Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 119: Yoshi's Island

Episode Date: September 25, 2017

Yoshi's Island hasn't been re-released in its original, unadulterated form since its 1995 debut, but the upcoming launch of the SNES Classic promises to make this platforming legend slightly more available (while supplies last). And to mark the recirculation of Nintendo's last hurrah for the Super Nintendo, we sat down for an episode-length discussion all about Yoshi's gorgeous, inventive, and somewhat polarizing adventure. On this installment of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Henry Gilbert, and Gary Butterfield as the crew gushes about this 16-bit gem nearly lost to time.

This week on Retronauts, Poochie ain't stupid. Hello, everybody, welcome to yet another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host for this one, Bob Mackey. And today's episode is the long-awaited Yoshi's Island episode. Yes, I promised it in our Yoshi Games episode. That was episode 88. Now it's finally happening thanks to the SNEX Classic. Before I go on, though, let's see who else is here today with me.

As always, we have... It's Jeremy Parrish, spitting watermelon seeds in your face. That's awesome. And who else do we have? Gary Butterfield and, like Yoshi, my reproductive and digestive systems are tragically, tragically mixed. We're not going to get into that, but I'm glad you at least address it. You're not going to get into it. You got a mouse in your pocket?

He has to live with it, though. I think Gary's going to filibuster this. Please, I'm very sick. And who else is here? I'm Henry Gilbert and I touched Fuzzy, so I am dizzy right now. Just say no. Use Fuzzy Responsibly, kids. All I got to say is that.

So, I want to put this out here. This is the first time that Yoshis Island is actually being re-released in its proper form on the S&ES classic. To date, there has been no official re-release on any other platform. No, the Game Boy Advance version doesn't count. I'm sorry. Can't believe you're hate it. No, it sucks. They added some really good extra levels.

Good for them. That's all I've got to say is good for them. Just because they didn't have enough buttons and just because they didn't have the effects. And the colors are bad. And the sound is terrible. They add some levels, though. And they add voice effects too. I want those levels ported back into the Super NES version.

Well, it's not going to happen. But the important thing is this treasure from the gods is finally now available. We can finally play without having. to steal it. And I assume, like the NES Classic, the S&EX Classic will be so easy to find just in any store, any, any, any, any store you go into, they'll have thousands of them just falling out the shelves. Remember when I predicted that the NES Classic would be sold at places like Home Depot and caps, just like the Atari flashbacks? Why did you not retire and shame, Jeremy? I mean, I would have been the only. I did. I had to

quit U.S. Gamer. That's what did it. They were like, get the hell out of here. But yeah, I mean, this episode is because, A, this game is so great, it deserves its own episode, and there's not enough time to talk about it within the realm of other Yoshi episodes. But also, yes, finally, you can play it on that S&ES classic. We're not going to get into why you couldn't play it before, maybe a little bit, but it was a shame. And now after 22, 22, ever-loven years, we finally have access to Yoshi's Island again, and it is fantastic. So before we get into Yoshi's Island, I did do some research. on the background of the game.

And as with a lot of these games from this era, there are like no interviews to be found outside of Japanese interviews. And thankfully, last year, one of them was translated. And maybe two of them. It's kind of like one and a half interviews on this game. They're kind of fluffy, but I feel like a few interesting things came out of these interviews, including just how long they spent on this game. So just to go over just why this game is so great and just how much time was spent on it,

Development for this game started immediately after the launch of Super Mario World. Immediately after Mario World ended, they started working on prototypes for Yoshi's Island. That's a heck and long time. That is a heck and long time. That's like technically a five-year development cycle. It took them two years to find a prototype they could turn into an actual game. Wow. The one they talked about possibly using was what would have been the worst possible Yoshi's Island,

which is an escort game where it's like you are Yoshi independently. sort of, you know, doing things on level to have Mario make it to the end. It's sort of like Mario and Mario, yeah. I'm glad that they turned that into its own thing that didn't even come to America. Yes. Mario Mario is fine, but if Yoshi's Island was anything like that, I mean, that is actually the very good-looking but very bad playing Rocco's Modern Life S&S game. If you've ever played that, it's an escort mission where you were escorting the dog's

spunky across the level, and it is so hard and so bad. I hate it so much. I was going to say it sounded more like Pac-Man 2, except where you're directing, well, I guess now. Yeah, I mean, I love Pac-Man 2, but you're more of like an arbitrary god in his world, just firing things at him and poking him. This game makes Pac-Man 2 look like Rocco's modern life. A sentence that will make no sense in the future. The first person to say that ever. Congratulations, Gary.

So, Miyamoto didn't care for the scoring aspect of this game. It's important to note that Miyamoto was doing other stuff while this game was in development, presumably working on what would become Mario 64. He was installing every office at Nintendo with a tea table. Yes, just to throw it in the air and scream. But yeah, this is Takashi Tezika's game, not Miyamoto's game. And there are some philosophical differences we'll talk about as we talk about the game itself. But Miyamoto sort of let Tezuka do his own thing, lead his own team on this game.

Because, again, he at this time was working on the N64. and the launch game for that, Mario 64. And what was supposed to come the year after, Ocarina of Time, of course, that would take another year to stew. Well, Superraniass was kind of when Miyamoto was transitioning into just the full-on leadership role he'd have. Like, he was overseeing Star Fox, and he was a bit of a liaison on the Donkey Kong Country series as well. So he had his fingers in a lot of pies. He couldn't really direct a sequel to Super Mario World.

And I don't think maybe Jeremy can correct me. I don't think he directed Mario World. I know he didn't direct Legend of Zelda and Link to the Past. Did Miyamoto direct Mario World? I think Tezica designed that also. Yeah, yeah. But this one, he was sort of like, he was executive producer and overseer on Mario

World and Link to the past, but with this game, he was more hands-off. Miamoto kind of rose pretty quickly to a management role. Like, they gave him Nintendo R&D4, which became Nintendo EAD, like in the mid-80s. So at that point, he was the person in charge of a division. So he wasn't

really directing and designing that many games firsthand. He was more, you know, kind of overseeing and supervising. Just like everyone for a long time was like, oh, Gunpei Yokoi was the creator of Metroid and designed all the Metroid games. No, no, he was the boss of that division. Right, right. And he was the executive producer or like the producer on it, but the actual director of the designer, that was Yoshio Sakamoto.

It was something else entirely. I mean, okay. I liked finding that out just because when I mourned the death of Gunpei Yokoyo, I was like, oh, and the creator of Metroid's gone, oh, and then I learned about the existence of Sakamoto. So I was like, oh, good, okay, he's not good. I mean, based on the interview I read, I felt like he couldn't necessarily pull rank on this game as he could with other games. He was too tied up in other things, or maybe he just didn't want to interfere with development. He had a huge influence, though.

One of the things about that interview that popped out to me was that he was instrumental in this kind of graphic style. Yeah. You know, which is a huge strength of the game, specifically reacting against Donkey Kong country, which makes me feel very good. Oh, yes. About thinking those games look bad. And we will get to that. Miamon is on my side.

Yes, that's an very important part of the development of this game. But so it's more about Tesika. There's only a few more things I pulled out of this interview. Yeah, so just really fast. I think, you know, you said he couldn't pull rank on this. I mean, my understanding of Japanese management style is not that, you know, someone necessarily says, this is what you will do. But it's more like, hmm, I don't know if this is the right approach.

And then the subordinates will be like, oh, yes, you know, my Simpa says, I shouldn't do that, so I shouldn't do that. Whereas maybe in this case, that's what happened. And Tesega was like, you know what? He didn't actually say I can't. So I'm going to just go ahead. I feel like Miyamoto is a bit different, though. I feel like I don't hear these stories with other developers, other Japanese developers.

But he's just like, if he wants something in your game, you have to make it. Even if he's not directing it, I feel like he didn't do that with this because he could have easily taken out the scoring system or whatever if he thought it was. If he really didn't like it, I feel like he could do that. But we'll never know because we'll never hear of these stories and these people after this. I would like to think, you know, when they put out the NES Classic, they did have some new interviews about the old game. So maybe they'll do that for the Super NES Classic? I really hope so. So two more things about Tessica, the main director of this game, and we'll talk more about this when we get into the meat of the game, is his intent with this game, and I think he met it entirely.

He was successful. He wanted to create levels. Players could play again and again. And if you're a beginner in the game, you can just get to the end. and if you're advanced in the game, you can try to find everything in the level, get all the max score. So that was his intent, these big levels that you could play over and over and over again with different approaches depending on what your skill was, what your objective was, what you wanted to get out of them. And according to him, this is a very, very tough development cycle. It took three years of development, actual development for this game, which was an enormous amount of time for an S&S game in 1995.

I don't really recall a lot of non, even big RPGs were like 18-month projects. Yeah, I mean, Super Metroid was like 18 months, and they've talked about how that was just like murder. That and Legend of Zelda Link to the past. Like, they couldn't believe how long those games were in development. So, yeah, for this to be in development five years is crazy. And you can really see. You'd even say cray cray. Cray, cray.

With the sheer amount of ideas in this game, you can tell they spent that much time on it. It's something, I think I've heard John Ricardy say on 8-4 play that like in these Nintendo. style back then seemed to be they'd make what you think they'd finish what would be the first game that they could put out and they're like no no no we'll make the sequel to that game and that's the game we put out of just the refinement of ideas and maybe that's also where like why it's so packed with stuff in this game yeah I mean I have to wonder like how much of that five years you know after you know the the kind of initial two-year development cycle where they were trying to figure out what the plan will even be like how much of that time was spent

iterating ideas and how much did they have to throw out or change as the technology came into place because so much of what this game does that's memorable and interesting is based on the capabilities of the FX2 chip. And I know we'll talk about that soon. Oh, yeah. I just feel like this is one of those games where you really feel like it was developed hand in hand with the technology. Like I can't imagine them having, you know, like worked on this game for a few years and

then said, oh, no, wait, we should add this new technology to it. and then, like, trying to figure out how to make that fit in. It's not that kind of game. I mean, if I could just make something up that I think is true, I want to say that this game was intended for just the Super FX chip. And then they're like, well, our development hardware can do this other stuff. If we build another chip, maybe we can get this life out of the game that we want, and that's why the FX2 was created for this in, like, three other games,

one of which didn't come out. So I feel like maybe this was intended for the Super FX1, which would have been around 92 when they were developing Star Fox. So I think maybe that's the story, I think. Yeah, it's real maximalist. Yeah. It's not, it doesn't feel like things were taken away from it, which is like supportive. They talk about how, you know, there weren't a lot of ideas that got on the cutting room floor.

Like, you know, just a couple, for the most part, everything they wanted to do they could put in. And that rarely works, right? Like, that's something, that's a mark of a bad game. And here it, it just sings. Yeah, I think that's an EAD philosophy in general. When I, I, like, interviewed people who worked there multiple times and like about, like, about, Galaxy, I asked him, like, was there anything in Galaxy 2 you wished you'd put in? And they're just like, no, we did everything.

