and can never be recreated. It’s just like one of Mozart’s operas, if you try to add or delete even one note, it ceases to be perfect.
Never the less, I still crave more greatness from this game. Don’t get me wrong, 54+ levels is not too much or too little. But I would still like more levels with the same care and design as the original. But after the hearing about the disappointment of Yoshi’s New Island on the 3DS, I lost all hope of there being a truly great Yoshi’s Island game again, one that was as good or at least almost as good as the original.
But that hope was rekindled by the announcement of Yoshi’s Wooly World on the Wii U. We have heard of the game prior to the release of Yoshi’s New Island, but we didn’t know what to think of it at the time. But after seeing how the game will actually play, I can honestly say that I am very excited for it. It looks like the same level design, engrossing secrets, clever enemies, intuitive mechanics, and fantastic visuals are all present. It might not be as good as the original, but it looks to have the same dedication to quality and spirit while still keeping everything fresh. And although we have yet to fully experience the game, I have high hopes that it will give us another truly great Yoshi’s Island game.
Until then, I can still play the classic that started it all. If you are a fan of platformers of any kind or games in general, then you owe it to yourself to play this game. It’s a truly masterful game, one that you cannot experience anywhere else.