Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 88: Yoshi Games

Episode Date: February 27, 2017

Following his debut in 1990's Super Mario World, Yoshi quickly evolved from a glorified power-up to a star that could carry games with his name alone. And in the character's nearly 30 years of existence, Yoshi-based experiences have taken many forms--including one that stands as possibly the greatest platformer of all time. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Ray Barnholt, and Henry Gilbert as the crew tries to pin down Yoshi's appeal and whether or not we should worry that he suddenly grew opposable thumbs. Be sure to visit our blog at Retronauts.com. And if you'd like to send a few bucks our way, head on over to our Patreon page!

This week on Retronauts. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I am your host for this one, Bob, And today's topic is Yoshi Games, and we're going to exclude one for a very important reason. I'll get to that soon. First, who else is here with me today? We have, as always... It's me, Boshi.

Boshi to Parish. I did so much research. I learned that Boshi in Japanese is actually Washi, which is a very similar pun to how Mario's evil twin is Wario, which is a pun that only makes sense in Japanese. It's also a kind of paper. Maybe that inspired Yoshi's story. Oh, yeah. Arts and Crafts look.

Boshi is only in Super Mario RPG, but he's the cool Yoshi with sunglasses. Yes. That's me. When people think of Jeremy Parrish, they think cool dinosaur with glasses. Oh, wow. Sunglasses. So, yes, that is our only Bosci discussion. Please post her comments after this if you're mad.

Who else is here today? Hey, it's Henry Gilbert, and Purple Yoshi is my favorite. Purple Yoshi. Is there a purple Yoshi? Yeah, I think he was either the fortress or Boss World Yoshi in the island. Okay, right. Yeah, I was thinking of island. And who else do we have? Terrible lizard, Ray Barnhole. Terrible Thunder Lizard.

Come on, 90s kids, am I right? Hey, that was an Eek the Cad. Savage Steve Holland production. Hey, he's all right. He made some good movies. So today's episode is all about Yoshi games, and I figured that as we go through different topics, I'm trying to figure out what we missed out on.

And I feel like this is a big gap in the Retronauts coverage. I mean, we've talked about Yoshi before in different Nintendo games, but there are a lot of Yoshi games I've noticed, especially while doing research for them on this topic. And I figure we really haven't talked about very many of these outside of the big notable ones where Yoshi is at the center. So I want to go over all of the Yoshi spinoff games, the Yoshi puzzle games and things like that. And I'm going to put this up front for some people. Not all of these games are good.

So you may disagree with us, but that's fine. You're allowed to like these games. I have a negative opinion about a good deal of these. But I'm willing to talk about them because they're interesting. And Yoshi's an interesting character that they do lots of experiments with, I think. He's more of like an experimental game character, like a Kirby type. You know that warning you do, the content warning? Like, you may not agree with everything.

I'm pretty sure that's basically a trigger for people to leave a one-star review. You should just let it slide, let it ride. No, I mean, I feel, I'm putting this up front. So if you get mad at me, like, we had some serious fallout over the Sonic the Hedgehog episode. You warned everyone. Now they're bristling in anger. Yeah, I know. See, I warn people then.

They're ready to be pissed off. Now my warning is more direct, and I'm happy that Ray and I are finally talking again. We were only talking through lawyers for a brief period of time but now the healing has started. Probably good I wasn't on that sonic one. Hopefully we won't come to blows over Yoshi. I think we're both on the same page when it comes to Yoshi.

I think we're okay. Yeah. Yeah. So we don't have a retro rule on retronauts. It's kind of like 10 years-ish, but I'm choosing... I thought we did. It's not formal.

I've broken it a few times. I mean, I've broken it in a little tuxedo and everything. Come on. It's very dressed up. It's got tails. and like a top hat, but for this... Tails, is this a Sonic episode? God, no, okay, we're gonna...

No more mention of Sonic that, I'm still wounded by that, but... I actually brought you a gift, Bob. Oh, wow, are those Sonic the Hedgehog socks? Sonic the Hedgehog socks. Wow, wow, thank you. I was gonna give these to you in private, but I think maybe it's a public showing. This is not a joke, people. I may, he actually handed me Sonic the Hedgehog socks.

I don't know what, uh, what coals he robbed to get these to me, but, uh, thank you, Jeremy. I'll give them to my girlfriend, because she will like them more than me. Great. But, um, I just threw them behind me, by the way. You're not your hair, too. I'm disrespectful. So, yeah, there's no real retro rule on retronauts.

But I'm cutting this off at 2006 because there's too many games to talk about. And when I sent out my notes to Ray and Jeremy, we kind of decided that we're going to make Yoshi's Island its own episode because it really deserves its own episode. It's like, I can't talk enough about how much I love that game. There's a lot going on in it. And we'll mention it. We'll touch upon it in this discussion just to, you know, tell you what other games are, you know, basing their gameplay off of or taking ideas from. But that is going to be its own episode at some point in the future. I hope to be on that one, too.

Just don't wait till 2020 when it's the 25th anniversary. Oh, God, I can't wait that long. Don't wait that long. Yes. Who knows what will happen to me? I'll probably have like a robot voice. That really, really be 20? Yeah.

Oh, my God. 25 and 20, yeah. So I want to go over Yoshi's origins really quick because we talked to it. Okay, so we have a Super Mario World episode. I don't know which one is. I think it's like 36 or something. Go back to the archives. It's part of our independent run.

It was one of the earlier episodes. We cover that in great detail. There's an entire episode about Super Mario World if you want to hear more about Yoshi in that game. It was that long ago? It was a 2015 episode, yeah. So that was episode 36. I'm sure I wrote it down here somewhere. So going back to Yoshi history, we see that Yoshi was originally conceived of for Super Mario Brothers 3.

I thought it was the original Super Mario Brothers, but doing more research into this, I found out it was 3. But apparently, for whatever reason, either design reasons, technology reasons, Nintendo couldn't execute this idea properly on the NES. And I think, I mean, I found out this from that Mario Mania guide that Nintendo Power put out. It was one of their four big guides after their initial four guides that had the red cover. So this is like the NES Atlas, the Game Boy Atlas. Was it also called the S-NES Atlas too? No, they were just named after that.

Okay. And then Mario Mania, which was just a sort of a tribute to Mario. I love that cover. Yeah, it's great. It's great collage. I think it's age rather well, despite being, you know, 25 years old, the graphic design in that book. But in that, we learn that there's a drawing of Mario writing Yoshi, and it's like, oh, we wanted to do this, but we had to wait.

And there's also that infamously has a line at the end. It's like maybe one day Mario will wear metal clothes, and that's five years before Mario 64. So Nintendo holds onto ideas for a long time, as we can see. So this Yoshi thing was in the works for maybe like three years, three or four years before. Super Mario World came out. And as Ray mentioned in our Sonic episode that we're all still recovering from, and I'm still, I still cry myself to sleep every night. But Yoshi's real name is, but not really.

It's T. Yoshi's Sor Munchakupas. Ray, can you explain where this came from? I just want you to talk about this. Because you made me aware of it. Yeah, it came from some sort of media kit, I think, from Nintendo of America, where they were establishing, you know, character profiles and stuff. I think, you know, in case 3-2-1 Contact Magazine or Hot Dog wants to write an article about Nintendo, they'll probably look up this as a reference material.

Or if you're making fruit snacks or something, right? Right. Who is this green dinosaur? I've got to get inside of his head. Yes, exactly. And I'll link to this on our blog. Kotaku wrote an article about this merchandising guide. It has a lot of fake details about Mario characters.

And it's sort of like similar to Sonic, where in our Sonic episode, we learned that marketing people wrote these fictional backstories that, would never be used, like Miles, Monotails, Tales is a real name. Sonic grew up in Nebraska. Robotnik was once a guy named Evo Kinto Boar, who was a good scientist. Like, all of these facts don't mean anything. And Yoshi's from Scranton. Oh, yes.

Is Yoshi's from Scranton? I believe it. I think the difference in those scenarios is that this is just what I'm getting from the Consul Wars book, but that Sega of America seemed a lot more involved in the making of Sonic, that they were like, no, Sonic is this? And it was kind of a back-and-forth thing. They were helping to find him. Well, I mean, while Nintendo of America was handed a thing by Japan,

and then they attached facts to it that Nintendo of Japan could immediately say, like, no, that doesn't. Yeah, I mean, infamously, the Kupa kids that we all know their names now, they were not named in the Japanese version, which is why they have different names on the cartoon, because the cartoon people were like, who are these things, and whoever was writing the manual was like, who are these things. So they each had their own ideas. I prefer the weird melange of rock and roll and talk show people to, like,

whatever the hell the cartoon names, like cootie pie and stinky or whatever. I mean, classic deke names for characters. Yeah, they might as well have been ghost like Pac-Man ghost for the most part. So, okay, so we got past Yoshi's real Christian name, and of course, it's important to mention.

I believe in Mama. Every time he hatches, you baptize him. I believe in the Super Mario World cartoon Mama Luigi, we see his baptism. So it is canon. Does that conflict with his being a dinosaur? Teaching dinosaur land, that's B.C. God put the dinosaurs there as a test of faith.

Ah, right. So they're a trick. Okay. So, of course, Yoshi, in my grand theory of cavemen and dinosaur-based things in the late 80s, early 90s, I consider this part of the cave-mania phase in entertainment. And we've covered plenty of games in the cave-mania pantheon. We have Joe and Mac, Bonk, Adventure Island, Wonderboy. For some reason, for whatever reason, in the late

80s and early 90s, this was a very popular theme in children's entertainment. I don't know why. This is actually probably retronaut's longest running theory. Even more so than all video game music is Prague rock music. It's my grand cave mania theory. And I don't think,

I think, like, really, it peaked at Jurassic Park and maybe up through 96, 97, it was still sticking around, but... Jurassic Park 2 killed it. That really did. Yeah, it's like, I'll kill dinosaurs with gymnastics and we all lost interest. Well, maybe Jurassic Park set up, too, that

dinosaurs could be here now, so you don't have to imagine cavemen hanging out with them. I don't know, Jeremy, you know younger kids. Did they still like dinosaurs? I mean, there's relatives, by the way. Jeremy's not praying on fun anymore. Me and my white van just cruise around. Yeah,

I mean, my nephews and cousins all seem to like dinosaurs. Okay. Yeah. They also like Minecraft and Ingrid Birds, which we didn't like back at the day. That's true. We had better taste. Like Transformers at He Man Yeah Way better

All those well-written Toy commercials that we watched Exactly So of course We have the immortal Yoshi noise And I'll edit it in right here It is a very Very hard to turn into Anamotapia

But that is the synthesized Yoshi noise Kind of like people call it the vacuum cleaner noise but That would not stick around for very long Eventually Yoshi would be voice We'll go through Yoshi's changes In a second here

But Cuberty Yes I have some very strong opinions on which Yoshi I prefer. And I forgot to actually bring, my girlfriend bought me the, it's not a Nendroid, but it's a Figma.