Like, we did every idea we had. And it was just a giant buffet of ideas. So we didn't cut anything. I don't think they, if there's something they definitely would have used, they find a way to use it. I feel like that was kind of the Mario style since basically Mario 2 USA. Like, every level is its own thing. and you don't see ideas repeated very often. That really took shape with Super Mario Brothers 3.

For sure. Where you're just like, there's 90 stages or whatever, and each of them is its own kind of like stand-alone idea that you don't see anywhere else. Whereas Corvo's shoe, it's just in one level. Yeah. So I want to talk about the people behind Yoshi's Island, and I won't go over them in too in depth

because I swear we talked about these people over and over again because we've done so many episodes on Nintendo games, yes, we're Nintendo Knotsder. but I don't feel the need to repeat myself because we've talked about them so much and I'm sure you've heard those episodes before if not I can tell you where to go to find more information but I shouldn't really need to tell you about Takashi Tezuka

I mean essentially Miyamoto's right-hand man like he and Miyamoto together created entire genres basically Super Mario Brothers, Legend of Zelda Tezuka directed things like Super Mario World Link of the Past, Link's Awakening like he is a fantastic director a very talented guy, very humble guy who's only recently started talking to people

who's only recently been in the spotlight. So that is Tezica, and there are four directors on this. He led the team. The other director is one I don't hear about that much. It's Toshihiko Nagako. Nakago, sorry. Apparently, he was a lead programmer

on a ton of Nintendo's 8 and 16 big games, like the original Super Mario Brothers, like No Zelda. You see his name all over the place. So I feel like he was like the tech director of this game, the programming director of the game, not necessarily an idea,

person. And now he's president of Nintendo S-R-D. Does anyone know what that is? Because I... Isn't it software research and development? Yes, but is that just a tech... Is that the America team that did the Mario versus Donkey Kong games? They used to be NST. Yeah, that's NST. Yeah, there's been

so many, like, mergers and like splits and, yeah, but he's a big guy now and he should be. I mean, he did lead programmer on, like, Legend of Zelda 1, so he knows what he's doing. Another director is Shigafumi Hino. He is the original designer of Yoh So it makes sense that he's on this game.

And looking at his credits, he seems to be mainly an arts person, but he did direct Pickman 2, and he was a planner on a Super Mario Maker. And actually, I have a nice little, after we abandoned the one-up office, it was just full of these, like, trophies and Chotchkes and all these great things that no one was going to take. And I took the Picman 2 standee, and Hino autographed it with Miyamoto and a bunch of other people. So that's the one game I know he directed. Maybe his only directorial credit, but Pickman 2 is a great game. Well, this game is so art-driven that I can see why he'd be on a director level there. Yeah. And another director, the fourth director, is Hideki-Kano.

Just go back to our Mario Kart episode. He is the Mario Kart guy. Also erected Luigi's Mansion, but he's basically been, like, king of Mario Kart since it started, and that's who he is. So go back to our Mario Kart episode, I talk about him a lot. And I don't even need to talk to you about Koji Kondo. Of course, he is, like, Nintendo's music godfather's themes from the Super Bowl. from Myr Brothers, Legend of Zelda, and so on. Now he's, he sort of oversees their music staff, but he still puts out some songs now and then.

So those are all the people. There's lots more, but those are the main talent. So before I get into the actual discussion about the game, I want to know from all of you guys, what is your experience with Yoshi's Island? What did you think of it? Where did you find it? When did you play it? Let's start with Jeremy. I want to know.

This game totally snuck up on me. I was in college at the time, and I was, you know, I was playing a lot of RPGs and so forth on Super NES. But I had not even heard of this game. And then, like, the week it came out, I saw it advertised in a target flyer and was like, what in God's name is this? So I went and it was on sale. And I said, this is a Mario game. I need to buy this. And I bought it.

And it just completely blew me away. It was this just visually stunning technological tour to force of a 2D platformer full of great ideas. It was a Mario game, but it was totally different than any other Mario game. And I miss when things like that could happen when a game would just come out of nowhere. It wasn't previewed three years earlier. I mean, it might have been. I just wasn't reading previews at the time, I guess. I don't think previews went back that far in that day.

Yeah, I just didn't see any hype or new. about this game in advance, and so it was just an amazing surprise. And I think this game is part of the reason I don't get surprised by games anymore because after this I started really following game news on, like, IGN64 and that sort of thing. Like that will not happen to me again. Yeah, I will never be caught unawares again. But, yeah, like it was an amazing surprise. Cool.

Well, so you liked it from the start. Oh, yeah, absolutely. How about you, Gary? You know, pretty similar. I was a huge fan of Super Mario World. that remains my favorite Mario game. And I wanted a sequel. And I wanted, at the time, what I really wanted was an iterative sequel.

Like I wanted, you know, something that would take those kind of ideas and take them further. And then when this came out, looking at it, looking at the back of the box, kind of reading the concept, I remember being pretty skeptical. And, you know, when I got it, I feel like there is like a real kind of relation between Mario 1 and USA, Mario 2, to Mario World to this, where there are these like projectile mechanics there's kind of different emphasis as you know totally different cast it feels like that kind of relationship there are a lot of shy guys in this game

yeah and the shy guys come back and they have tons of weirdly shaped bodies and like there's a variety really skinny ones like that yeah yeah and so I you know I picked it up because I knew it would be good but I you know and I got over that initial skepticism and just really loved it

it is Super Mario World was the first platform where I felt like really rewarded completionism, you know, where you're looking for these secret exits. It's full of secrets. And this game kind of codifies that by tying into the collectibles and it just worked. Like now, you know, collecting a hundred of everything in a level sounds awful to me. As a kid, I had all the time in the world.

And, oh, I get more levels for doing this. It's not just a score thing or extra lives. That's great. Right. This game came out a year, less than a year after Donkey Kong Country, a game that, you know, I played like halfway through and lost interest in and had zero interest in finding all you know, 102% or whatever. 10 million bananas.

Like there was no, just didn't, it didn't grab me, but, you know, there was an actual visible reward for collecting all the red coins and getting 100% with the flowers and everything and the stars on each level because if you did that in each world for every stage, there was a great bonus. There was more to do, yeah.

That was, like, that was a revelation too. It made me realize, like, if a game wants me to do, you know, this kind of tedious bullshit stuff, it's got to make it worth my while and this game actually did whereas Donkey Kong Country really did not. Nope. Henry, how about you? Well, I was

definitely grabbed by the Nintendo marketing I got rare on the brain here. Yeah, I was grabbed by the Nintendo marketing arm early on this that it was, I remember going to Blockbuster video and they had

you know, I could only rant so many, I could like You can rent one game or two movies for this weekend if we're going to the blockbuster. And then I see in the game section there's a VHS and it's like a free rental, what? And that's because it was an ad for Yoshi's Island. But I rented that and the ad really got me. But then once I played it, it wasn't, the Play It Loud campaigning of it wasn't really what I fell in love with. I just fell in love with just the pacing, the colorful world, the like humor that came through.

so many of the, of just the art direction, really. And then just the way Yoshi moved and felt, felt perfect to me. And I loved every boss in it. So I was, I was there from day one with it. It was, like, probably the last Super N.S game I truly loved. This was when my, my video game fandom really was taking off as, like, hardcore. Within the next three months of this, I was reading Next Generation magazine all the time. I'm like, okay, when's Ultra 64 coming out?

And I think it was just the love of Yoshi's Island really, like, exacerbated by my interest in games. Yeah, I want to play a tiny bit of that promotional tape. It's all online. It's the Nintendo promotional VHS for Yoshi's Island, and it is as embarrassing as you think it would be. And here's them talking about the game. So what makes this game so different? Do you think you can keep a secret? I can keep a secret.

Okay, then I'm going to tell you about morphination. We have backgrounds that wave where you're line scrolling vertically and horizontally, different scrolls of the background. So they made up morphmation, by the way. I didn't know that was a trademark term. Isn't that in that terrible commercial we're going to talk about later? I think they say morphation at that. They probably do. I mean, they needed a buzzword, like a blast processing or whatever.

The commercial is not narrated by Dugie Hauser's friend, though. No. As we were talking, it's a very Dan Cortez-style person, like the dollar store, Dan Cortez. ask your parents who Dan Cortez is they won't know He's got a big bandanae on his head And he's talking to Ken Lobb in that section I would get to know as like You're right

He just kind of shows up there But in the Just within a year of this I'm watching the N64 ad video Which is just Ken Lobb saying like Do you know what analog controls are guys Let me tell you look Mario's crawling Do you see that?

They're going to name a gun after me one day And they did My experience is like We're all on the same page here I didn't buy the game because at this point I had limited income so I was like I'm only buying RPGs because those games can last me a thousand hours but I would rent this I like right at the second

I saw it and I'm sure I saw previews but I was like this is amazing I've never seen a game that looked better I was just astounded by all of the 2D trickery and I didn't finish it until later in life maybe the early 2000s when I downloaded it to emulate it because this is a very long and very difficult game we'll get into more of that there

but yeah like I feel like we all have the same love for this game and I would make them leave this room because this is I think could be my favorite traditional 2D Mario game. It might be mine, too. I think I only beat it in the first weekend of rental because it was me and my little brother just mainlining it the entire time of like,

okay, you ran out of lives, it's my turn now, okay, now it's my... We traded back and forth and we're able to keep it up until all the way to the final Bowser fight. So now we can finally start talking about the game. In America, it's called Super Mario World 2, Yoshi's Island, but that's a lie.

There was no prefix in the Japanese version. I think my theory is Yoshi was a popular character, but they wanted consumers in America to know this is not a puzzle game or a racing game or whatever. This is a Mario platformer that happens to star Yoshi. At the start of that promotional VHS, they say, you've waited four years from the sequel. It's Super Mario World too. So at least in America, they were really leaning into this is a sequel to Super Mario. For sure. And I'm not offended by that at all.

I think it was a smart idea because I don't think I would have ignored it. Of course, if there was a Yoshi game, I would have played it. But it probably steered more people towards this game that had played maybe the bad puzzle game, Yoshi's cookie, and thought, I'm good on Yoshi games for now. Yoshi's Safari, no thanks. Yeah. As we saw in that Yoshi episode, he was in a lot of OK games, some mediocre games. Including ones after this. Oh, yeah, yeah.

A lot of bad. Like that are called Yoshi's Island. White, a lot of us. The 7 out of 10 golf. Yes. This is the Yoshi's Island franchise other than this. Makes me so sad. But, okay, so here's my crackpot theory that I assembled while doing research.

