Mar 19, 2018 Can optional content determine the playability and fun factor of a video game? Cody discusses how this happened as he and Jon review Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island for the SNES Classic, arguably the best platformer ever made.
World 1 is the first world of Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island and Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3. The world contains eight normal levels and two secret levels. Its extra level is Extra 1: Poochy Ain't Stupid, and its secret level is Secret 1: Exercise in the Skies. The world's theme is a grassy plain in spring.
Levels of World 1[edit]The following is a list of each level in World 1. Make Eggs, Throw Eggs[edit]This level is an easy course that teaches the player some things about the game. The level features Shy-Guys, Fly Guys and the Chomp Rock. Watch Out Below![edit]The second level is easy too. However, at the beginning, Yoshi must run quickly because Incoming Chomps will fall down and create holes in the ground. This level also introduces the transformation of Yoshi into a Helicopter. The Cave Of Chomp Rock[edit]This level takes place inside a cave containing many Nipper Plants and Chomp Rock. The level also features a Minigame room. Burt The Bashful's Fort[edit]The first fort is an easy level. At the beginning Yoshi must be careful because some walls can fall down and squash him when Yoshi runs past them. The level features the Burts, Lava Bubble and much more. The boss of the fort is Burt the Bashful, a giant Burt who jumps very high. Yoshi must throw eggs at him to defeat him. Hop! Hop! Donut Lifts[edit]This level is slightly harder than the previous four because it is an auto-scrolling level, so Yoshi must follow the path to get to the end. The level features the Donut Lifts as says the name, which fall if Yoshi stands on them for too long. Shy-Guys On Stilts[edit]This is an easy level with many Shy-Guys on Stilts. This special kind of Shy-Guy cannot be swallowed by Yoshi when on their stilts. This level contains two dark cave areas. At the end, a 1-Up balloon will appear. Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy[edit]This is a forest level with a Minigame Room and many Fuzzies. It also features the extremely rare Melon Bug that helps Yoshi to defeat enemies like Tap-Taps. Salvo The Slime's Castle[edit]This is the first castle of the game. It is an easy level, however Yoshi must be careful with the spiked platforms and the rotating cylinders. The boss is Salvo the Slime, a giant Lemon Drop. Yoshi has to throw eggs at it to defeat it. Poochy Ain't Stupid[edit]This is the first 'extra' level in the game. The main focus of it is Poochy, who Yoshi must ride on to get past the level. If Yoshi falls off of Poochy, he'll fall into lava and lose a life. Exercise in the Skies[edit]Available only in Super Mario Advance 3: Yoshi's Island. This is the first secret level in the game. As the name implies, Yoshi will have to traverse through cloud platforms and other types of airborne terrain most of the time. Bonus-1[edit]Collecting 800 points (700 in the remake) will unlock Flip Cards to play anytime.
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Back in 1995, I thought I knew what a Mario game was. Running left to right (or maybe down to up). Jumping on things. Eating mushrooms to get big. Flying, sometimes. You know the drill. Then Yoshi's Island came along and showed that Mario games could be about a lot more than that.
Yeah, you were still running through levels and jumping on things, but the myriad ways Yoshi's Island expanded on the Mario formula made it feel like an entirely new game. Yoshi went from an occasional helper in Super Mario World to a permanently controllable character in Yoshi's Island, tasked with protecting a near-helpless Baby Mario riding on his back. Yoshi's oversized tongue let players slurp up enemies and transform them into projectile eggs that could be fired in any direction. What used to be a run-and-jump series was now run-and-jump-and-slurp-and-shoot game, and the Yoshi's Island designers built levels that catered to these new abilities wonderfully.
But the true key to Yoshi's Island's appeal, to me, is the flutter jump. If you continue to hold the jump button after the peak of Yoshi's arc, he'll kick his feet in the air to first slow his descent and then start floating upward again, achieving a new, slightly higher peak. If you have enough elevation, you can flutter multiple times before eventually floating to the ground. This new feature added a crucial, extra bit of post-jump precision to the standard Mario jump, and allowed for a lot of platforming challenges that required mid-air direction changes or extra-long flutter leaps. It's hard to explain to someone who's never played Yoshi's Island just how right it feels to trace a series of gentle, perfect curves through the air with a well-timed executed series of flutter jumps.
Then there's the way the game looks. Mario games have always been bright and colorful, but Yoshi's Island brought a hand-drawn aesthetic that really captured the game's sense of childlike wonder. From the gentle pastel backgrounds to the stark black outlines of the primary-colored characters and enemies, there's the slightest bit of imperfect sloppiness to the visual design that evokes a grade schooler's dream world more than a pixelated game system.
A lot of people don't realize that the 2D sprites in Yoshi's Island were backed up by a version of the polygon-pushing Super FX chip—the same one that powered early 3D SNES games like Star Fox and Stunt Race FX. This allowed for massive bosses that could stretch, rotate and move with a smoothness that was unknown in games at the time, but also provide subtler effects like the way Yoshi's head compresses a little bit when he bonks it against the ceiling. The Super FX powered character animation carries a level of detail that makes the characters seem much more lively than the keyframe animation of previous Mario games.
Avoiding enemies is still important in Yoshi's Island, but getting hit one or two times usually isn't an instant death, as in previous Mario games. Instead, you can just quickly recapture the floating Baby Mario and continue on with the level. It's an important change for a game that marks a transition point of sorts from the simpler 'get to the end without dying' Mario games that came before to titles that focused more on exploration and secondary goals.
Yoshi's Island doesn't have a time limit, allowing players to search out the five giant flowers and 20 hidden red coins in each level to their heart's content. Finding these bonuses isn't necessary to beat the game, but searching out a perfect score on each level provides a great excuse to go back and really absorb all the nooks and crannies of the excellent, puzzle- and secret-filled level design. Plus, finding all the secrets on each level unlocked a series of six extra-hard bonus stages. You know a game is good when you're excited that the reward for playing well is that you get more levels to play.
That's because every new level in Yoshi's Island showed more originality and imagination than the entirety of many other platform games of the day. There are enemy monkeys that spit watermelon seeds at Yoshi and try to run off with Baby Mario. There are giant, screen-filling Chain Chomps that try to chase Yoshi down (before inevitably falling and chipping a tooth on a cement block). There are items to transform Yoshi into vehicles ranging from a helicopter to a submarine. There's a spike-proof dog that serves as a barely controllable transport. There's the infamous level where Yoshi gets high (sorry, 'dizzy') by inhaling floating spores. You never know what to expect when you unlock a new level in Yoshi's Island, and that expectation of new content keeps you going at least as much as anything else.
Yoshi's Island Reddit Download
The magic of Yoshi's Island has proven hard to recapture. I'll never forget the feeling of disappointment I felt when I bought Yoshi's Story on the N64 only to realize it was a pale, simplified shadow of the game that inspired it. Years later, Yoshi's Island DS did its best to expand on the SNES classic, but everything from the controls to the level design just felt the tiniest bit off. The Game Boy Advance rerelease of the original Yoshi's Island might just be the quintessential version of the game, featuring six new unlockable stages that feel perfectly integrated into the larger whole.
The radical experimentation of Yoshi's Island holds up amazingly well even nearly two decades after its first release, and stands as a testament to how even the most well-known and beloved series can be tweaked and expanded successfully.