What are those little ones with the standees? The Japanese made, play arts, I don't know what it's called. I mean, Nendroid is the thing. Figma makes Nendroids. Yeah, that's the Cheeby versions. Like, Figma's are the normal size bodies, and then the giant head,

much better versions of Funko Pops. That's an android. Okay, I don't know what these are. Is it the same company? I think it's a different company that makes it like Bondi or something. Smile plus, I don't know. No, it's, yeah, smile is the, they're the ones who make dendroids and, uh, and figmas.

Have you noticed how we're all giant weaves in this room? We're like, let's name every Japanese toy company we have. Well, I mean, we can get into it. Yes, Ray was, Ray was just, he didn't want to be part of this, and think themself. But so, uh, what I love about this toy company that I don't know the name of, but I'll put it in the blog.

They make, uh, toys based on the earlier versions of Nintendo characters. So some of my favorite ones are, I do know the model ones. Yes. Do you know the name of it, right? Mediom. Mediom. That's it.

Yes. Thank you. So, two of my favorite little toys that I own are the Mario and Luigi from the Mario Brothers arcade game. Yeah. Those really weird kind of like, it's a mix between anime and Fleischer Brothers, sort of like thick lines. They all kind of look like sacks of dough. Yeah, yeah. And like their weird pointy hats or, well, like, not pointy hats, but like the weird hats that come to a point.

Yeah. It's like Popeye's elbow. It's a design that makes no sense in three dimensions. You have to turn them a certain way to get them to look okay. But yeah, like, so they have that. They have the original Yoshi and they have the link that's on the box art of the Japanese version of the first game. But I have the true original Yoshi, and that only lasted until 1995. There are two Yoshis.

So this Yoshi has, he has like the half-litted eye look. He's very laid back. He has the tiny arms, of course. They're not hands that can grab things. And he has a saddle. And over time, really starting from Yoshi's Island onwards, he would grow hands with thumbs to throw things, of course. His saddle would become a shell eventually over time

when he no longer had to carry anyone. And I don't know why a dinosaur would have a shell, but that's another story. And a voice. And I really believe it's obvious to understand why they made this design change. He needed more autonomy when he was no longer just a vehicle you could ride. Like when he was his own character, he needed to be able to do more things. So you say these are two different Yoshis.

Two different Yoshis. Like the bigger Luke theory. I've never heard that, actually. How about Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr.? Oh, what is this right? In Donny Kong country, that Donkey Kong is supposed to be junior. That's right. The original.

That's right. Yoshi is like a disposable creature. Like every time you ride a Yoshi in Super Mario World, you're hatching a new life into being. Yes, yes. And the weird thing about Yoshi is... And then dropping it into a pit. Just using him for your own selfish gains. There is no Yoshi in the first game even.

Like, there is no, that is Yoshi. And they have to make a distinction of that, too. Like, on the Super Mario Wiki, they make a big distinction of that, too. Like, this is the Yoshi page for the green Yoshi who stars in these games and who they market it to. But there's also just any Yoshi page. And then there's the yellow Yoshi page, the purple Yoshi page, black Yoshi, all the different colors of him. And I get from a design standpoint why they want to give him, say, hands. because that's more, you can do more than that.

Like, animation-wise, he can do a lot more. Yeah. Emote more. He can clench his fist or point at things. And just having, you know, claws, or what... Little dinosaur hand. Yeah, little dinosaur hands. Yeah.

Just doesn't leave him with much to it. They need to humanize him more. Yeah, they really anthropomorphize Yoshi. And you're right, Henry. There is one Yoshi, but there is also Yoshis. I think in the beginning of Super Mario World, you're reading a letter from Yoshi in the message block

it's signed Yoshi so that could be the one true Yoshi that will save us all. The one with hands because he was able to write a letter. I don't know, are those message blocks just like dictations or whatever? They have the little speaker. Yoshi was talking into it. Who knows how Yoshi communicated before you could babble in a

baby voice. So yeah, I don't think that the Mario games were meant to be dissected with this much bigger. I mean, that's what we're here for. It's our job to do this, Jeremy. That's where we're making in the big podcast books. But so we eventually have the Yoshi that we have today after Yoshi's Island, starting with Yoshi's story, where we have hands, a shell, and baby boys.

That's very, I think, divisive. I don't know about you guys. I'm not a fan of it. And I don't know where this idea came from because Yoshi had, he talked like a baby in the Super Mario World cartoon, but I can guarantee you no one in Japan, especially Nintendo, ever watched that. Because if they did, there would be lawsuits. and Deek would have disappeared much quicker than it did,

or at least I think they just renamed it to avoid scandal. So, yeah, and it's weird because Yoshi does say his own name, like a Pokemon. And I was trying to do the chicken and the egg thing, like, okay, Yoshi says his own name like a Pokemon, but when did the Pokemon anime come out in Japan, where that was the conceit that wasn't in the game, where the Pokemon said their own name. I think that was 97. It was, it was spontaneous, simultaneous evolution.

I actually looked at the release dates of the first episode of the anime and the release of Yoshi's Island in Japan, and there was an eight-month gap. So conceivably, it could have been inspired by Pokemon. And I would not be surprised, because it is a Nintendo property. They could have looked at this and went like, oh, that's a fun idea for a thing to do. I mean, like a Pokemon, he hatches from an egg, and there are lots of him, but with different variations. Excuse me, but in the first generation, could you hatch a Pokemon? No, you couldn't. That's what I thought.

That's true. But who's to say they weren't immediately, they weren't already planning? Yeah, they hatched from eggs. And also, Game Freak does have a Yoshi history. There's that as well.

So we'll get into that. Yeah, yes, the dark history. Well, speaking of those eggs, like the question of gender on Yoshi, I've had that conversation with a friend a while. They just, like,

I believe in most official Nintendo things they do call Yoshi-He and use, asking pronouns, but then not, but then he lays eggs, like that hatched thing. Just in terms of biological Yoshi sex, he is producing

eggs. Life finds a way. I guess so, yeah. There's even a funny there were tons of funny moments in Smash Brothers brawl where you know, snake could talk to the colonel in Kodak about different characters and he even has this conversation

in it about the colonel says he throws eggs and does him. Wait, he lays eggs? And the colonel just hand waves it away. Like, yeah, he does. So I just looked this up. We pause briefly, but I will now play the clip from Smash Brothers. Thank you, Henry, for letting me know

about this. I had no idea. Even though I think I listened to all of these at the time. So here we go. Botakar. What's this lizard thing? That's a Yoshi. It's a dinosaur from Yoshi's Island. Watch out for its long, chameleon-like tongue.

If it gets you, you'll be swallowed whole. It lays eggs and throws the bright. Then it must be female. Actually, it's a heap. At least that's what it says. It talks. Yes, it talks. Well, kind of.

Now you've got me curious. How about I capture one so we can see what they taste like? Oh, snake. So there you go. the bad audio music mix. That's better than any comment we could make. Yes, really. David Hater's best paycheck ever.

Kudos to whoever wrote that. I like that. It also borrows a snake eater thing. It's like, what's it tastes like whenever you see an animal or grab an animal? So, yes, let's now move on to, wait, wait, wait, I want to know from you guys because I have strong feelings about this. I prefer OG Yoshi, my dinosaur friend. He doesn't talk.

He knows his place. But we still have a bond. So what do you guys prefer in terms of the world? Yoshi's. I mean, like, in terms, okay, so I like the design more, I will say. I have no, I have no real affection for, like, Yoshi's in general, but I just like the design of original Yoshi. So, what do you guys think about, like old Yoshi versus New Yoshi? Do you have a preference? I'm just curious, because

I have strong feelings. I do like the New Yoshi is a cuter design. I like, I like his cuteness. I miss his long neck, and I also don't like that it's seemingly just a cup a shell on his back, that it doesn't feel pretty new there. But, you know, I am a traditionalist. I like his high, his high half-litted look, but

if one had to exist, I actually would pick the newer one. Oh, you betrayed me. I'm sorry to say. Actually, Henry, Oji Yoshi is like Jay Sherman in season one of the critic. And baby Yoshi is like Jay Sherman in season two of the critic. They really cuted him up. It's true. Jeremy, how do you feel about this?

I was going to say old Yoshi, but then you're talk about like him knowing his place. I'm going to go with a social justice version of but the thing is they give you the best of both worlds because baby

Yoshi still have that like stubby armed heavy lidded look so when you get a heavy like a baby Yoshi and you know Super Marr

New Super Mario Brothers Wii or New Super Mario Brothers you like it's still it's still got that sort of vestigial design

so you could almost say like old Yoshi is actually just an immature version of modern Yoshi you're right

actually I prefer that's my favorite kind of Yoshi and I do have a plastic toy of that because I'm a child Ray please talk about

your favorite Yoshi right I don't like the I don't like the CG Yoshi that has like the really exaggerated snout and stuff

and really big really big hands too yeah it's too like Mickey Mouseified I think just like trying to make these huge

circular shapes so I guess kids can draw them better I still I mean okay to its credit

I couldn't draw originally Yoshi that well so I probably could do the newer CG one I mean the only

Nintendo character that they really want you to draw is Kirby yeah Yeah, I mean they teach you. Exactly. At the beginning of the game.

Yeah, so let's move on to the games. So we're going to be And so we're going to be talking about Yoshi's many games, but I also want to encourage all of you to host on the comments of this episode. Which is your favorite Yoshi? I want to know your reasoning behind this, because I'm very curious as to who falls in line with me and who falls in line with Henry and who is a baby Yoshi booster.