And I want to know if anyone agrees with me on this. So let me get through this. I feel like Yoshi's Island is a direct response to the sort of console platformer, like, war that was going on at the time. So we have other graphics-intensive platformers. We're starting to make Nintendo look kind of bad. So Donkey Kong Country, of course. This is definitely a response to that. It's been said as much by Miyamoto.

Sonic, things like Disney's Aladdin, things that with very good graphics and very sort of basic gameplay, things that sort of got by on Flash. And it's okay to like Sonic. It's okay to like Disney's Aladdin. I'm just saying those games were kind of flash first and then gameplay second. Also, multimedia was taking off around this time. Even though early CG was really ugly, people wanted to see it. So there's even more of an emphasis on graphics on 3D graphics, which Jocci Island has some. and the other thing is

Nintendo EAD knew this would be their last Super Famicom game and at the time they probably thought this is the last time we can make really nice 2D graphics I think all of us consumers assumed all of us game players assumed in the late 90s like

oh there won't be 2D games anymore maybe they'll be on Game Boy maybe there'll be another portable you can play them on but from now on everything is 3D why would you make a 2D game I feel like Jeremy I think some of your early internet stuff was sort of a reaction to that.

Like, no, two-d-games are still cool and important. They're not going to go away, yeah. And when you say early Internet stuff, you're talking like the late 90s, right? Like, 1999. That's still early Internet. It is. For most of the people listening. Yeah.

So, and I feel like, so this is a reaction to those games, but it was an very Nintendo-like philosophy where it's like, we will focus on graphics, but not just for the sake of graphics, the technology that's powering these graphics will allow for more possibilities. They will allow for enemies to move in new ways and to change. change shape in new ways. They will allow you to attack in new ways and to be attacked in new ways. Donkey Kong Country is built on amazing tech, the stuff that has made all those graphics. But if you look at the game itself, you're just jumping on enemies, rolling through

things. The tech, it could have been made without any of the tech. It would be the same game. Yoshi's Island needs that tech to exist. And the tech powers the mechanics in some way. I want everyone to react to that crazy rant. I just let out. No, you're 100% right. I mean, that's kind of what I was getting at earlier was like this game, I really feel like the development, the design happened in, you know, hand in hand with the development of the Super FX 2 chip.

Right. Because there's so much like things that we take for granted in modern games just couldn't be done on Super NES hardware, like, you know, platforms that tilt or those doors that fall, like the walls that fall forward in three dimensions or, you know,

just all kinds of things like that, rotating enemies and the, the crazy fight with Raphael Raven on the moon. Yeah. Like, you needed that technology to make that work. And the game was not just flash. I remember showing this game to a friend of mine, probably like 2001. He had never played it before.

And he was immediately dismissive, just like, oh, they're just showing off the technology. I was like, no, there's like all this stuff happening. Yeah, there's some flashy silly stuff like the shy guys that jump at you and they spin. Yeah. But then there's all kinds of stuff that is enabled by the technology. It's not just like showing off. It's actually doing something different with a video game. You've been playing too many PS1 games.

You've forgotten what the Super NES was actually like. Yeah. There's that definitely. Like I would plus one that. But I would also say one, it uses those kind of gimmicks in moderation as opposed to just kind of a wash across the entire thing. Yeah. Right.

So Donkey Kong Country has that new kind of like graphics engine that just permeates everything. This like things stand out there to a purpose. it's also kind of pursuing graphics in a former perspective of art direction rather than just technology. Yeah, yeah. So it's a triumph of like kind of art direction rather than just like density of, you know, pixels or like, you know, kind of resolution. These other things you can kind of push for. Yeah, I agree with that too. I think, you know, Nintendo, not that there weren't awesome platformers before 1991 in the shadow of Mario,

but I don't think Nintendo felt particularly challenged by them. after Super Mario World there were Sonic especially but more than just Sonic that were they were bigger games than Mario and I think they were this was their attempt to incorporate those ideas but to do them the

Nintendo way of doing them and I think too from a historical perspective you need to consider like the PlayStation was out or just about out when no it was out when it was after about a month in America

yeah yeah and And in Japan, it came out before the game did, too. And then same with the Saturn. So, like, it's in the shadow of next-gen stuff. So I think that they, in promotional stuff, I think they were amping up to talk about the super-effects chip, especially showing stuff like that flattening door because those were polygods or a polygod, maybe. But that showed off again, you don't need to buy a new system. This does more things than you think it can do.

Look at all this cool stuff. But they did it in cartoony ways and all and in gameplay. important ways. I'm glad everyone agrees with me because otherwise I'd shut this down and we would leave. But yeah, I mean, I agree with all of this. Yeah, Tyrant upon me. We're all on your side. This is my episode today. No. We presented our Yoshi ID at the door. He put us in. Yes. But I do agree with all this, but I really see, especially considering this game probably started development or did start, did start true development in 1992. This is definitely a sonic, anti-sonic game, a reaction

to Sonic, I think almost specifically where Sonic was flashy, Sonic was colorful, Sonic had a lot of gimmicks to it and Nintendo could not release a fall-up to Super Mario World that looked like Super Mario World. They needed to bring the Flash. And by 1995, Sonic was sort of about to hit his flatline period where I believe 96 was Sonic 3D Blast. Go back to our Cancel Games episode,

you will hear about the nightmare development of Sonic Extreme where there were like nine different versions of it all taking place in different kinds of gameplay. It's just, yeah, Nintendo did not know this is going to be happening to Sonic, but this is sort of like their reaction to Sonic, I feel, and a lot of ways. Yeah, one thing that hit me in like my third play-through-the-game in just a few years ago was realizing, oh, the mechanic of dropping the baby and having the recharging thing

that technically Yoshi can live forever. There are insta-death moments in the game, mostly he can take a lot of hits. The dropping of the baby is the same as losing rings in Sonic gameplay-wise, yeah. Yeah, and having a recharging time. that will recharge up to 10 feels even more of a better, like even a better idea than the Sonic thing. It's like you can at least, it's sort of like the idea that Halo brought to all of gaming where it's like you will have recharging health no matter what. You just, we will give you this much to play with at all times.

Yeah, it's not about avoiding mistakes entirely. It's about avoiding a density of mistakes. Right, right. So I do want to talk about the, uh, what powers all of this, the Super FX2 chip, not the super FX chip. That's a whole different chip. I'm sure it's very similar though. Uh, so this only powers four other games.

one of them is very inexplicable to me. Winter games, which I've never played. That's one of the Super Nintendo games at Powers. Doom, the bad, but still admirable port of Doom for the SNES. Getting Doom on SNES is that it should be applauded. I did play that port, and I think you play Doom in about 60% of the screen when you're playing

it. And also the soon to be released, and probably released at the time of this, you're hearing this, Star Fox 2. So those were all games that were powered by the Superfect's 2 chip. We can talk a bit about this. I feel like this is the reason why they never bothered to re-release these games until now

is because of just the time and money equation. We know it's not a patent issue. We know it's not anything involving rights or anything like that. It was just like, that would be one more thing for them to figure out, even though the documentation has been online forever, even though teenagers figured it out and made their S-NES emulators and they work fine. That would be a cost that Nintendo might not be able to recoup, just making that one-est. extra bit of functionality for an emulator. And that is my belief. I don't think it goes any deeper than

that. I don't know if anyone disagrees with me on that. I guess. I mean, that's, that's the only thing that would really make sense if it's not, if we know it's not a patent issue. Yeah, I believe Dylan Cuthbert said as much, right? He said he was unaware of anything. Okay. So, I mean, that's probably it, but it's not a very good, it's very easy to argue that down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, at some point, that's probably the rationale. It's just not a very good rationale. Yeah, I agree. It's, I mean, you can see that as. being a possible rationale, Gary, and I agree it's not a good rationale.

To keep this game buried in time for 22 years, yes, I know there was a GBA port and like a million people probably played it, but still, this version of this game, with over 12, like almost 12 years of virtual console to date, it was never released in any form on that service. And they used the Superfx chip in so many novel ways. I mean, that was the main point of that promotional thing,

but they really... Morphamation, bro. It did make for a gooier, more animated and, like, it's just a better world. And all this shaping and scaling stuff, I love the early use of the giant chain shop in the background that then comes into the foreground and just takes a huge chunk out of the screen. You're like, well, there's nothing, I've never seen something that big in a Mario game before, and just the foreground and background use like that, too. It actually takes place right around the same time you get the giant bullet bill in Super Mario world, like in your thing.

So I feel like it's echoing that kind of on purpose. It also gives you a teaser of the final battle with Bowser, which has the distance. So at the very beginning of the game, you're getting this tiny little vortaste of what you're going to be dealing with like 50 levels later. That's such an Nintendo thing of like, we showed you the trick we're going to do at the end of the game now. You'll forget about it, though. But yeah, the thing that I really like about Yoshi's Island's use of this advanced technology for the system is that it's different than what everyone else was doing with a Super FX chip. Everyone saw the Super FX and it was like Star Fox. We're going to do that.

We're going to make some triangles fly around and sort of an abstract mess. Yeah. And Yoshi's Island did not do that. It said we're going to create the opposite of abstract triangles. We're going to create very hand-drawn looking, thick, detailed, two-dimensional. two-dimensional art and we're going to use very seamless effects within that

2D space to like enhance the sense that this is hand drawn and like living animation. So the most important thing, of course, the Ochie's Island is the story. And so the beginning of Yoshi's Island, when you turn it on, it's like a, it's like a hideous preview of what could have been. I love that. Yeah. I'm going, like, if you wanted this to be Donkey Kong country, here's what we could have made it look like.

Just be happy we didn't. Happy jackals. So the story makes no sense, and I like how it makes no sense. So this is a prequel to the original Super Mario Brothers. So Kamik, who is formerly called Magicupa, tries to steal baby Mario and baby Luigi from a stork who are being delivered to their parents. Of course, that's how babies are made. But Kamak tries to steal both of them and only nabs Luigi and Mario falls to the earth.

And there's no established reason for him to want to steal these babies. I don't know if that's just implied. It's a prophecy. Yeah. Like, why not? There's a prophecy. I don't know. I believe it's a prophetic or like these are the special twins.

Have you read Mushroom Kingdom Historia? They go into it. I got into some online arguments that really hashed it out. Yeah, to this point, the Mario mythology, if there was one, was pretty much like these were Brooklyn dudes who then went through pipes to go to the Mushroom Kingdom and defend the Mushroom Kingdom, but they weren't Mushroom Kingdom citizens and they weren't born there. And, like, even in Mario mythology, which, again, there isn't really one.