So I really want to know what the stats are. I might have a poll. This is very important to me. I don't know why. So let's move on to the first game in the series. It is Super Mario World. This is where Yoshi first appeared, of course. This came out in November of 90 in Japan, August of 91 in the U.S.

And again, we have an entire Super Mario World episode that's Retronauts Episode 36. Please look that up if you want to know more about the game itself and Yoshi. It's 90 minutes of Mario World Talk. But we can talk about some basic stuff, of course. I mean, in this game, Yoshi is something you ride. He's not his own character. There are four different colors, each with their own special abilities. There are baby Yoshis, which if you feed, they will grow into a bigger Yoshi.

Jumping on Yoshi affects the soundtrack. There's a lot going into just this very basic idea of having Mario. ride something. Am I missing any major things? I mean, eating enemies. I mean, you take Yoshi from stage to stage and you can keep him, you had the strategy of I have to beat this stage

with Yoshi to take him to the next stage so I can abandon him to make this big jump to get to the secret keyhole. Yeah, yeah. He was a very he was kind of like a jump booster too. You do have to abandon him to do certain things like that. Very easy to sacrifice Yoshi's. Yes. And his ability to do different things by eating

different colored cupas was pretty interesting. It's something that was not utilized that heavily. Not really. It's mostly in the bonus world, but I love blue Yoshi myself. Yeah, it's a fun little detail. Yeah. It's stomping with the yellow shell in your mouth, so everything

explodes. Yeah, that one lets you fly. It gives you the stomping power, and if you spit it out, you spit fire. I thought that was the flashing one. The flashing shell, yeah, you're right. Yeah, that's the best of shell for sure. And I also like that he can jump on pointy things. He'd be fine on the saw blades or the death spikes.

And it makes a little tap-down sound effect, which is very cute. Yeah, and actually, thinking about this, his baby-ish persona was kind of set in this game because he would not follow you into ghost houses and fortresses and things. I mean, obviously, they did not want to design those with Yoshi in mind because it's a lot of cramped corridors, a lot of things they want to make more challenging, and Yoshi in some ways made the game a little easier because you could take a hit with him and jump back on him and take another hit. So it was more of a design thing, but it also helped establish him as sort of a

childish frety cat, scared animal kind of thing. Yes, I don't know if I'm thinking too much about this. I never took that, but it was just like, oh, I can't fit in there. You guys must have seen the people who analyze the sprites that say, like, is Mario punching Yoshi to open his mouth and eat something, or is he pointing out, like, oh, do this thing? I think he's pointing. I feel more like he's pointing, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was just, like, casual

animal abuse. I wouldn't expect that from Nintendo. Because, like, for a long time, people assume that the joke was like Mario's hitting bricks with his head. But clearly he was punching them. But for some reason, everyone just thought he was bashing them with his head. I don't know why. I don't know. But he's still killing toads every time he does that.

Yes. But it's interesting to notes that he is. He's killing his own citizens. Hey, they were dead when they were turned into blocks. He's setting them free. He's just desecrating their corpses. But, God, I forgot I was going to say. Oh, and that they removed, well, speaking of animal cruelty of Mario World, they did remove dolphins from.

The game, oh, am I getting at it myself? That's what I forgot to talk about, please, please go on. I mean, they removed dolphins from the game that, or could he not eat them? He couldn't eat them, yeah. He couldn't eat the dolphins. But again, I think that was a gameplay decision or a design decision because if you ate a dolphin, it got rid of a platform. And maybe they just tag them as enemies or tag them as eatables without realizing, oh, this can make the stage much harder or not in the way we wanted it to me. I just know in the early 90s, dolphin safe tuna and the fishing of dolphins was definitely a hot topic.

Yes. And it's still a thing that happens in Japan. Incredible, comestible dolphin. So, yes, that's all of our Mario World chat for now. If you want to learn more about it, go to your local library, and they will kick you out. And then you can look this up on your phone because there is no Yoshi information at my library. I checked, and it's shameful what's happening in this country. You might find that issue of 3-21 contact.

Oh, really? There was never a zoo books about Yoshi, so I was upset about that. So the next game on our list is Yoshi. It is a puzzle game. It came out in December of 91 in Japan. in June of 92 in the U.S. I just like the way it's named. It's almost like he did get his own spinoff sitcom.

Yes, yes. It's like it's based on his... What's that? It's an exclamation point. And it needs to be based on his stand-up, really. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it gives him a family and a wacky neighbor, and it's trying to tackle the modern world.

Flushing shells are never there when you need to fly. What's out to deal with that? Oh, boy. So, this is by Game Freak. But it is a really, really lack-like. Pustre Puzzle game, and I try to give it another chance, but I'm surprised just how basic it is. It's bad. So it is a match two game, and there are some games that do that, but that's all you're doing.

You're just matching things together. There's nothing more to that. There's one thing where, so you want to match things together, and you sort of rotate columns. Mario's at the bottom, and you sort of switch columns between hands to get the things to fall where you want them to. But once they're matched, they disappear, and that's it. You just do that until you can't do it anymore. It's very Tetris-like and sort of it's endless.

Oh, sorry, go ahead, Ray. It's actually a bit more like Hattress, but even like with a bit removed from that. I never played Hattress, so I wouldn't know that. Yeah. Yeah, and the one gimmick is so if you match, sorry, if you stick a bunch of unmatched tiles between the top half and the bottom half of an egg, it's sort of like the Yoshi version of Tetris and that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to make that stack of unmatched tiles as large as possible to pop that top part

of the egg on it and squish all the enemies in it. that's basically it. And I feel like Nintendo has given this game away for free or basically free in so many versions in so many ways. Still overpriced. From a PR standpoint, they should not be virtual consoleizing this so much. Like, there's so many list of games that are still not on virtual console, but they just dump Yoshi like, I feel like in the first three months of the Wii U and 3DS One. I don't want it.

I don't want it at all. It was one of those 30-cent games when the Wii U first came out. It was like, it's the 30th anniversary of the Famicom. Here's 30 games for 30 cents or 10 games for 30 cents. And when they price that the same as Super Metroid, you're just like, what are you doing? Yeah. What are you doing? I bet it will be the first game on Switch in their monthly program.

It's going to be the first Switch game. And then Mario's Woods. I prefer that. Oh, God. But it was Game Freak. That's the Game Freak game we were talking about. Yeah. That's Game Freak's worst paycheck.

Yes, it was. But I mean, if you had to pay a lot of bills while working on Pokemon in the background. And I'm almost positive, Musuda, who is the Pokemon. He was the music. guy now he's sort of the overlord where he was for a while. Now he's not directing stuff anymore. He's a producer. But you can really hear Pokemon-ish music in

this game. It sounds like Pokemon music outside of the classical music that they borrow. And in Japan, it's known as Yoshi's egg like Yoshu no time ago. And in the EU, or wherever it was released in Europe, it's Mario and Yoshi. So I guess Europe had a problem with Yoshi. They needed Mario there. They needed the reinsurance of Mario

being there in order to sell a game with Yoshi in it. You couldn't carry a name. You got a native in there in Italian. Well, the thing is, you are controlling Mario, really. Yeah, actually you are. What is Yoshi even doing in the game? He literally stands on the sideline and watches. He's cheering you on.

He's like, make more of me. I mean, he's talking to you. Yeah. He's talking to you. You're helping his race get more Ryoshi's. Yeah, you're helping, you know, repopulate the Yoshi race after they were driven to extension by Cuba Kids. That's just my theory. Yeah.

Yes. It is a babyish game, and I think that actually sort of launched, Yoshi's sort of being perceived as for babies. as a franchise because it is such a simple puzzle game that anybody can really figure out. Yeah, and I mean, it wasn't an era where you could make a puzzle game this simple and get away with it, but after pollo pollo, things like that, I think it's just

you can't go back to something this simple. Yeah, for sure. We're going to be able to be. I'm going to So, the next to you. game on our list is one that I personally like a lot. It's Yoshi's Cookie another puzzle game

like just a year later. So it came out November 92 in Japan and April 93 in US and I have to say, I probably repeated this a million times. This was my debut in the gaming press. I sent a tip into GamePro the December 93 issue and they printed it. So I'm in that issue

with my Yoshi's Island tip and it was rewritten by editor with like the cookie won't crumble so fast if you follow these tips. I never wrote that. But They sent me a T-shirt, which... Good inspiration, though. Never fit me, even to this day. It's way too big.

Oh, boy. But I think I still have it. But, yeah, it's another puzzle game for Yoshi. Where you mostly plays Mario? Where you both plays Mario? Actually, it's like, it's this giant machine where you're basically... It's a cursor-based puzzle game where you have rows and columns of cookies, and you can shift rows over one to the left or the right, and you can switch columns one up or down.

So you're just kind of moving and switching around columns and rows to match cookies, and you have to get rid of all of them. And it is a match two game, but it's much more complex and interesting and prettier than Yoshi itself. Would you agree with Nehre? I don't know how you feel about Yonius cookie. No, I'm pretty much the same way.

I had it on Game Boy and played it a lot. Yeah, this is NES, Game Boy, and S-N-E-S, right? Yeah, for some reason, Yoshi never got an S-N-E-S release, but it had Game Boy and N-E-S. Yeah, it's weird. Well, I think they knew why waste money on this thing. Especially if they've got Yoshi's cookie coming,

which is a better puzzle game. So with cuter drawings, and I also, I just have something about, like, how the Japanese love of cookies. Like, those are very specifically cookies. I feel like I don't see it in American, or I didn't see it at American bakery. Oh, for sure, yeah. I mean, this game needed a, you know, a collector's edition that came in one of those blue metal Danish butter cookie Dutch tins. I didn't see these cookies until maybe 15 years after I played the game. Because there's a German bakery down the street, and I buy these cookies.

cookies now. I'm like, I'm eating Yoshi's cookies, and they're delicious. Those little checkerboard... Yeah, with the jelly inside. Yeah, yeah, so good. But I just was like, are these jewels I'm matching? Why is this Yoshi's cookie? But yeah, this game was developed by Bulletproof Software. So things are just a little bit off model. Things just aren't quite right. It's not totally ugly, but... Oh, they're Dutch, right? They're Dutch?

Yeah, well, Hank Rogers is Dutch. Hank Rogers is Dutch. So maybe that's like the Danish butter cookie connection. But I don't know if he didn't work on this game. I understand what you're saying, Jeremy. I'm trying to make a theory here. Maybe even better than the caveman theory. Was Olaf Olophson involved? He might have been.

Who knows? But I'll tell you who was involved. Maybe with the Super NES version of the Sony Soundship. Yes. But who was involved was Alexei Pajinov. Alexei Pajinov. Thank you. Thank you so much, Ray.

He actually designed the puzzle mode of Yoshi's Island, which was essentially, not Yoshi's Island, Yoshi's Cookie, which is just like the main mode, except they give you a prescribed number of turns in order in which to eliminate all the cookies. So the Tetris guy made a substantial amount of content in Yoshi's cookie, which is maybe why it was that good. Hey, I never heard that, and I'm not discrediting you yet. Uh-oh.

Whoa. I was just wondering where that came from. Is this an alternative fact? I did my research, but I read an interview or something like that. Because this game was originally a game called Hermitica, designed by a designer named David Nolte and Nintendo bought it, I think. Something happened along the way that made into Yoshi's accent. Island.

Gosh, God, Yoshi's Cookie. I can't stop thinking about Yoshi's Island. Yoshi's Cookie Island. Yes. Was this game the inspiration for Medios? Because the mechanics seem really similar. Medios. Oh, yeah.

I wouldn't be surprised. Like, I feel like this cursor-based puzzle game, like I feel like Paneled upon would kind of draw from this too. Well, I mean, the way you're moving like entire rows of all that. Like, I think if you controlled Yoshi's Cookie with a stylus, you'd pretty much get Medios. I would play that version of the Yoshi's Cookie if they ever made it. But yeah, I can definitely see that.

I wouldn't be surprised if the developers of that game, like Yoshi's Cookie, wanted to do more with that. I think with Yoshi and Yoshi's Cookie back-to-back that also planted the seed with the Nintendo that we can make Yoshi the presenter of puzzle games, and that's how you would then lead Tetris attack later. But I think that's, I think that there's a connection there. And puzzle games were really huge then. I'm sure they're still big now with, you know, lots of phone games and things like that.

But this was like the post-Tetrus wave of people trying to make their own big puzzle game, which is where Pollo Poyo Pollo came out of, which is where Pano came out of, things like that, like big companies making these really interesting puzzle games. Yoshi's Island does feel a little simple. Again, I keep saying it. What's that? God, I can't stop. I'm sorry.

I'm going to put like a little bell in. Maybe it should have just been the Yoshi's Island. I know. I'm going to add in like a little clown horn every time I mess up saying the name of the games. But Yoshi's cookie does feel a little simple. I do prefer Tetris Attack or Panel Dupon however you want. want to call it. Sure.

But I still played a lot of this for this episode, and I still really fell into it. I don't know. It's very soothing as like a very soothing soundtrack. And interestingly enough, I noticed that it has a version of Yoshi with arms looking very much like the Yoshi's Island Yoshi in this game. That's just because he's a little off model. I'm sure whoever was drawing him was like, we need to give this guy arms because he's operating this cookie machine.

It was more squat, too. He really was with bigger eyes. So it was interesting. I never noticed that before, but the Yoshi's Island, I said it at the right time. the Yoshi's Island Yoshi is in this game. We're going to move on to Yoshi Safari. Oh, boy. So, Ray, you're right to question some research

because I was questioning research on this where it was like, oh, hi, I'm Wikipedia. And according to me, Yoshi Safari was made by Nintendo R&D1 and directed by Satoroiwada. And I was like, I say no to you, sir. Have you even seen this game? So I did some more digging. And the theory I dug up was that Tose

probably made this game, just given the lack of polish and the slightly off-model characters. And Tosei is not a bad company. I will say that I don't think Tosei's a bad company. But it has a certain Tosey feel and there's no credits on this game. I would say the character designs definitely have a stoffy feel to them, too. Oh, yeah, you're right, yeah.

I think the better evidence is that they did make the Super Scope 6 cartridge. That's it, too. And the lack of credits, too, because Nintendo games, they had credits at this time. All of them did. Yeah, so I feel like there was a reason why they didn't have credits. The shame of Tose. Yes. The shame of Tosay.

Shame of Yoshi Safari as well. Yeah. And actually, I did a article for Games Radar. It was like the evolution of Yoshi Box Art, but I was in like 2013. I earned $100 whole dollars for that, so thank you so much future. I invested in my future with that money. But there's interesting censorship in this game, at least in the box art, where the Japanese box art has Mario literally shooting Bowser in the face.

with like a superscope style gun. Well, he's shooting Bowser's castle while like a, you know, what's his, Mufasa-esque vision of Okay, yeah, so that's, it's like his head,

the head, the head version of him that's on his castle then. So in the Japanese box art, it's Mario and Yoshi's back firing a bullet or an explosion at it and the explosion is exploding on the Bowser face.

And in the American box art, Mario is erased and Yoshi is just sitting there and for some reason, Bowser's face is still exploding. Regardless, is Mario with a gun. Yes. Yeah.

So. I wonder how Nintendo is of America was feeling at that time that, like, video game violence is all over the news. And the Nintendo of Japan hands, I'm like, here's a light gun. Sell this gun. Yeah, they would have been... They would just take them back to the Super Mario Brothers original concept where Mario was going to shoot guns instead of a fireball. If Joe Lieberman saw Mario with a gun, he would be straight back to Congress for those guys. God, yes.

I mean, this was released in the fall of 93 for the U.S., and I believe the congressional hearing on video game violence was December of 93. Is that correct? Yeah. I'm pretty sure it was. Yeah, so I feel like Nintendo was always trying to sanitize things, but even they could feel like the Mortal Kombat effect in the air

where it's like, this is who we are, we are not going to put Mario with a gun out on store shelves, even if it's a fun gun that, you know, doesn't really kill people. I mean, we did make a plastic bazooka, but, you know. That is so strange to me, though, they would have had trouble selling the Super scope when, like,

five, yeah, five years before this, millions were buying their system with a gun. They were used to associating, oh, Nintendo's the people who make the game where I shoot things. Based on shooting animals, not like cartoony, fun creature. It's just like real ducks.

They're pretty cute ducks. They soften the violence against birds where the ducks were just like I don't know what happened after they hit the ground, but they had this like, I don't know. I feel like they made it a little more palatable than what it could have been. I've played those arcade hunting games and they're a little tragic actually. It's like, yeah.

I do want to talk briefly. I want to touch upon Yoshi's Island. We'll control this conversation. Oh, go ahead. Okay. We'll take turns. I'll take turns. Yeah, okay.

Oh, yeah, actually, yeah, there's more about the game. We can talk more about it. It's basically like what, it's like an alternate universe where Sonic R was Yoshi's Safari, because it's basically Mario Kart on foot. Yeah, the way it looks, it really does look like that, yeah. And you really just are staring at the back of Yoshi's head the entire time as it bobs up and down and as the flat landscape. The true first experience. Yeah.

And also from a Nintendo history standpoint, this was the first, I believe, the first English language release where she was called Peach and not Princess Toadstool. You're right, that's right. And I think that also goes to this being a Toose release or a B-level release that A-level localizers in Nintendo of America would have made sure it said Toadstool, not Peach. Well, there's very little to translate in it. There's no cutscenes necessarily. Yeah, they probably, they might have even written that text in Japan. and, you know, just sent it over because there wasn't a lot to it.

But hey, they were ahead of the curve, though. Yeah, yeah, that's true. I forgot about the peach thing. Thanks, Henry. I don't think they were ahead of the curve. No, I know. Missed it. And then Yoshi's name was Eggman, but...

It actually could be. T, Eggman, don't you goop. It makes more sense. So I do want to briefly touch upon Yoshi's Island because, again, God, this game is a work of beauty. I was almost brought to tears by playing this game for research. We're going to time you and see how long

this is such a time. We're briefly going to touch on it. I bet it's going to be like 30 minutes. And I will say, please find a way to play the original, even if you have to steal it. I know that's bad to some people, but I played the GBA one on my Wii U

for like five minutes and I was like, I can't do this anymore. Just find a child who owns a copy, punch them to take it. That's like a 30-year-old child at this point, right? Yeah, right. Yeah, so like I tried playing that GBA one on my Wii U. I lasted five minutes and I was like,

screw it. I got the ROM. I got my SNES USB and I was in, I was in Hog Heaven, or Yoshi Heaven. I did beat it on the GBA, but that was when it was new, and I didn't have as much of an alternative for it then. Yeah, Nintendo is not giving you a way to play the original. You're not hurting anyone, and it deserves you to play it.

And I want to put that out there. Do you think it is like a super effects chip thing? Is that, like, a licensing thing? We've talked about this a lot, and I don't think we have a consensus. There's no hard, fast fact about it. Yeah. I mean, we kind of sub-tweeted, I just totally forgot his name.

Organaka, yeah, yeah. We sub-tweeted him into a conversation about it, and he jumped in and said, yeah, as far as I know, like, there's no licensing issue or anything like that. So I don't know if it's technical, like if it's a lot of R&D trouble that Nintendo just doesn't want to bother with.

Because the original Star Fox never got virtual console either, did it? Right, no SFX chip. Yeah. One or two is on virtual console. Yeah, but either. way I do. I love Yoshizan. I think it is one of my top five games of all time.

I love that game. So I actually, I wanted, another thing that drew me to Jeremy's work when I was a much younger person was that I felt he was one of the few people really talking up how awesome Yoshis Island was in like 2000. Nobody else was. Everybody had forgot about it.

And I was sold on it early too. I was one of those people who would rent the free Blockbuster rental of a commercial for for a Nintendo game. Oh, right, yeah. The one they have for Yoshi's Island of just some saying, like, every detail. Like, look at this.

Look, this door fell down, and it's polygons. Is that crazy? More than any other Mario game, and I'm still, are you still keeping track of time? Because I need to get all this in. What are we at? We're at two minutes. Oh, God, thank God. Okay, so more than any Mario game, this is my favorite 2D Mario game.