They don't care if you ask Miyamoto, like, hey, why is this happening? He just goes, who cares? Yeah, he shut up. But just a year before this game, in the end of Donkey Kong 94, they create a bridge of when you beat Donkey Kong at the end of that game, you fall into the Mushroom Kingdom. And then the Mushroom Kingdom story begins. Oh, I forgot about that. So, and that was a Miyamoto made game. so it's as canon as anything else, you could say,

but they already were throwing it out for this game. And I'll also say with the story, the end of it is they both get dropped off to their parents. Yeah. And then in Yoshi's New York, no, Yoshi's New Island. It's Yoshi's Island. D.S. isn't it? Yeah.

In that game, they then established the stork dropped them off to the wrong parents. They're going to have to drop off to their real parents again. So those aren't their parents in that game. It's like baby Quantum Leap or something. I remember... Oh, boy. So, Yoshi's Island... Mario Luigi, years of therapy.

Sorry. Yoshi's Island DS only exists to retcon Mario and Luigi being delivered to a mushroom house at the end of Yoshi's Island 1. Well, when you beat new Yoshis Island, they just get delivered to a different mushroom house. It's just to say... I played all the way through that,

and I do not remember any of the story of that game. Yeah. I care so much about the Mario World mythology. I guess the babies must end up at their home at some point for them to be, you know, taken in a time travel storyline and partners in time for Martin Luigi. And at some point

they have to go racing also. Yeah. Yeah, and coexist with adult versions of themselves. Play tennis pretty well. Yeah, and also this game establishes that Mario and Luigi are suddenly twins. They're not an older and younger brother. Like, I always assume that I can't be making this up. Mario was established to be the older brother,

right? You think of the movie? I think of just like the media and like the Mario Mania guy. Luigi always calls him Big Bro. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So big bro by like 20 seconds. Yeah, it could be that thing you see with all twins. Like, I was bored first, five minutes earlier, or whatever.

So, but I think that's just, that just kind of translated into Luigi just being the beta to Mario's alpha in the relationship. Beta male. I don't, I'm not going to go down this road. It's facetious, everybody. Don't worry. So more of this I picked up by playing it again over the last week. I see a little more of Sonic in this game than I've. seen in any other Mario game, including just like how Yoshi moves is a very interesting thing. Yoshi is slow to start. He's got a lot of heft and momentum to him. But then he breaks into a

run after a few seconds. You don't have to push a run button. And it's really important that you don't have to push a run button because if you did, you would interrupt your movement with a tongue attack. That's a great idea. That's a great design decision. There's no run button in the game. And that feels a lot like Sonic the Hedgehog. I like building up the momentum with him. I didn't even, when I first played it, I did not miss the run button of Mario's I never, I don't think I ever thought, oh, where's the run button? I should just hold down X.

Yeah. And I play Mario, Mario, I always just want to walk. How dare they take that right away from me? And they didn't retain that idea. I think in every... Bring it back. The run button is later entries and it doesn't feel right. You're never not holding the run button.

Whenever I'm playing Mario with someone who's not using the run button, I'm like, what are you doing? Who taught you how to play video games? Nobody, apparently, because you're playing them wrong. Were you dropped off of the wrong house as a baby? So, and also in Common with Sonic, levels feel a little Sonic-like more than like Mario World or Mario 3

they're very large and dense some have multiple pathways we'll get into more about the level design later but that's another Sonic comparison I found I think they were a bit intimidated by just the sheer size of Sonic levels and that's what brought people back to Sonic to explore those levels. It's like a good

iteration of that though because there's a reason to explore. Yeah I see I mean I guess I kind of get what you're saying in the sense of like these are very large levels. Sometimes they have multiple paths. But I feel like Sonic is not really meant, you're not really meant to see an entire level in one go. Whereas in Yoshi's Island, it really is about like poke into every corner and see every space. These are much more like an opportunity to be thorough as opposed to, you know, whatever you're supposed to do in Sonic. I want to say you're

just going fast. No, I agree. You got to go something. I don't know. I agree. The intent and the philosophy is different, but they were like this, if you look at Sonic, if you look at things like, again, Disney's Aladdin, those are big, dense levels. And I feel like this is the standard now they were thinking. We can't have the short Mario World Mario 3 levels.

We need big levels for people because that's what people want from a platformer. And you have to keep going up and you also will have to like find separate rooms to get keys and then open doors and then go to another key. And like, I feel like there were even a couple of fortresses that had like elite, more

than two halfway point or the charging thing and just the midpoint. Yeah, the levels, I would say, are between five to six times larger than anything you would see in Mario World. They're huge. The levels in this game are really, really big. And they're not meant to be played like a Mario World or Mario 3 level. They're meant to be explored. And that's why Yoshi moves a lot slower.

That's why the levels are a lot denser. And it's not just a clear path to the end. You're meant to, like, go up, go down, look around the levels, look for hidden things and stuff like that. Yeah, the most daunting one of those, for me, was, it was one of that first helicopter transformations. And it's just a massive giant map. I'm like, no, I have to find every red coin. Like, okay, I went all the way through this section to the right. Now I'm going to zip back to the helicopter thing.

And, okay, recharge an helicopter. Now I'm going to go all the way to the upper left and check all these places. Yeah, there's a lot to find in this game. And if you want to get the top score, you need to explore every corner. Before we take our break, though, I want to get into more about the controls of Yoshi, and Gary brought up a very interesting Mario 2 analogy, and I totally buy it because this game is all about projectile attacks. And this is, it feels like it could overcomplicate things, but it really doesn't. Basically, you eat enemies, you hit down to make an egg, and you can have up the six eggs trailing behind you, and then you throw them using a reticle. And I'm a hasty guy myself.

I don't know about you guys. Hastie is the control scheme to go with. You'd hold the button in and you'd release it when the reticle is lined up to where you want to go. Nintendo could have easily had you control the reticle or control the speed or something, but they left that automatic, which I think was a really interesting choice. That could have overcomplicated this system too much, I think. Yeah, I guess it was a hasty guy, too, I think. They give you the option to freeze it, too.

So you can get that precision. Oh, okay. I know you can freeze it up. I didn't know you could freeze it anywhere. You can lock it into place anywhere. Wow, wow. I've been playing the wrong way. I'm sure I knew that at some point with this play-through, I were just like, no, fast, fast eggs,

Fast eggs. I think that's the main kind of mechanical complexity of this game. So there's a lot of these little tricks which we talked about, which are great. The actual platforming itself, this is not as precise, even of a game I don't like, right? The platforming is not as precise as like Donkey Kong too, which a game I don't care for. But like it's not, you know, that's really precise, pure platforming. This isn't really that. Like a lot of times you're not going to barely make jumps.

You're not going to have to consider that. Right. The depth comes from this egg throwing mechanic and the kind of, you know, reflections and refraction angles and things to get secrets. The way they build that into not just your offensive vocabulary, but into exploration. Yeah, and it's not just, I mean, this could have been a very basic game where you're just like, oh, eggs are just like the bullets you throw. Yeah.

But no, and I feel like a lot of the FX2 chip is doing like math to track where the egg will go when it ricochets off things. Because I have not seen anything like that in another S&S game. I mean, when you kick a shell in Mario, it goes in a straight line or it drops down. It doesn't like bounce off of the walls at different angles and stuff like that. And they teach you really early with just the arrows in the stage of, hey, there's a thing that seemingly you can't get to. Maybe shoot an egg at that arrow. Yeah.

Look with that. Look what happened. You got that flower. If you look at the previous Mario games for Mario World, I feel like in that game, more than Mario 3, they were playing with the idea of Mario holding stuff, Mario carrying stuff, like keys and bricks and blocks, and using shells and bringing it to the end of the level to do something with it.

A lot of that involved just toying with the idea of having something to hold on to and to use. In this game, they really take that to its logical conclusion where Yoshi has things to hold and throw and use like keys, but that does not erase any verbs in his vocabulary.

Like, they just follow behind him. If you're Mario and you're carrying a key, that's all you can do, that run and jump. But Yoshi can have a key trailing behind him, and he can just do everything he does normally.

And they can play with that idea a lot more. And a lot of these fortresses and dungeons, they feel like Legend of Zelda dungeons, but from a 2D perspective, with just how dense they are, how many doors there are, how many lock doors there are. It's very, very interesting. You mentioned, Henry, the use of arrows to kind of give you hints.

Do you feel like that speaks to a compromise in game design where they have to say conspicuously, like, look here, here's a thing, do this. Like, you know, with web design, if you say like something, something click here, then you've kind of failed as, you know, writing and hyperlinking. I don't want to say they had fewer arrow. I think they definitely had fewer arrows the further you got into the game. I think they trusted you more to do it. And multiple boss fights depend on you knowing to ricochet and shoot it a different direction.

Yeah, that's for sure. I think that's more of just a beginning thing of like, look, we'll give you this one for free. We have to assume you're a child playing this. So you might not even read the text boxes that are going to come out of the cute little text box block. Yeah. And this game has a tutorial stage, huh? Now that I think about it. It's very, very brief.

Yeah. It's basically like, welcome to Yoshi's Island or whatever. And you don't have to actually do anything in that tutorial stage. You can just sort of like go to the end of it. But yeah, I feel like after you get past the basic first stages, I feel like the arrows are just showing you like, there is another route here. You're like, you have to find it.

They're just kind of calling your attention. There's something up here somewhere. And I kind of like that idea. I don't, they probably could have, like, I don't know, I done that in a more subtle way, but I like that these levels are so big. It's nice that they're, like, showing you, like, there's something up there.

You might not find it. You might not have what you need to find it, but you should look up there anyways. There might be an invisible block, floating block that will have the fourth flower you haven't found in this stage. But you might have to shoot through every single thing in this area to find it, though. There's something to, because the game, it's not like the game doesn't engage in that kind of, you know, discovery-based game design and tutorializing, right? Like, there are definitely moments where you're going to shoot it. egg and it's going to have an unexpected effect. I think that one of the early ones, it tells you to shoot an arrow or shoot an egg at an object and then on the way there it collects

all the coins. So you're trying to get the object, but it's also teaching you something indirectly as well. Some of those things remind me of Donkey Kong country, actually, where you fire the egg into a thing and it just collects everything. Yeah, the eggs also collects coins and the daisies you find and things like that. Some things are definitely just like, hey, do this. And some things are a little bit more elegant. And I think it really does come down to some of those elements not being super intuitive. Yeah. You know, like once you get it, you get it.

But it's not something that's going to come naturally, I think. The amount of things eggs can do, I'm just thinking about them. It's just like enemies react in certain ways when you attack them with eggs. You hit switches with them. You hit platforms with them. There's just so many things eggs can do. And there are different kinds of eggs. The egg council box.

Yes, I am. The incredible edible egg, although I don't know if Yoshi's eggs are edible. But they are. Yeah, I'm going to try one soon. But, yeah, like, there are different colored eggs. If you break those, you'll get different rewards. There are big eggs. You want to get every red coin, you're going to have to get some of those red eggs.