I think it has more ideas than any 2D Mario game, more unique ideas that are never reused. And I feel like the development of this game was at a time when there was a sort of a platformer arms race. and Nintendo was even competing against themselves. So it's like we had like Sonic, Earthworm, Jim, and DocuCon Country, all happening in this little bubble. And Nintendo was like, we are Nintendo. We make the best 2D platformers.

We're going to show you the best 2D platformer ever. And I think that was the thesis for Yoshi's Island. Like, this is going to be the end-all, be-all 2-D platformer. Fuck off rare. We'll show you how it's done. It was also, it was made by a team of people who knew they were or who were making Super Mario 64 at the same time. Yes, yes. So they would know that this might be at the time.

they could know this might be their last 2D game they make with that budget, with that group. That's very true. They all kind of, so I feel like I mention this every time I'm on Retronaus, but I did, I interviewed Takeshi Etizaka about this, the director of Yoshi's Island. This was for like the reveal of the Wii U, and then in the last five minutes, in 2012-E-3. In last five minutes, I said, Yoshi's my favorite game, can I ask you a couple questions about that. And one was about, what do you remember about the development?

And he said it was not easy, but he was surrounded, like he was working with all these other super high-level Nintendo guys who would go on to, in the N64 era too now, lead their own teams on their own. So they were the A-team of Nintendo, of EAD at least. And secondly, I asked, like, because I had read these stories, like, Miyamoto did, made the car of drawing super cutesy as an FU to the, to Rare. And so I asked if, like, was it was, was the design of Yoshizal inspired by Donkey Kong Country in those games? He's like, he did say it was in response to that. Like, they were, they made it cartoonie in response talking about country. He didn't throw shade at DKC or, whereas, don't quote Henry Gilbert is saying, Tessigris says, Donkey Kong Country sucks.

You'll never work in this town again, Henry. But he did indicate that it was, I don't have it, I don't have all the words in front of me, But he did indicate that it was in response to talking about. I believe it. And I also believe the other thing you said where we all believe this at the time, too, where Nintendo probably thought this is going to be the last real big 2D game we'll ever make outside of Game Boy Advance or whatever comes next. So they really put all of their stuff into it.

Okay, we're running out of time. But what else did I want to say? All the people that worked on this game still work in Nintendo. I looked at all the level designers. They still design levels in Mario games. Even Mario Run. So like all these people still work in Nintendo, which blows my mind. But not really because you never leave Nintendo if you do a good job there, I think.

The only way you leave Nintendo was in a body pack, really. And Yoshi's Island set the tone for a lot of rules of Yoshi that would go forward from that on, like that, that there are multiple Yoshis that also a history of Mario that did not exist to that point to make it a real prequel of this is Baby Mario and Baby Luigi in the Mushroom Kingdom. The grammar of Yoshi movement, we have established the butt stomp, we have the floaty jump with that, allows you to like have an arc in the air. We're wrapping up Jeremy. Jeremy's frantically pointing out his watch. The butt stomp, the floaty jump, the throwing of the eggs. And it'd make Yoshi, green Yoshi, the Yoshi, which would, I mean, I guess he kind of already was, but you start the game.

The first level is Yoshi, the last level, you are green Yoshi, instead of the different colors you'd been to that point. Yeah. And there's a bunch of pastel colors. But we have to cut off the Yoshi's Island discussion. Please let me know how soon you want me to make this episode because I am just like, I want to keep talking about it, but I can. I already have a lot of notes.

But again, this episode has so many Yoshi's games, and Yoshi's Island deserves its own, not just episode, but podcast series. That'll be the next Patreon tier, exploring Yoshi's Island. We'll be right back, guys. We'll take a break, and we'll be back with the rest of Yoshi's games. So we're back, and we're here to talk about. So we're back and we're here to talk about a very very, a very good. polarizing Yoshi's game that I've kind of come around

on. I'm not sure how I really feel about it yet, but I don't hate it as much as I used to. And that is Yoshi's story, which came out on December 21st, 1997 in Japan in March 10th, 1998 in the United States. And this is a game that really just broke my heart into pieces originally because I didn't have a Nintendo 64

at the time. I just borrowed one from a friend to sort of catch up on Nintendo games that I couldn't play. And I rented Yoshi's story, and I'm like, cool, it's like a Yoshi's Island sequel. I love Yoshi's Island as we talked about previously. And I played through it and I was just like, this is just

crap. Like, there were, what, there are six stages in this game. It's so easy and it looks bad and why are they talking? Why are they singing? I just immediately hated it and I never really revisited it until this podcast episode and fortunately my girlfriend played a lot of this growing

up and I didn't. And she kind of explained the game to me and it's a surprisingly complex game How do you guys feel about Yoshi's story? I kind of have a better appreciation for it now that I know how to play it. I mean... How do you play it? I'll tell you that in a second.

I was super-de-duper excited for it. The second I saw there was another Yoshi's Island coming, I was like, hell yeah, I'm getting this thing. Pre-ordered it to Ice Orest, got a black Yoshi's Beanie Baby for doing so. Oh. And then when I got it, I felt I played it like a Mario game, which meant it was done in like two hours. And it's like, I paid 20, like, I paid 60, 70 bucks for this thing. I was very upset by it. And I, the only thing I ended up liking in the end of it was it's like offensively saccharine.

Yes, yes, and it really is. Yeah, this is, I think, the final nail in the coffin for, like, Nintendo's perception among the gamers. Yes. Because, like, they betrayed gamers. Well, you know, Nintendo of America at least worked so hard on the play-at-loud stuff to try and, like, turn around their image. And then, you know, a few years later, here comes Yoshi's story. and it's like, okay, well, Nintendo's for kids. Bye.

And then that just sort of like ruined it for like years. Jeremy Parrish, where were you when Yoshi became a baby? Bob, I'm glad you asked. So I was an adult. You were a man. I was. I was in college. Yeah, so I, like Henry, was super excited when I saw that there was going to be a Yoshi's Island story

because I loved that game. It came out of nowhere and just blew me away. And I was like, yeah, more of that. That was one of the reasons I got an N64. And then the early reviews hit, I think, like, IGN or N64.com at the time, did like a preview hands-on and said, what the hell is this? It's terrible. And I said, wait a minute, if respected journalistic institutes like N64.com say it's not good. They didn't say the graphics were solid and the controls were tight, right?

I was like, wait. So about a month before it came out, I took a family trip. to Dallas or something. I don't know. And I happened to go to a store that had a demo of it. And so I tried it for myself. And I was like, whoa, they were right.

What is this thing? This is not what I wanted at all. And so I was actually one of the games that made me say, maybe I should trade my N64 for a PlayStation. And so I did. And so I guess I'm one of the people Ray was making fun of.

But I have been told by a few people that there is a lot of hidden depth to the game. There really is, yeah. Yeah, I'll let you talk about that. Ray, did you say, but I do want to go back and give it a fair shot at some point. And I'm, you know, I want to do like Nintendo 64 retrospective videos at some point. So that's pretty early in the system's lifestyle, lifespan style.

Ray, did you say your thoughts on Yoshi's story? No, I don't have much anyway. I mean, I did buy it and everything, but I guess I was disappointed. So the concept for this game, I mean, there are tutorial blocks. I feel like this is a game you need to read the instructions first before you play. and when I rented it, it did not have any. So I was kind of lost on this concept. And it gradually teaches you, but I don't think it teaches you fast enough.

So the sort of way this game plays out is there's no goal line at the end of a stage, as you would find in Mario. The stage ends once you eat 30 pieces of fruit. Which surround the screen. Which surround the screen, yeah. There's no shortage of fruit. Yes, there's no shortage of fruit. But you really want to, so ideally you want to eat the 30 melons in each stage. There are these like light green melons.

which apparently in Japan are like a sign of luxury. You buy these very, very expensive melons if you're a rich person and eat them, even though I feel like melons in America. I think you mostly give them as gifts, actually. Oh, really? Take them to people's houses when they have you over and you're like, my very nice gift for you. I feel like melons in America are like the filler and fruit salad.

No one likes them. It's just like, where's the more interesting fruit, you know? But yeah, so they're the melons that are cut with like the T-stem that you see. They're only cut like that in Japan. So you want to get all 30 of those in a stage if you can. And like, that's the ultimate goal is to play the stage as well as you can to, find all of those 30s throughout this stage that loops. And in order to help you in finding these things, which is something that is not in

Yoshi's Island is you can warp between four different points in the stage. So at some points in Yoshin's Island, you can miss collectibles forever. And there's a focus on collecting in the game. This game at least gives you a way to jump around the stage and go back to places you might have slipped by or fell past a piece of fruit that you wanted, which is pretty cool. And if you can't get that all the melons, you want to prioritize the fruit you eat either by the lucky fruit that is chosen when you start playing the game randomly, or the fruit that your color Yoshi likes.

And the ultimate point of the game is to make your Yoshi as happy as possible because once you eat enough of the right kind of fruit, Yoshi becomes quote-unquote super happy. The music changes. When you butt-stomped by shy guys, they turn into fruits. You're invincible. He has all these special effects, but he is super happy when he eats enough fruit.

But yeah, I mean, so really the goal of the game is sort of like a scavenger hunt to find the ideal fruit. to eat. And the game is weird because conceivably there are six stages in every session of the game. So there's one stage you play per page of the story book that is the metaphor for Yoshi's adventure.

Finding these giant hearts in stages, add more stages to the following pages. So as you play through the game and find things, you're making the book bigger conceivably. You're adding more stages to the pages of each individual stage. Does this make sense to any of you

guys? Yeah. No, I mean, this It wasn't explained well by the game, though. It's complex. And if you're playing it, but this, I think it's also worth thinking about it in the historical context that in early 98 when this came to America, when I played it, their Nintendo had pretty much, like, given up 2D games. This was their first 2D game on a console. This was the first high-level 2D game they'd made since the N64 and launch because

they were just so, they were, they were making the best 3D games. Then to go backwards to Tudy, I guess I expected it to, especially with the connection to Yoshi's Island, I expected it to be a point A to point B goal type thing. Same here, yeah. Not the quizzical searching for melons. And it is still very much like Yoshi's Island that you're going through these very dense levels with lots of collectibles to focus on finding things. And also all the Mario USA enemies are still in there, too. Exactly. And there's Yoshi throwing eggs.

There's Yoshi's butt stomping. all of Yoshi's Island stuff is present in this game but if you're playing through this game not knowing what it is you play six easy stages and it ends and you're like what the hell was that? There's no way for you to know that you could add more stages to this book that you're playing through I just played through it once and I was like that's Yoshi's Island has like 50 huge stages

with lots of stuff to find. This is a six stage game so having this explained to me my by girlfriend who is a true gamer I must admit she plays Dungeons and Dragons like twice a week so she is a true gamer girl and I am just a fraud. But she is the one who explained this to me. And it made a lot of sense. I don't know if I quite like it.

There's no way I like it as much as Yoshi's Island, but I feel like taking it on its own terms and trying to ignore how bad it looks on a 4K TV. It's ugly as sin now, too. And it kind of always was, I think. I don't know. I never liked how it looked. Well, it's a style they would definitely refine

in later handicraft platformers that Nintendo has made so many of. I think this game also just bummed me out because, in retrospect, it is the first sign of, like, Yoshi's the B-tier series now. Yeah, yeah, officially. It is not their AT. Nintendo does not put their best and brightest on it. So who worked on this game? I will tell you, the soundtrack is by Kazami Takata, who is a Totaka.

Yeah, sorry, thank you. Totaka. He's a very, like, one of Nintendo's more eccentric employees, at least in the terms of his output. I mean, KK. Slider and Animal Crossing is based on him correctly. Correct? Is that right? Yeah. And his music has a very distinct off-kilter, sort of whimsical touch to it that is not found in like Koji Kondo's, you know, Zelda and Mario music. It's very, at times odd.

And I will play like one of the, one of the songs from Yoshi's Island right now. Or so Yoshi's Story. Does this game have to talk a song in it? I'm certain. I have to assume it does. I feel pretty sure it does. But look at, look at, there's the video for it. Yeah.

So here is, so there's a common. theme for Yoshi in this game that became Yoshi's song essentially and it's reiterated throughout in various versions in this game and here's the rap version of it. Oh god. Yeah. And you can really hear that

sort of a vocaloidish thing that would become KK Slider. So not all the songs are great or fun to listen to, but... That's like when you play the weird chanting music and Wii music. Yes, yes. And I'm glad you brought that up right. So, yeah, this reminds me a bit of Earthbound, too, with the weird samples, the odd choices, things like that. But again, I believe Totaka, right?

That's his name. Okay. Totaka did direct Wii music. We can't hold that. against him. I feel like it was an idea of Mianamoto Head, and sometimes you just have to do those ideas, even if you don't want to. But yeah, who directed this game? It's a Nintendo employee that

we don't really hear that much about, but he directed some pretty big games, so Hedekekono is the director of this game. He also directed... We hear about him. I mean, he's the Mario Kart guy. Oh, yeah, okay. Does he still do Mario Kart? Yes. Yeah, I feel like I wasn't the same old. I'm still around. I just feel like he is sort of

far down the list when you name off Nintendo. employees. I'm not saying he's not important. I'm just saying you don't really hear his name as much. He's nobody's favorite, I guess. Aw. I'm not a... What the fuck? Jeremy just ripped his... I love Hideki Kano T-shirt.

Where are we? Power rankings. Ranking the Nintendo's. I'm not saying, again, this is not a value judgment. I'm just like, oh, I don't really hear this guy's name a lot. But again, directed the first two Mario Carts. Help direct Yosh's Island. There was like a four-man directing team on that game because it was so big. Luigi's Mansion is the Yoshi's story of the GameCube. It really is.

But I like it a lot more. No. Take that back. All right, I take that back. In terms of disappointment, but then people realizing it wasn't so bad, maybe. Can we say that? Yes. So, yeah, again, I'm not...

I loved it from the start. I'm not judging Mr. Conno. I loved his Mario Car games he's worked on, so yes. I did enjoy Yoshi's Island. I enjoyed Luigi's Mansion when I first played it much more than Yoshi's story. That's for sure. For this game, I really think it deserves a true HD remake in the manner of Yoshi's Woolie World. old Kirby's Epic Yarn.

I mean, this game is really going for that look. But again, those assets, the Nintendo 64 was never a 2D powerhouse. And this game is meant to be played on an SDTV in 1997, and that's it. It's really hard to play now. It's hard to control with the Wii U controller. And I feel like the design is so interesting and so unique, I feel like if they put this on the 3DS or made some sort of Switch remake, I don't know. I just want to see this game look better because it's hard to look at for too long.

That was one other thing that angered me. about it in 982, that I felt like Yoshi's Island was made against the grain of CGI pre-rendered stuff, and then Yoshi's story is the CGI pre-rendered character. Yes. That isn't so bad after one.

Actually, Yoshi's Island begins with a very Donkey Kong country looking Yoshi and Stork and Mario and I think it's just putting that up front, like just be glad it doesn't look like this, because we could have done this. They're just putting it out there. And then as soon as you see that great island rotating, you're like, oh, thank God.

You didn't actually do what I thought you would. It's just, I don't think the graphics are the biggest deal as the fact that it's just annoyingly vague. Like for a game that is perceived to be for babies, like you cannot figure it out without reading the manual. That's true, right? And it is weird that it's such a babyish game with like babbling, grunting babies saying their own name. And being happy. Yes, and being happy. But again, someone, it was like, it's like monster hunter where someone had to sit me down and be like, okay, Bob, this is how the game works.

This is the goal. This is what you're supposed to do. You know, as someone, you know, I was not an animal. not someone who really plays games to 100% them. So I didn't really like the whole collecting stuff in each stage and just having that be the goal. Yeah, and they're really big stages too in this game with lots of little corridors, very, very, very dense stages.

So we're getting into some sketchy territory here with Yoshitopsy-turvy. Quite a jump in time. So that's six years in between these two. This is December 2004 in Japan and June 05 in the U.S. So, like, Yoshi was still present in all the NITMario games that there were a ton of. I mean, he was in every sports game. Smash Brothers. He was in CART games, Smash Brothers.

So it's not like Yoshi wasn't anywhere. He was still very present, but he didn't have a game of his own until this time. Yeah. And this is the first Yoshi game developed by Artoon, who we mentioned in the Sonic the Hedgehog episode. This is the studio founded by Naota Oshima, who is Sonic the Hedgehog's character designer. And they would eventually become sort of the Yoshi's studio in a while. way. After becoming our zest, I forget what happened. They were like absorbed and then they broke off and did their own thing again. But this is an obscenely ugly game. Jeremy, you

might have reviewed this. I did. Can you talk about this? You remember? This came out right around the same time as Yoshi's Touch and Go, right? It did. Yoshi's Touch and Go was actually before this in the U.S. but after this in Japan. Yeah. Yeah. So this was kind of a dark time for Yoshi actually. It was. And a dark time for Nintendo in general, you know, for someone in the Games Press, where, you know, perception is everything. It was really hard to kind of drum up enthusiasm around the office for anything dealing with Nintendo at this point. Like, the DS was so weird and no one really knew what it was about yet.

And then you had the sort of Game Boy Advance, like the straggling tail end of games like this, where it was like, what? So, yeah, this game, it's, I guess, kind of an interesting idea sort of built around the same an accelerometer concept as Kirby Tilton Tumble. And Mario Wear Twisted, which is a great, great game. Yeah, that was a really good game. This was not. It's a really kind of

clumsy, sloppy platformer. It's really ugly. The graphics are really extraordinarily bad. And they all move super cheap. Yeah, everything feels cheap. Bad flash animation. It's like... It was shocking to me. It's like early Homestar Runner Bad. It's like

Icebox cartoons. But, you know, this was this was not, you know, an amateur homemade cartoon. It was a professionally released video game on a physical medium. Yeah. From a major publisher. So how does this play exactly? A major franchise. Yeah. Basically, you control Yoshi by

tilting the game system back and forth. Which is I guess an interesting idea. Like, Loco Roco did that sort of and was much better about it. This tries to be more like a traditional platformer doing that. It's been

a, it's been, you know, a decade since I played it. but I just remember it not being fun in any sense of the word. I really, really disliked it. The good news is I don't think anyone will ever play this again. I don't think they'll ever re-release it. I don't know why. It's really hard to look at it, like you said. Switch virtual console, just to wait.

That'll be a maze game. We can all talk about that when that happens, yeah. So, yeah, this was also called Yoshi's Universal Gravitation in Europe, and I don't know, like, you're just booing the concept of Europe? No, just weirder. It is a bad day. Is that like a turn of phrase in the U.K.? No, no, no.

It's a literal translation of the Japanese name. Oh, okay. The title also has it beneath its name. We call it Yugg for short. You feel like Topsie Turby, that's more of a British phrase anyway. They would have gone with that overseas. Is it? Higgledy, Piggledy? Oh, I mean, I think of it.

I think of it because that's the name of the film about Gilbert and Sullivan. There's always those weird moments where, like, European games. European games do not just leave the Japanese name alone and just give it to you saying. I actually like the name. the title, Universal Gravitation, but the game itself. It's crap. Yeah, total crap. I don't think anyone can argue against that.

I've never found a fan of this game, but the next game... I bet someone will show up in the comments of this. Bear in mind that this was the point at which I was really, you know, in the kind of early days of working in the games press professionally, really going to bat for like 2D games, handheld games. Like, I was always trying to cheerlead them and, you know, call people's attention to them and say, like, you should play this game. Don't overlook handheld games. Don't overlook 2D games because they're still great.

And this one, I just couldn't do that. Yeah. I was wrong. This is terrible. You're right. Why did I waste 10 hours of my life? But the next game is good. That is a qualifier to that, I guess.

But this is Yoshi. Yoshi Touch and Go released in January of 05 in Japan and March of O'5 in the U.S. sort of a very, very early DS game. It's made by Nintendo, not by Artune, instructed by the director of Benchroy 2. And I did not know that until today. apparently he is the guy who put this game together. I believe it was supervised by Takashi Tezuka, who is like the second in command in terms of 2D platformers,

like Mario and things like that. Pretty much, yeah, he's the exact producer on most of those things. I guess the title usually is just producer, but there's a seniority implied there. Of course. And this is not the first runner. I was looking up the history of runners and apparently B.C.'s quest for tires?