Oh, you're right. Yeah, and the flashing eggs, too. And at some point, you can steal the snowmen babies of sentient snowmen and throw those at enemies. It's so cruel. But, yeah, just like, they thought so above, you're just throwing eggs at things. They're like, these eggs are essential to almost everything you do in this game. And eating enemies was so central, too. Like, it felt like a waste if I ever jumped on a shy guy or another.

And he'd be like, I don't want to jump on him. I need to make him an egg. Or even if I was at full eggs, I need to eat this and spit it out because it'll do more damage that way than just jumping on it. Like, they still give you the option to just Mario-style jump on everything and make them explode. But when you jump on them, they die more in the way of when Yoshi jumps on people in the first Super Mario world. Yes. They explode, like poof. And when it comes to eating enemies, some you can just eat, some you have to eat from one side.

I mean, if you attack first, some, like the innocent baby penguins in the ice stages, you can't actually swallow them. You can only spit them out into things because Yoshi would never swallow a cute penguin like that. I love the look on Yoshi's face when he can't eat something. His tongue gets all waggly. It's great. Yes. So those were all of our Yoshi's egg facts. I think Jeremy might have something.

Yeah, I'm just looking ahead at, or not looking ahead, but looking at some maps of the game, some of the later stages. And it looks like arrows are kept in the game, but strictly. to point you in the direction that you're supposed to go, and they're almost, like, completely superfluous. Like, you'll get to the end of a section, and there's an arrow just basically saying, go to the next screen, which you don't even need. So, yeah, they stop using them in the later worlds

to give you hints and guidance and more. They're just like, hey, it's part of the scenery. Yeah, and actually, some of the screen transitions, you don't go into a pipe, you just hold right on the screen, and you just warp to the next area. So, yeah, I guess those are necessary in some areas. But, yes, those are all of our egg facts, folks.

Stay tuned after the break for more exciting Yoshi's Island stuff. Exciting. character didn't need to worry about car shopping, it would be Yoshi. Not only is Yoshi himself a vehicle of sorts, he can actually turn into a car, or a helicopter, or a weird digging mole tank thing. But you're not Yoshi, and you can't metamorphose into a cool dinosaur hot rod. Good thing there's True Car. True Car can connect you with a network of more than 13,000 dealers and give you a look at their actual inventory, more than 700,000 pre-owned vehicles. On top of that, once you register with True Car, you can get a look at actual numbers on what other people in your

local market have paid for their cars. That way, it's a cinch to see if the car you want is even available for purchase. Get a sense of its real market value and even read up on all the retailer incentives you have available. TrueCar will put you in touch with a local TrueCar certified dealer for a quick, easy buying experience. So far, True Car customers have saved an average of more than $3,000 off MSRP across more than 3 billion cars sold. So when you're ready to buy, visit TrueCar to enjoy a more confident car buying experience. Some features are not available in all states, including Dinosaur Island. Sorry, Yoshi. Hey, everybody. I'm Matt Perez. And I'm Satchel Drake's. Together we're hosting a new Forbes podcast called Overworld.

It's all about video games and the impact they have on art, culture, society, history, all that good stuff. It launches Tuesday, September 19th, and we'll post every Tuesday thereafter. So please subscribe at podcast.1.com, the new Podcast One app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you hear your shows. Do you want to save more money? Sure, we all do. And if you're a retronauts listener, Odds are you play a lot of video games. So if you want to save money and play even more video games, then you definitely need to hear about our new sponsor, Gamefly. Gamefly is the best way to buy and rent video games.

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This premium trial allows you to check out two games and or movies at a time. You can only get this offer by visiting gamefly.com slash retronauts. Now go and sign up and start playing all of your favorite games absolutely free for 30 days. That's gamefly.com slash retronauts. When is too much, too much? To find out we crammed everything into Super Mario World 2, Yoshi's Island. 60 more levels, massive enemies, huge Yoshi tricks.

All serves up with the latest graphic technology, Morph Nation. Hmm, I'm off. Sure you don't have room. another little bonus level? Uh-oh. Super Mario World 2, only on the Super NES. Still the big one. So we're back, and I want to talk about another element of Yoshi's Island, as this is a

platformer and a Mario platformer. There is jumping, but it is much different than jumping in a Mario game. Yoshi does jump in the air, of course, but his main ability, after that is a sort of variation on a double jump. He can sort of float upwards in this arc perpetually. It's not really a hover. It's sort of like a... Parabola.

Yeah, parabola. Like, you can't go straight across. It's more like gradually decreasing. It's still like a hover. Yeah, it's a little bit of a hover. It gives you more horizontal. It doesn't let you go further vertical like a double jump way. I think he learned that wiggly leg hover trick for Mama Luigi.

Am I? The immortal Mama Luigi. But I... I... Love the sound Yoshi makes. This is the only one. Yeah, this is the only one where he makes good sounds when he runs that.

Otherwise, he's like, ha. Yeah, his baby voice. There are no voice clips in this thing. We hear the immortal Yoshi sound. And so the jumping, yeah, it's a bit different

than it is in Mario. You don't get any power-ups that affect you're jumping in any way. But jumping is very important. And I feel like this is a very, I'm going to say, about the halfway point, this game starts getting very hard.

And I feel like that hover, that parabola, arc you can do is really just a way of allowing you to like fudge your way out of that situation. Like the princess float. Yeah. I love the extra oomph you get of

continuing afloat after bouncing off ahead of like a cupa. Oh, that feels good. You jump on a paratroopa and you get like almost double height on it. It just feels awesome. I'm like, yeah, I hit it. Boom, I'm flying.

It's a great feeling. You can chain them also. Yeah. Which is people use in all kinds of like ridiculous breaking and in speed runs and things like that. Like, if you're very good at it, you actually can gain a little bit of height. Yeah, yeah. You're not meant to, but you can.

Frame-perfect button hitting, I think, for that. That fluttery jump actually got referenced recently on the show, Stephen Universe. I just loved it. The character of Stivani, which is a Dragon Ball Z-type fusion of two other characters. During a fight, they realized that they could float. And when they do the float, they are doing the leg wiggle while they're doing it. And even the same sound effect, but, like, mm, like the extra effort for it.

That mechanic also showed up a couple of years later in Kloa, where you flapper ears. But, I mean, Klinoa, the first time I played it, I was like, oh, this game was inspired by Yoshi's Island. It's very mechanically similar. I can see that, for sure, yeah. So we also have the butt stomp, which Mario would later steal and use forever. This version is, this version, of course, though, was invented by Yoshi.

There's something kind of similar to this in the first Warioland game when you wear, like, the bull helmet. but it's a different, I mean, it does the same thing, but the one that we think of, we think of Yoshi's Island and Mario is like, there's a little freeze in the air and then you come falling down. It's a nice little, like emphasis of the impact that's going to hit. I like that idea. And the stopping on a dime is really important because it dovetails really well with the float. Yeah. So you can kind of slow down your movement, position yourself perfectly, and you can stop on a dime for where you need to land, which is almost...

Stomp on a dime. Yeah, take that dime. Because Yoshi can't stop on a dime, actually. If you want to change directions, it takes them a little. little bit to get moving in that direction. There's a nice little animation for that. It gives you that precision. And to add on to a point I said earlier, one of the things I like about it is the critical path almost never requires that much precision. You do the good thing of taking the kind of platform mastery and putting in those optional areas and putting it finding certain

secrets. So it's very useful for that. And it's always going to be a useful tool. But it does have that kind of player-controlled difficulty. Like it's up to you how much you want to take from it. I like that early way they teach you of it of. Here is a chunk of ground that's sticking out of it. Like, do you want to keep smashing it until it goes down to the bottom? Oh, hey, look, there was a thing there. And so then it's in your head the entire rest of the game. Like, if I ever see a, basically a nail sticking out of the ground, I have to smash it down.

When you're Yoshi, everything looks like a nail. Any post, you have to take the time to, like, butt-stomp all the posts. Yeah. And it was officially, I believe it officially was the butt-stop. Nintendo of America's sanitize. that soon enough. And sometimes it's been just called pound the ground. They say pound the ground in the text of Yoshi's Island as well. And in all future, now it is just officially the ground pound. When they escaped the Play It Loud era, they had to avoid using the word

butts. Yeah. I guess maybe they worry like, well, what if little Jimmy hears about stopping butts and then you stop someone's butt? We don't understand for it. There's a continuum from ass smash to pound the ground. As smash. Oh, wow. So baby Mario, of course. I think we neglected to mention Mario a whole lot in this episode, but he is the main health mechanic in Yoshi's Island. So once you get hit, as Yoshi, Mario will fly off in a bubble and start wailing horribly, and your star counter ticks down.

You can collect up to 30 stars, or sorry, it will always be a 10. You can always have a count up to 10. But you can collect 20 more stars after that to get 30 total stars. If you want the perfect score, you've got to have 30 stars. Yeah. So you have to find 20 stars throughout the level and then never lose. Keep them Mario. And there is a certain amount of grace in each stage.

Like, if you take a hit early in the stage, then there's a pretty good chance you can replenish your stars. Like, there are certain things you can do. Anytime you go through the mid-stage ring, any enemy that's on screen will turn into a star. Or multiple stars, actually. And it'll give you 10 seconds as well. And you get items. There are items that can replenish it. So if you're ever in a tough spot, you can go into a menu for a Super Mario Worldesque.

I love eating those little star guys. Instead of just running into them and getting them, I much prefer just eating them. I will assume you, sorry, man. Yeah, and we should talk about, like, some people really don't like the Mario crying sound. My opinion is the strange opinion. It's bad on purpose, where it's like a baby crying,

like in terms of humans, I think it's meant to immediately alert your lizard brain, like something is wrong. A baby crying is designed by nature to tell your brain, like, hey, look over there. Yeah, it's meant to give you the sensation that, oh, something's bad. And it sure beats, you know, the legend of Zelda where if you run to like half a heart, you're, dee, dee, dee, that gets really annoying.

Actually, with Yoshi's Island, you get a little beep, beep, beep, beep, and the baby crying, too. You get an arrow, too, if you're too far away from it, just to know where he is. But it can only last for a few seconds because then the little dude swoop. Right, that's really the difference. Because if you're playing, you know, Metroid or Zelda and you're in alarm mode, you could spend a lot of a dungeon in alarm mode. Yeah. Here, it is a fire to be put out, and you're not going to. survive if you don't stop that noise.

It's a great little spike in the pacing when it happens, and it will happen to you unless you're super good, because I find this game is pretty slow pace. It's very pokey. You're exploring. You move slow. But when Mario is captured, you're like, oh, shit, I have to get him back. And you're just flicking your tongue out and throwing eggs and just, like, a real spike in the pacing that lasts for maybe 10 seconds.

And I like, I like, I like, let me know in the comments. Like, what does the crying do to your brain? Does it set it on fire? It seems like a lot of people can't get past that. Like, they can't get past the timer in Majora's Mass. It's like the one stumbling block that makes them not able to play this game. So collecting is a huge game changer in this game, and it will go on to influence all the Mario games after this. As we talked about with Tezica's intents, he wanted every level to be very replayable,

and he wanted players to approach it based on their own intent. Like, I just want to finish this level, or I want to get everything in this level. And we'll talk about all the things you can collect. So one thing that would go on to be in every Mario game, Red Coins. Thankfully, they would be reduced to eight in each stage in future games. In Yoshi's Island, there are 20 red coins in each stage. And if you're-20 is a lot. There are a lot of them, yeah.

It's 20 a lot, but they're not in 20 different locations. They almost are always found in clutches. They're usually clustered together. And if you're paying attention, the Red Coins have a slight tint to them. There's a slight tel graphically that might be harder to see on a CRT TV, but I could see it. No, you can see it. Okay, yeah. I remember being able to see it back in the day when I was playing this,

Like, I need to get that coin. There's also these smiling daisy faces. There's five in each stage. And as you continue playing the game, they become more and more hidden. They're usually found in secret areas or you have to find your way into a corner and a little floating cloud will appear and you throw an egg at the cloud. Yeah, these are sort of the more deviously hidden things. Some kind of trivia about those. If you look at the deleted stuff from this game, it's pretty likely these used to be dragon coins.

Oh, okay. Yeah. They make a coin sound when you pick them up as they are. are now. And in the files, there is a redrawn, not the same dragon coin from Super Mario World, but a new one with a new style. I like the daisies, because they can, they also show up as enemies where it's like there's a daisy, but it's grimacing at you and it falls down. Yeah, it's a mimic, yeah. This is the Dark Souls of Mario games. Yeah. I beat you to it. I beat you too and Gary. Get out. I'm controlling the show. Everything is a Dark Souls reference. And then we talked

about the stars, of course, getting, you know, this is a gauge. So the red coins and the daisies are a gauge of your skill at exploring and the stars are a gauge of your skill at performance. And you want to make it out of a stage with 30 of the stars. And your award for getting 100% on every stage in the world is an extra

stage that is really hard. After I unlock two of these, I was like, I'm unlocking stages I can't finish. I don't want to do this anymore. These are really, really hard stages. Well, they knew they were for super players as Nintendo would say. It wasn't just the

I only ever got the ones in the first world. Like, I couldn't get it. I think everyone gets the ones in the first world and is like, wow, these are hard. I don't ever want to have to redo this again. Yeah, I should play a new game now. I think I've got all the fun. I'm going to get out of Yosh's Island no more. The first bonus stage is a poochy stage, which is super hard.

It's introducing you to the idea like this is your punishment for doing well at Ocean's Island. Sorry, Gary. I like this articulation of it, though, in comparison to Super Mario World with the, you know, the, you know, nautical and fabulous, not nautical, you know, radical, those, those stages, the challenge, star world. Yeah. Which is, they kind of save those up for the end. And that's something that you do to kind of get 100% completion.

Yeah. So then you get the weirdo sprites. Here, it is, you're getting the reward as you go. So if you want, it's not just saving everything up until the end, like you can kind of pace them, you know. Yeah. So if that is something you engage with, which like I did when I was younger, I think I, 100% of this. I didn't when I was older. But if it is something

you engage with, you're getting a little bit of it at a time rather than just saving it all up for the end. Yeah, not like one shotgun blast of extra hard stages. It's like it's one you can concentrate on if you want to, not hate, you can sort of poke at. And you can always go back to it. Like since it's not linear, it's kind of nice. And the, the, the Star Road and the special world in Super Mario World kind of works the same way

in that you can sort of unlock notches of it as you go along or nodes of it. But not the, I mean, I could be misremembering, right? Like, I know you can do the Star World that way, but can you get the tubular and the like, gradually? I thought that was after you do. You do one at

a time. It's a special, like, set of levels. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I could be misremembered. Yeah. I really like the school motif, too, of your scoring, like it scores on a shock time. Also, like, football. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, with, like, whistles and everything. Yeah, fight song

though. In this game, there's no football player with baseballs. The baseball players throw baseball. Yeah, there's a bunch of baseball players too. But when you can see the When you get a 100 on a stage and you see the chalk 100 on the flip side of the screen, it goes like, or then once you've done the 100, it flips over like, 100, eh, you got it. It really rewards you visually even with that, with that. It's a nice treat.

So there are not as many levels in this game as are in Mario World, but there's actually more level content, I would say. So there's six worlds, eight stages in each world, and two of these stages in each world are fortress levels, which are very great and very puzzle-oriented, very maze-oriented. Again, like I said earlier, I would say even conservatively, these are four to five times longer than a Super Mario World level. But I'm thinking now there might be like six to seven times longer just with how long they stretch. I feel like one segment of a stage before you go into a pipe or to the edge of the screen to go to the next same minute is like sort of a Super Mario World level size chunk. Real estate-wise, you know, real estate-wise, probably not.

But because you move more slowly in this game. That makes it feel longer too, yeah. But maybe four to five is right. But they will take you a long time because with Mario, when you're playing a Mario 3 or Mario World, you are sort of running it like a Olympic event. You never stop running. You're jumping over things. There's a bit of exploration, but they're built to sort of just like never stop running, never let go of that button.

It's a continuum, right? Because Super Mario Bros. 3 focuses on that, I feel like much more. Like, Super Mario Brothers 3 levels are shorter than Mario World levels. Yeah. Mario World levels are shorter than these. Yeah, for sure. And in that promotional thing, they say there's 60 levels, which is technically true if you unlock the two bonuses for all six worlds. I neglected them count those in my count because I never played.

You shouldn't. Like, that is a cheat. If I was a kid, to be like, all right, 60 levels. And I only had, you know, 8, 40, whatever. Sorry, you got to earn it. You got to earn it. And as we mentioned before, just so, so much for. variety in all of these levels. Ideas are rarely used more than once, and if they are, there's a

variation on them. One of the things I can think of is there is the section with the falling, so the chain shops are in the background. They look very small. You start walking, a giant one falls and just destroys the ground in front of you. That happens again, but once you get done with that section, suddenly a giant one starts chasing you from the other side of the screen, and you do not expect that at all to happen. So they are very, they do not want to reuse ideas, but when they do, there's just like, what's the spin on this idea? How can we surprise you? and that is sort of like, yeah, we saw that in Mario 3, Mario World, Mario Galaxy. We didn't see that in Super Mario Sunshine, unfortunately.

But, yeah, that was like their philosophy with these kind of games. Like, we want to be conservative with our ideas and put them out there once so they stand out more and are more important. And I can think of a lot of moments in this game that stand out. I mean, can you guys think of any levels in particular that really speak to you? It articulates really strongly here because even though that's been something they've done for most of the series, Like, you know, that is evident in those other entries. There's such a big toolbox here of just kind of things to add. So they can combine them in very interesting ways.

Yeah. And the variations aren't quite as subtle, right? Like you can look at two Super Mario World Levels or Super Mario Brothers 3, you know, specifically or one levels and be like, okay, this is the kind of the idea here. This is a lot of verticality. So things like that that kind of differentiate those levels. Here there are stronger differences because there are kind of more gimmicks. So just having more tools allows them to kind of,

come up with more combinations like more Legos in the box. Yeah, like there are certain kind of platforms that only exist in like one stage. It's amazing and just like that's our idea for the stage and we're not going to use it again and they had a lot of self-control. They could have easily made this game

just a rotation of similar ideas. I mean, I would not expect them to but another developer could have done that. I think obviously my favorite is touch fuzzy get dizzy is so fun and creative and I also just like the basically a fart that Yoshi does if he eats of, if he

like, oh, no, no, that's when he like swallows one of those ghosts, the invisible ones, he just kind of farts out stuff. He can't eat. No egg appears. I kind of wonder, and we have to talk about this every time I talk about Yosh's Island. I kind of have to wonder how nobody at Nintendo raised an eyebrow to the, the fuzzy

dizzy concept, because look at Yoshi's eyes, everybody. They're giant, they're red. I mean, everyone, the stupidest joke is just like, yeah, Mario eats a magic mushroom, der. But I feel like, yes, this is a joke about psychedelic drugs. Like a little joke for the kids about LSD or whatever or real magic mushrooms. You have to keep in mind that narcotics are very uncommon in Japan.

Right, right. People don't use them. You just don't see that like they're super illegal. Yes, I'm not saying Tezico was like tripping balls in the office. No, no, no. I feel like it doesn't have the same stigma that it is here because you don't have kids getting addicted to meth because of their mothers. Because it's so rare. But I meant like for America. You know, I'm surprised that it didn't raise. an eyebrow because, of course, there's a Mario, sorry, there's a Wario land game where one of his power is being drunk. And it's just like, no, that's

silly Wario. He drank too much juice, and now he's got a tum-tum egg. Well, alcohol is different in America, too. But yeah, it is interesting. I think it kind of came, I always assumed it came through in like the Alice in Wonderland loophole of just like, Allison Wonderland is

absolutely about psychedelics and narcotics and all that. But it's like, no, you're in Wonderland. You take a pill. And then You change and you do, and you hallucinate things. And so it's just a natural hallucination in the world of Yoshi's Island, just the same as an eat, drink-me-drink in the world of Alice in Wonderland. I mean, I think Miyamoto has said multiple times he was influenced by Alice in Wonderland when thinking of the magical world of the mushroom kingdom. Yeah, I mean, I don't think Tezzeca was taking psychedelics, but Lewis Carroll was definitely chugging laudanum while writing those books.

It's just like, yeah, it's more heroin wine, yummy. So you ask which stages stick out to us? For me, I would have to say, I don't remember the name, but the stage with the monkeys and the watermelons. I love that you have these characters that aren't really dangerous to you. They're like a nuisance, and you can't kill them. You can't stun the monkeys. Monkeys by...

Knock them out. Yeah, but they'll do the same thing as you. They'll eat watermelon and then spit the seeds at you, but then you can eat the watermelon and spit the seeds back of them. So it becomes like this kind of like very lighthearted shooter sort of thing. Yeah, there's just like clusters of monkeys everywhere. And some of them are dropping bombs on you. Yeah, and it's also interesting because that level represents sort of a change up in the pace

of the game. You know, you've been through these very convoluted, multi-tiered stages. And then that one's much more like of a linear stage. and the sort of complexity comes in the fact that there's trees and there's monkeys in the trees and you're kind of sort of making your way, not through a minefield, really, but a monkey field. Yeah, like a monkey field. But it is kind of like a war field.