Is that what it's called? Sure. You also had, you know, Metro Cross from. Namcoe. Okay, yeah. I mean, this is a long history, but I was playing this on my Wii U controller, and this really feels like a modern runner. You're just essentially going for distance, and

it's all touch interface, but it's kind of weird because when you're playing on your Wii U controller, seeing both screens, you can only interact with the bottom screen, and I really want to interact with that top screen. So I feel like they could really remake this game, and I should say the concept is, so the first part of any time you play this is

you're guiding Mario downwards, baby Mario. as he falls. You're drawing clouds to kind of steer his descent away from spikes and into coins. And the second part of the game is he falls on Yoshi's back. And you do the same thing, basically, you build clouds to make Yoshi run and avoid obstacles. You tap the screen to eat enemies. You tap the screen to throw eggs. It's all very cute. It's all very interesting. It's all retailing of Yoshi's Island. Yes, kind of in a way. For the DS and it's all touch base, of course. The problem is, I mean, it's an interesting thing and it works, it works, but it's also not a $30 box product. It's very slight. Yeah. That was, you know,

I said, you know, this was a dark time for Yoshi and Nintendo, et cetera. Like, this game was not nearly as bad as universal gravitation topsy-turvy. Oh, no way. It's fun. The problem is it's just very slight. It does not feel like a standalone game. Like, there's not that much to it. And if it had been a mini-game contained in something else, like Mario 64 DS, it would be fantastic.

It does feel like a mini-game. It really does. But this was, you know, like you said, very early DS software, and it was in that experimental phase. Like, what do we do with the game system? We can't make minigame collections all we've done. And it also made you blow into the DS mic, which we all love doing that, don't we? It's never embarrassing.

It's my favorite thing to do on trains and on the part. I just love it. Yeah, well, it feels from the Nintendo School of Thought they usually have at a system launch of what are the tools we can do with, like what can we do with the gimmick of this system on a surface level, and they get that ready for launch.

Like, one-two switch is totally from the same field. from the same way of thinking as Topsy Turr, as Touch and Go, and same with, like, we play. It all feels pretty similar. I like it more when those ideas are packaged in a Wario-Ware thing, which I've also kind of said, Switch, one-two-Switch seems to be a Wario-Ware game without Wario in it, which makes me sad.

Yeah. Yeah, this game, like, the concept of having indirect control over your characters and having, like, a traditional platform adventure by not actually directly controlling your characters would be done really, really well about, what, like six months later by Kirby's Canvas Curse? That's right.

It's the same concept, but how, I guess, you know, that extra time allowed them to really sit down and put together a really brilliant, really creative, really substantial game. This feels like, it's not obviously because different development teams, but this feels like the rough sketch for that.

Here's an idea, and then later, you can buy the full game based on it. It feels less designed. It feels just a little more free form. It's a concept on the page, but the design really isn't there like it is. And Rainbow Curse is really good, too. The Wii U.S. sequel is really good.

Yeah, I love that game. But, you know, it's funny. You mentioned that it just makes me think now that, like Kirby, other than Yoshi's Island, like in the post-Joshi's Island history of Yoshi, it feels like the Kirby games, like, come a year later, similar-ish, and they're better than Yoshi. Except with an R2.

Except with Yoshi's Woolly World and Kirby's... That's true. Epic yarn. Yeah. That's backward. But, yeah, like, I would say canvas curse was the point at which the DS all of a sudden, like, had an app that really showed what the system could do. And this could have been that, but it's just, it needed longer in the oven. Yeah.

That's when I bought a DS because I saw reviews for stuff like touch and go, just like, eh, seems too light. I don't, and I'm good. And then, like, the electric blue DS came out alongside the canvas curse. And so that's when I finally got it. But I still never went back and got touch and go just because the reviews made it sound like $10 was the right price for that. I bought it, day one. And it would eventually become $10 in a few months. I thought collecting DS games was going to be a good thing to do.

Right. Me too. I'm there with you. I don't know. I'm going to be able to I'm going to be. the a new to be the

the I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm

I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm So our final game on this episode we'll be talking about in great detail is Yoshi's Island DS. And it came out in March of 07 in Japan. And actually eight months earlier, sorry, four months earlier, November of 06.

in the U.S. And I want to put this out here by saying it's the first Yoshi's Island game to ape what the original Yoshi's Island did very, very much to that same sense of design. I mean, Yoshi's story sort of jumped off of it in a way. This is really just kind of sticking to the rules, adding a few more to it.

I want to put this out here. I don't like this game, but asking Artoon to make Yoshi's Island too is unfair for them. Not that they're the worst people on the planet, but the best game design ever worked on Yoshis Island. It was like this great confluence of great designers, great idea people, all putting everything

together in this platformer arms race to make the best platformer ever. Asking anybody to make that again and outdo it, it's like making a new Star Wars, basically. Like, you can't make it better than the other Star Wars. It's always going to be worse, even if it's still enjoyable. And I wouldn't call R2 the J.J. Abrams with games. No. They're more like the George Lucas, like modern George Lucas. Yeah.

I think, nevertheless, Bob, it is, the game is sort of the mulling fans wish fulfilled because, like, oh, we're just going to make Yoshi's Island again, right? And on paper, that sounds great, because you have even looks the same. Wasn't it promoted first to Yoshi's Island, too? Like, when it was an answer. And that was too sacrilegious, apparently. I mean, I'm not. They were like, I don't think this game earned that number.

Yeah. And it did, no way. Like, I'm glad Nintendo called the Yoshis Island, yes. Though I feel like they could have come up with, I wish they had done, like, Yoshi's Island Desert Secreter. Something with... Dumb and stupid. Diper shits.

That's what I call it. Because this game is full of babies. And I want to complain about this. Babies of Yoshi's world. Something was happening at Nintendo at this time where every goddamn game had babies in it. I mean, we had the partners in time

with baby Mario, baby Luigi. We had this. Is this when Miyamoto had kids? Because, you know, like everything that he's interested in because of a game. Like, he's suddenly, he's waking up at 3 a.m. to feed a baby. I don't know. He's like, I'm going to make some really annoying babies in my video games. He was in his 50s. I would have hoped that his kids would have already been born.

Does he have kids? I don't remember. I don't know. He was kids. Okay. I would assume they were probably born in the 80s or something, maybe. But he had his dogs. He made his dog games. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, like, babies were everywhere, and I don't have a problem with babies per se, but for some reason they were just in every game, like, Mario Kart double-dashers.

Here's, like, 90 babies. It's like, that's what I wanted out of my life. Baby version of every character. They needed to expand their rosters, and they were Like, well, we don't have that many characters, so how about the baby version? Make their body smaller and give them giant hats. And it has a fight. I mean, I guess they could make new characters within that world instead of just the baby versions of everybody. I prefer when they just added all the Kupa kids and I was like, I'm cool with this.

I like these characters. This was before they were let out of the vault. Yeah. They were still locked away and unrecognized. They were in Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga. I mean, yeah, but that almost felt like Alpha Dream was just shoving him in there. Like, yeah, we got them. Like, they were never anywhere.

Other than that. So I'll tell you all the babies that are in this game. Baby Mario, of course, baby Peach, baby Donkey Kong, baby Wario, and baby Bowser. And they each have their own unique abilities when they're riding on Yoshi's back. And the main gimmick involves switching babies throughout a level in order to nab all of the typical Yoshi's item collectible. So, of course, you have 20 red coins, five flowers, and 30 stars, which is essentially your health in a way. It's basically it's the baby timer. When you lose the baby, that starts ticking down.

And ideally, that is judging your, I mean, that is judging your performance. Baby timer is also known as the biological clock. The biological clock. When that ticks down, Yoshi's got to get pregnant somehow. I mean, it's up to you, buddy. Even though he's a male, it's okay. It finds a way. So, yeah, as you unlock new babies, each stage you get the opportunity to switch them

in order to overcome obstacles, only they can handle, like, let's say there's these invisible M blocks. When you have Mario in your back, you can either see them or hit them and create platforms for other characters to use, and then they can, and use their abilities after that to get the things. It's very complex, and I think it's kind of interesting. But, yeah, there's a little too much going on in this game. But part of the problem is you can only switch babies at baby signs.

There's like baby changing stations. Ha, ha, ha, very funny. Okay, but yeah, it's kind of annoying to have to navigate to those and then go back to the place you need the specific area. Yeah, I wish you could switch them on the fly, and that would have made for a little more effective use of this idea. Extra backtracking through stages that are a little too dense anyway. Yeah.

That just take forever. And then also, it kind of messes up the flow of the level two of, all right, I'm jumping around. This is fun. Oh, there are the monkey bars. Better go get the K. Yeah. You have to go back. All right.

Got it. And we need to talk about the screen gap. Oh, yeah, the screen gap. The screen gap is a big, big problem in this game. Number one, this game should not be sold on the Wii U because there is no way to play it effectively, and I hate that. The one way you can play it is like, we're going to put an image of a 3DS, or sorry, going to put an image of a DS on your TV and you can watch it in those tiny screens like,

no, there are other ways to do this. But sorry, Jeremy, go ahead. I want to know what you think about this. Well, it's just, you know, the DS's two screens are not, you know, directly contiguous. There's a space between them. And games had to figure out how to work with that. Some of them did pretty well. Like Contra 4, even though there's action happening on both screens, it really feels like they thought about what's happening in that dead space and tried to design around it. Whereas this game, not so much. Like, I found constantly as I was playing that I would bump into hazards that were in between the two screens that I couldn't see because of the way the screen was scrolling and

the way the stages were designed because you do navigate on both screens. Right. You know, the screens are like, or the stages are double-decker, basically. Yeah, I mean, when I was playing this for research, I found that they didn't have you jump between screens that often, but they always want you to be paying attention to the other screen. And that's hard to do because that's a lot to take in at once when the screens are connected. especially when one is sitting at a different angle. It also makes the egg throwing across two screens really difficult.