And, yeah, it's just very memorable. It really stands out. It really feels like the kind of classic Japanese storytelling of the tricky monkeys that are messing with you on your way, on your mission. and that they're just such jerks and then you're like, oh, well, I got a watermelon two now, guys. I'm going to spit seeds of you. That monkey will steal your hat in the next Mario game, so watch out for him.

Yeah, one of the ones I can think of offhand that I always remember is a fortress that reminds me of like a Zelda dungeon because the boss is behind four different locked doors and you basically need to get four keys by going to four different rooms and completing four different challenges. Like, that is definitely like a Zelda dungeon in Yoshi format.

I really like that dungeon a lot. Yeah, yeah, that was a cool stage. Yeah. Jeremy stole my answer. Sorry about that. Oh, it's dark Jeremy. That's a shadow the hedgehog variance. Shadow Jeremy. Dark Jeremy's here.

But one of the things I love about the monkeys, the watermelon thing, though, and we touch on this a little bit, but just how many ways, offensive ways you have, because they didn't take away the jump. You can swallow enemies, you can throw eggs at them, and you can get these watermelons. And they don't just show up in the monkey level. Like, they show up elsewhere as well. So you just have so many different kind of neat things you can do.

Well, you can't swallow an enemy while you have watermelons. But you can still carry eggs and throw them. Yes, and jump on enemies. So it replaces one of your verbs, but you have so many backups. And there's normal watermelon, then fire and ice. Freezing, yeah, freezing watermelons. Those are cool. Enemies just shatter pieces.

It's very disturbing. They definitely die. So, yeah, let's talk about enemies. I'm going to say, I don't think this is a crazy statement. I think this has the most diverse cast of enemies in any 2D Mario game. I mean, Mario 3 Mario World have a huge. Jurae of enemies, but this game I feel like beats them. And they don't put

out the normal Mario enemies up front. Like, gumbas appear like in one stage that I remember. Kupa show up way later, but they lead with shy guys. There's some piranha plants, but like all the returning enemies have these new flourishes. The one thing I really like is the Kupa paratroopers.

They have these big, billowy wings that are just like they're flapping really gently in the breeze. And when you jump on them, feathers fly everywhere. It's really cool. Like, they want to dress up the normal Mario enemies, but also make variance on them with the technology they're using for the game. I love the new sound effects they give some of the familiar enemies, like the piranha plans. Let me do that.

And how their heads rotate? Yeah. And how good are the stilts shy guys? Those guys, yeah, they get their own level called shy guys on stilts. Yeah. And also the flower with a rotating hand And you just kind of eat his head To get more eggs

Oh yeah, that guy And also speaking to Super Mario too There's a really cool moments Where there's just as a way To fill up your eggs You go to a pipe They'll constantly be spitting out shy guys But you can go into those pipes

And then they're basically like being inside of a vise Yeah, Mario too And there's these little flowers that constantly shoot out eggs too if you need to refill Like they give you a lot There are some challenges where Like we're not going to give you a lot of eggs You have to find them to do things.

Most of the time, there's a lot of opportunities to get eggs so you're not screwed or have to backtrack a lot of waste time. Yeah, you have the egg block, you have the egg flour, you have the constantly coming up shy guys to be eaten and killed immediately. Like, what a life of those guys live. Born only to be eaten immediately. And I can't remember there's some kind of enemy that can, like, catch your eggs and throw them back. Those are the baseball guys. Okay, yeah, yeah. I love when they introduce those because you're like, basically, you know, you've got this power that can destroy anything.

And then all of a sudden that gets turned against you and you're like, whoa, wait, what? Yeah, yeah, it's really good. And some enemies will just steal Mario from you and run away. They're not interested in attacking you. We're still your eggs. Yeah, the little bandit mice, steal your eggs, and the bigger bandits will just grab Mario.

I love them. When you see their little eyes in the mice holes. Oh, no, they're coming from me. Get away from me, jerk. Yeah, it's also like, I mean, this is moving on, but I think it's pretty arguable that this might be the best group of bosses. Oh, yeah. Not just in 2D Mario, but maybe in Mario.

We could talk about the bosses for sure, Gary. I feel like what the greatest thing about this is, I feel like they're calling attention to the Super FX2 chip where it's like you enter the boss domain and it's a normal enemy, but then Comac sprinkles basically Super FX2 magic on them. And then they turn, they always get gigantic, but all of their mechanics rely on the technology. And some could have been done on the SNES without the chip, but most couldn't for sure. Now, when Konami did this with Castlevania Harmony of Disnance, everyone complained. But these are so much better. I love all the bosses because they're so, they're so cute and weird and special. Like, I love the one who, I think it's one of the first ones you ever fight is just you, it's so simple you shoot eggs at him, but you make his pants fall down until he is nude.

Isn't that bashful burt? Yeah, it's bashful bert. And then he berted the bashful. And then he just, you don't even kill him. He's just like, I'm so bashful I die. Yeah. He turns embarrassed. Shrieking violet.

One of the bosses is a ghost coming out of a flower pot. You just push the pot to the edge of the ledge and that's how you beat him. They're all pretty easy. They're just really cool concepts. Like the blob one where you have to get to his heart that has the little band-aid. Sluggy the unshaving. Sluggy is unshaven. Well, you have to keep like shooting at him to get like, I got to get close to this heart.

Oh, I'm almost that eggs. Oh, I got it. And then he's called the unshavened. because there's like five straight hair sticking out of his head. The giant cupa is really just a test like how fast can you throw eggs precisely.

Accurately. Yeah. So it's like you have to throw it three times as he falls backwards and then you can stomp on him. Which would be like the thwomps castle thing is the same deal in

Super Mario's 64. Yeah. And of course Raphael the Raven I think everybody's on a call attention to that. That's the greatest. And we got to talk about where you get swallowed into the prano, which is not that cool mechanically.

Oh, it's a frog. Or a frog. Yeah. I feel bad for that frog. It's why I remember. But it's such a cool. It's such a cool theme, right? That's so, I was like, oh, this is a different way to do it rather than, because that's when Yoshi gets shrunk down.

That's right. The magic effects of Yoshi and you think like, all right, time to fight a big frog. And then they actually draw a whole new sprite for Yoshi, like looking at the, looking at the player. I'm almost like, what the fuck is this the first game with uvula abuse? I don't think so. It couldn't possibly be. Yes. Bob, I know you feel bad for that frog, but like he did eat Yoshi.

Hey, he's just doing his job. Well, Yoshi's got to live. He's got a faded mission that Yellow Yoshi does. That's true. And I rewatch that boss fight and you are pooped out at the end. Yeah, you go at the butt. You go out the butt.

Yeah, that's a really great arena though because it just all like undulates as you move around. Yeah, and gets smaller. Like as you, yeah. He's constantly eating shy guys after he eats you. It's really weird. He's the guy from the commercial. And then he's like pulling at the sides of the stomach and kind of reminds me of been the classic Daffy Duck cartoon Duckamuck

where he's fighting the blackness around him to keep it up. It kind of reminds me that fluidness. But, yeah, Raphael the Raven is the best. He's my favorite. It's kind of on like a little print style planet. Oh, definitely. I can see the reference.

And it's such a, like the birds in this game, the little blackbirds have such a cute design anyway. They're like this little blob with a little white eyes. I like the seagulls too. Like they have the big billow wings too like no legs like those have wings and no legs while raff has a legs but no wings and that in that stage you're introduced to the idea of ravens that run around little spheres but then this one is a big bigger sphere and the the I like that it waits for you to figure out

like remember how you get butts off the ground and make the thing go down I think you mean ground pound yeah sorry ass smash yeah super ass smash brothers yeah Raff is a best. And it ends with this, I think, too, with a Bowser fight, it did something I think future Bowser fights would do that they hadn't. So, in Super Mario 1, same Bowser fight all the time. Super Mario 3, you have a final Bowser fight, but there's not multiple stages to it. Same with the Bowser you fight at the end of Super Mario World. It's one type of Bowser fight. In this one, you have one type of Bowser fight. You're like, all right, I beat Bowser. Guess the game's over. And it's like, no, Bowser's giant. And it's the second.

stage to it. It was, I think it's the first multi-stage Bowser fight, which is now just like after Super Mario 3D Land had like a 12 stage battle fight and 3D World have like a 20 stage bouncer fight, which I loved. I love 3D Land and 3D World. Those Bowser fights are really just almost like uncharted type levels of running towards a camera while Bowser does tons of different crap. So up next I want to talk about transformations in this game, which I feel would influence the state of power-ups in Mario games to come, definitely. So how these work are, Yoshi can transform into one of five different vehicles, which are all animal-themed, a train, a car, a tank, a helicopter, and a submarine.

And then you're given these, like, limited mini-challenges that the power-up usually will run out within that course, but there are some courses in which you have to collect more power-up icons to continue that power-up. So it feels a lot like Mario Galaxy and Mario 64. Don't forget about Super Mario. Or Super Baby Mario, yeah, yeah. They're all very, very limited. I think they all follow the old Starman approach where it's like you have this power for this set of time and do what we want you to do in this time limit.

On Super Baby Mario is Star Man pretty much. It's you're having a Star Man. They play the music and then it's just keep running forward, keep going forward. On the ceilings and stuff, do you know. No, I was just trying to remember, doesn't this game have a mole power? Yeah, the digging mole. That's the tank. Oh, yeah, it's a tank.

So they're all animal themed in some way. Yeah. And I do love the tank controls of the mole of like, oh, I got to go back around to you. to go backwards to get to the next power up. Yeah. It's an element that doesn't really need to be in the game, but all of these work well and they're all short enough where they don't overstay their welcome, I think.

The overstay and the welcome is something that R-Tune didn't freaking learn about the transformation. They're like, oh, transformations, you want to do full levels of these, don't you? Like, not really, no. Yeah. And one of the things I forgot to include in the notes about the interview was Miyamoto, one of his ideas that was shot down, actually,

was when Baby Mario Colette's a star Miyamoto wanted Mario to turn into adult Mario briefly With a beard Yeah, we had a beard Oh wow

I don't remember that I remember reading that It was not in the schmuppolations Okay Like hot dad Mario Yeah yeah Yeah Like performing internet

He'd be an adult Adult Mario like presumably in a diaper He's not gonna grow clothes right I didn't know I'd put that together We've got diaper I don't know Let's do this game

Too many fetishes are happening It's dynamo from the running man so I mean in all of this we've been talking about graphics but I really want to highlight just specifically I have one discussion about graphics period without diverging so I'm going to go out there and say playing this again playing it in 2017 I'm going to say this is the best looking to-do game Nintendo has ever made and probably will ever make I want some discussion about this because I can't think of anything else they've made things that look fantastic but this is just all devoted to the graphics

and the tech and all of the mechanics that are behind that. But I don't know, I can't think of any other 2D game that looks this good that Nintendo made. No, I don't, I don't think they did when they went back to 2D or when they were still doing 2D in, like, GBA games, which looked great. Like, I love the art direction and say advance wars, but it's still, yeah, but it still can't really compare to just how colorful and vibrant. And also just how many, how many special, like the thing I just said, the frog boss fight, just the, a one-off sprite design, they'll just throw out, or little things when Yoshi is splatted by the door, if you get it by the door, you're then, it's kind of a paper Mario effect, pre-paper Mario. You're just a 2D flat thing that you then float down, paper thin. Or, I mean, it happened to Bugs Bunny in a million cartoons.

I'm betting they got it from that. I forgot that happened because I usually avoid those now. Oh, you're so. I'm just so much better than you had, right? I would say Metroid Fusion is probably the only platformer Mario made or Nintendo made that came close because it has that very persistent comic book style and everything except the actual characters. But all the backgrounds have a very bold like heavy ink kind of look to them. It's not as it's not as sort of sketchy as Yoshi's Island, but yeah, it's very much has its own personality. And I will say that

Would you consider Yoshi's Willie World, a 2D game? I meant traditional 2D art. Okay, not hand-drawn. Yeah, hand-drawn art or pixelated art or whatever. Yeah, I mean, so I feel like what I feel Nintendo is doing with this is that, so a lot of the mechanics I feel like

are response to Sonic and the level design and things like that. I feel like the graphics are a response to things like Earthworm Gym and Aladdin and the Virgin Earthworm Jim type games for the Genesis. And Sonic himself was a much more expressive sprite than Mario. That was another of those things like Mario, in Super Mario World, if Mario State still, he's not going to do anything. And he's not going to look at the screen or look at you or any of that stuff that Sonic did and seems so cool for doing it.

Sonic's tapping his foot. He's waiting on me. But in Yoshi's Island, I feel like everything is over animated, not in a negative way, but more than you would expect. Like the way, even like a walking cycle will have like extra frames in it. It's just, like, there's more frames baked into every animation than you would expect in a Nintendo game like this. And because of their Nintendo, nothing impacts the play in a negative way. Like, you brought up Rocko's Modern Life earlier, which isn't that classic super over-animated license. Right, right.

Things look good, but it just takes too long to do anything because there are too many frames. In kind of general, about the art direction, as far as it being the best, like, I think that it just has a very unique aesthetic. It does, yeah. So these are, you know, aesthetic choices, but this isn't heaping anything that we see very often. Not in America. I feel like this is definitely a take on the Japanese gag manga style where these exaggerated but ultra cute things that are sort of crudely drawn, but there's also a lot of artistry behind them. It's sort of just like a fakeery. It's like it looks like a child drew this, but no, no child could draw this well or have this much imagination or have this great of color design.

But as far as Nintendo games go. Yeah, yeah. So like you look at older Mario games, which are, they're not really aping anything specifically. Those are big kind of color swaths of surreal environments that are very. appealing, not particularly detailed. You look at something like Metroid or Super Metroid, which are games, I think, look amazing, but they're going for an aesthetic that I feel like is a little bit more common. Yeah, it's more expected.

So it's not about the execution being better or worse. It's about the kind of uniqueness in terms of what they've done. Right, right. And I would have said, like, cran coloring, but it's actually more of a color pencil. Yeah, like pastel. Yeah, and also graphically speaking of his management, I didn't mention this when you're talking about the story, but the story is, too, that, like, it isn't Yoshi singular.

It is a clan of eight Yoshis helping Mario through the world. So each stage you get a different color of Yoshi. And it's always for the same one. So when you see every boss fight from Yoshi's island, it'll either be the yellow Yoshi or the purple Yoshi, except in the case of the final Bowser fight, you are back to classic Green Yoshi. That was a really good choice.

Which tells you that Green Yoshi is still lead Yoshi of the world. But, yeah, and also graphically, the opening screen, the title screen of the spinning around Yoshi's Island, where you can see each of the six areas you're going to go to. And if you've beaten them, you will see your progress kind of reflected in the spinning thing. I meant to mention with the bosses, too, a little touch that I didn't know until I watched Awesome Games Done Quick for Yoshi's Island. With the Naval of the Piranha plant, you can, if you get right in front of him, before KMEX shows up you can just shoot it before it

transform and kill it and then KMAC just shows up and goes like oh my! And it's over and you won. It's like killing the end in Metal Gear Solid 3 on the docks in his wheelchair. But the developers knew you could do that and put it in there. That's really cool, yeah. And then they actually put a reference to that

in Yoshi's Wully World as well. You could do the same, there's a naval pirata fight in that game too and you can do it again. Just because there's no other place to put it, it's worth encouraging everyone who's listening to this to watch that speed run. Oh, yeah. Because it's one of the best.

And it's very entertaining. The guy who does it, who's constantly juggling eggs and kind of shuffling them and doing, you know, it kind of flourishes. You know, so it's very, very neat. It's one of my favorite speed runs ever.

We're talking about graphics now, and I want to say that they were very conservative with polygons. Anybody else developing this game would be like, we need a boss made of three polygons for Mario to fight

or like a very crude polygonal enemy. The polygons in this game, they're all like square platforms or, you know, rectangular doors or things like that. They're all limited to very basic geometric shapes. It's very smart and it makes the game age incredibly well. Like Star Fox does and does not age well. This game does because it was like we know how bad this will look. If a 3D thing is a living thing, it will not look good in this game.

Yeah, I wonder too if that was them knowing in the cubicle next to them in EAD is Super Mario 64. And they're saying that, like, we can't really compete with this. or they knew that that was going to cover the bases on that. Yeah. It also encouraged them to go even more 2D in this one. So like Earthbound before it, and as we heard in that video clip, this was a victim of the Play It Loud era of Nintendo, very in your face, a very reaction to Sega,

being crude and rude and full of attitude, if you will. This is like the darkest era of the Play At Loud period. And the Yoshi's Island commercial is a direct rip-off of the Mr. Kriozote scene in Monty Python's the meaning of life. It's just the man being served food over and over again and then the camera pans away and then you hear him explode and the food like hits the wall. It's like a man dies in this commercial.

It's the prequel to seven. Yes, it really is. The commercial cuts off before Morgan Freeman and Brad hits you up. God, but yeah, I mean, does not fit the tone of this game at all. Absolutely. And you don't, I mean, I don't even get the direction they're going in the PR of that.

Like, there's lots of stuff in this game. Like, could you be more specific? And can you put it in your mouth? Yeah. Like the operative, you know, Yoshi puts things in his mouth. Like he eats things, but it's about this like throwing eggs. It's about so much more. Yeah.

It's like someone just saw, it's like, it would be like a Kirby commercial almost. Like it would make more sense. He turns them into, he doesn't like just eat them. He turns them into things. Yeah. And we're quickly running out of time. I do want to talk about the music really quick. I feel like this is a pure Koji Kondo soundtrack and I really wish you would have made it a longer soundtrack.

I wanted one more overworld theme and one more underground theme. The themes are great, but they are, you hear them a lot. lot in this game. And the levels are very long. But I do want to call out a few things. I really love the bonus stage theme, which is like a Lady of Spain style song. It's just like, you can feel yourself being paddled down Venice or whatever. I love it. Yeah, those bonus stages, I always like, eh, must I? I got enough lives. Yeah, you can really stockpile a lot. And the other one I want to call out real quick before we close out is I love the mid boss theme because it like has this really intense, like dangerous beginning, but then it moves into

like a very little ditty that I is so atypical of a boss theme. So that's the, you're in trouble now sort of part of it, but then it moves into this. It's so great. It's like, this guy's not a threat. What are you talking about? Yeah. Especially when you know you're in the fortress level, not the castle level.

So you know this isn't going to be the most challenging thing. I would, I think I'd do this every podcast, but I would totally tell you to listen to the Yoshi Games episode of VG Empire that I I DJed, I guess, as you put it, and some of my favorite Yoshi songs.

And I love the remix in this game. Well, not remix, but like the newer edition of the Yoshi song that was in Super Mario World. Oh, yeah. I love the athletic theme. So, yes, this has been our Yoshi conversation. I have more to talk about. I thought I would not have enough to talk about.

This game is so great. We all love it. I hope you like this podcast. And if you want to know how to support us, We are on Patreon as Retronauts. If you go to Patreon.com slash Retronauts, you can help support the show. And we have great incentives for you, including for just three bucks a month. If you give us that, you'll get every podcast a week ahead of time and with no ads and at a higher bit rate.

So that is the ideal way to listen to Retronauts. And I think that breaks down into like 50 cents per podcast. So if you don't want ads in your life and if you want these episodes a week ahead of time and ad free, it's three bucks a month. If you just want to give us a dollar a month, that's fine. Your money helps us make the show. It helps support us, and it helps us continue this effort with this podcast that I still love doing even to this day. Let's go into plugs. Let's start with Jeremy.

Yeah, you can do that Retronauts thing, because that's what I'm doing. Oh, okay. Go to Retronauts.com, because it's a real website for real people who like real talk about real old video games. Also, I'm on Twitter as GameSpite, so check that out. And you can check out my YouTube channel, which is under the name Toasty Frog, where I'm going through old video game systems. Game by game, one at a time. Well, hey, that reminds me of Talking Simpsons, the podcast I do with Bob and Chris Anteastern, where we go through every episode of Simpsons, one at a time.

And we are into season six now, and if you want to support that and hear episodes a week early, because we ripped off the Retronauts bottle there. I rip myself off. Go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. and, yeah, you follow me on Twitter, H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G, and I'm really looking forward to that Super N-E-S-Mini. I hope my order hasn't been canceled already.

I pre-order one at Walmart. Don't let me down Walmart. Gary? Yeah, and you can find me on the podcast, Watch Out for Fireballs, or we tackle games in no discernible order. We are part of the DuckFeed.comTV podcast network. You can find us there.

We do a bunch of different shows. We are also supported by Patreon. You can find links and the like. We'd love it if you guys gave it a shot. And then you can find us on Twitter or find me at Twitter at Gary B-A-R-Y-B-U-H. And of course, I have been your host, Bob Mackey.

You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. We'll be back next Monday with a brand new one. We'll see you then. I'm not gonna be. Oh, and so. And...

...and... ...and... ...and... ...and... ...and... ...the... ...and... ...the...

And caller number nine for one million dollars. Rita, complete this quote. Life is like a box of... Uh, Rita, you're cutting out. We need your answer. Life is like a box of chocolate. Oh, sorry. That's not what we were looking for.

On to caller number 10. Bad network got you glitched out of luck. Switch to Boost Mobile, super reliable, super fast nationwide network, and get four lines, each with unlimited gigs for just $100 a month. Plus get four free phones. Boost makes it easy to switch. Switching makes it easy to save. The Mueller report.

I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House, his special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand, that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officer started shooting at a robbery suspect last week.

Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear knowing that your choices will directly affect. the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.