It is weird. Trying to aim that kind of tall orientation is tough. Yeah. I didn't beat this game because I got to the part that annoyed Mimos mixed with the screen gap were the platforms that then had that pink blob on them that would just bounce you off of them, that you would just bounce off of. They put those in such, like, cruel places. it was no fun.

That's basically when I was like, this stop being fun, I'm done, don't need this anymore. And again, it's not fair to ask someone to make another Yoshi's Island that is not Tezica and his team at Nintendo. And I feel like if Yoshi's Island didn't exist and you played this game, you'd be like, oh, it's an okay game. But going from Yoshi's Island to this, like back and forth, you really feel what they missed, these little details. Like, in Yoshi's Island, Yoshi has a real, like, heft and weight to him. Like, they want you to make him make it feel like you're carrying something. So Yoshi's kind of sluggish. She's got like a momentum and a weight to him.

And in a very smart move, Yoshi's Island, not Yoshi's Island DS. Yoshi's Island, there is no run button. Once you move in one direction long enough, Yoshi starts running. In this game, there is a run button, which essentially interrupts what you're doing, because when you hit that button, Yoshi sticks out his tongue, and then you can start moving, and then you break into a run. And I feel like missing on a tiny detail like that, it's so tiny, but it adds so much to Yoshi's Island and why it works.

There's not that little break in the action when you want to start running. You just start running by, you know, moving in the one. direction long enough. I know that's incredibly granular, but it's like they missed that little detail, and I feel like Nintendo, their designers, they really knew how to make Yoshi move. And in this game, it doesn't feel nearly as good. Yeah, I also, somebody who cares way too much about the Mario mythos, I didn't like that Wario got pulled into that.

I just was like, like, like, Wario can exist within the Mario world, but I see him as a land character and his own character. Yeah. For him to be in an EAD-D-related... game and be like, oh, yeah, he's the Mushroom Kingdom. He was a baby there, too. I was like, bleh, don't like that. To a lesser extent, Donkey Kong as well, but more so,

but that's even more complicated. But just having Wario there, it's like, I want him in his own corner. Yeah, I mean, Wario's been dead for so long now that I feel like, oh, it's kind of neat to remember when they were just put him in games, but now he's, since Game and Mario did whatever. At least I suppose it was a master of disguise.

Yeah, that's pretty bad. Oh, yeah. When's our Wario episode? We already did one, Ray? It was like episode two. Oh, Jesus. Time for another one. Yeah, so... No Blends again. Yeah, we could redo that,

do the HD remaster. You know, one of the biggest problems of this game is that aside from the addition of the baby mechanics, it doesn't add anything new that was not in the original

Yoshi's Island. It reasons a lot of graphical assets. Everything is something you've seen before. Like, you know, in Yoshi's Island, it's surprising when you get to the island and there's like little monkeys climbing the trees

and they're kind of harmless, but then, you know, like, they get in your way and interfere. Yeah, and they still Mario, yeah. Okay, but, and that's in Yoshi's Island DS, but there's nothing new. There's nothing in addition to that to make you say, oh, that's, that's unexpected. And it looks worse despite coming out 11 years later. It does not look as good. I mean, they reuse a lot of assets, but the ones that they create themselves don't look as good as the ones in the S&ES game at all.

Like that they had a real, like, like, zing to them. That's kind of a DS problem. Like, new Super Mario Brothers had, you know, lots of familiar enemies, and then the new enemies that they created looked really bad. There were new enemies in that game? Yeah, there were a few, and they had no style, no taste. I can't remember that at all.

But I will say, Henry, do you have something to say? I'm sorry? No, no, that's pretty much it. I mean, I will say that I will give this game points for doing something new. We can talk about Yoshi's New Island. Is it New Yoshi's Island or Yoshi's New Island? New Island.

New Island. I will say that I tried giving that a play on a recent plane trip, and I'm like, I respect Yoshi's Island DS more because they at least try to do something. You were just an uglier Yoshi's Island with one extra gimmick. And it's fine. I mean, it's not offensive.

It's perfectly playable. But again, Yoshi's Island exists. And it's hard to get out of that shadow. Yeah. So that was my initial thought. But then as I played it and reviewed it, I realized this is not for Yoshi's Island fans who played Yoshi's Island 20 years ago and want a sequel. This is for, you know, the young 3DS player who has never played Yoshi's Island.

And, you know, it's... Has no way to play it. Nintendo's fault to a certain degree for never reissuing Yoshi's Island aside from, you know, the GBA port. But even that's a little inaccessible. You have to own a GBA or a Wii U, and no one actually does that. Yeah. Or you could have gotten ambassadored into that with the 3DS, yeah. So I really feel that, but, you know, the young audience, like the target audience for this was not a 3DS ambassador.

Yeah. I feel like if you take this as just an attempt to create a Yoshi's Island, for young players who have never played Yoshi's Island before, it's actually really, really good. Yeah, if you just take this on its own in a vacuum, it's a perfectly fine game, but it's, I live in a world with Yoshi's Island and I can't forget about it, you know?

That's fair, but I don't know. As a reviewer, I feel like I need to kind of think, like, who is this for? And if it's not for me, I need to understand what they're doing here. So that's one of those cases where I really had to step back out of myself and realize, yeah, this is disappointing to me, personally, but it is a well-made game, and it's for people who don't have my, you know, 40 years of video game experience.

It's not for me, and it wasn't for you. I wasn't reviewing it, but it's like at the same time, I don't need to play it. It's not for me at all. I, you know, actually, I would have reviewed New Island, but we ended up giving it to then freelancer Cat Bailey, frequent guest on this show. But she, I liked it a little more than she did. I edited her review, but my, uh, comparing to the DS one, I think, think New Island is a better baseline game, but it certainly doesn't try as many things as

D.S. does, though it's better at the shit it tries. Yeah. That counts for a lot, too. Yeah, and the big, the big egg actually was kind of fun. I wish they'd done that more. Yeah. And maybe I'm still, maybe it was Jeremy. I forget who I read said it. Like, it is, it is, it is, it is kind of a sonic game. Like, it's the closest to Yoshi game has been to, there's, like, a lot of like speed running parts like there are the parts where you are rocketing through the stage as fast as you can and you have to like

dodge stuff and that definitely felt like a sonic stage to me and it ended with spoilers for New Island I did like the well one of the secret boss but the real final boss was being teleported to have a regular Bowser fight in current Mario time

that's kind of fun but graphically too though I thought it was kind of a boring choice. I liked it more than I thought it would, though, because when it was first to NASA, I was like, all right, they're going back to Yoshi's Island. And then when I found out, somebody revealed like, oh, it's Artoon. I'm like, yeah. Must it be Artoon, Nintendo? Well, the next game we can briefly talk about for a minute. It's Yoshi's Woolly World. I lied. We're going beyond 2006. But I feel like it's fine. It's perfectly fine. It's perfectly great. I mean, it's good feel. And they know how to make a game. It's not Yoshi's Island. It's

doing its own thing. It's very collectible-driven. I enjoyed it. It's very cute. And it's coming out for 3-D-S. Yeah, it's Yoshi and Pucci or something like that. It's what's called, Yoshi and Poochis' Rooli World. Yeah, so... The other Poochee. Out of all of these Yoshi's Island derivatives, I would go for that one.

Play it on Wii U, play on 3DS. It's not going to be the same thing, but I feel like they're better than R-Toon games. Oh, totally, well, I mean... The Woolly World. Woolly World gets the egg tossing really right. Like, that's what's great with it. And it makes the... The floating jumps feel a lot more correct.

It even has the stuff from Yoshi's Island. Nobody really loved the transformation into other things. The brief, like, time power-ups. Yeah, that was... Oh, God. I'm going to talk more about Yoshi's Island. Somebody stop me, please. I will say also that Yoshi's Woolly World,

I don't know about the 3DS version, but the Wii U version has a really nice co-op element. Right. I have, you know, one of my very young cousins, he's like, I guess, four now, maybe five. He likes to come over and, you know, play video games. Usually it's Disney Infinity, but he gets bored of that after a little while. So his next favorite game to play at my place is Yoshi's Woolly World.

And he's okay, he's actually figured out, you know, despite being four, he's figured out a lot of the sort of complex mechanics, but he has a much better time when he plays at co-op with me. And I can kind of pull him through and give him guidance. And it's a very, like, you can turn it on super easy mode, so it's almost impossible to die, and it's great for playing with kids. It's like it's a really good cooperative, not like new Super Mario Brothers where you get in each other's way and you hate each other. That seems so annoying to play with other people.

Yeah, like this is much more of a helpful collaborative co-op play. So that's something most people I think overlook. But having experience that myself, I'm like, oh, there's an extra element to this game that most people, I think, you know, our age may not know about it. Yeah. And it looks really good too. I remember like one Nintendo directs back when the Wii was tanking or like in serious trouble and like the Nintendo. The Nintendo Direct opened with Nintendo employees going to a fabric store. It just showed you how different Nintendo was. Oh, that was their E3.

Oh, man. That was the first E3 direct. Oh, okay, yeah. I think you just mean that they showed Willie World super early. He was like, oh, God, we're making games for it. Just calm down. Yeah, yeah. That was before the fabric thing.

That was like, that was one of their first emergency directs was. We're making all these other things. Like, look at this idea. Because I remember six months later, they didn't show it at that E3. And I did ask Tesu come on that same interview. like, hey, where's that game? He's like, we'll talk about that later. If I was like, okay.

And it took him another six months to show it again. I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. So I have one final question for everybody. So I have one final question for everybody. something that I think about a lot, being a big Yoshi's Island fan, and we will have an episode on that

soon. I want to do it this year. I want to sit down with that game, play it back to front, get everything and play everything in that game. But my question is, can Yoshi's Island ever receive a proper sequel and should it? I mean, we've seen various attempts mostly unsuccessful in my eyes,

but again, no Yoshi for Old Man, I guess, is the slogan here in operation. But what do you guys think about this? Again, I feel it's fine for Yoshi's Island to just be its own one thing, and I kind of want people to stop trying to do another one. It was, again, this

moment in time with these people that can never happen again, and it was made under these conditions, which made it one of the best platformers of all time. I think you don't want to keep chasing that dragon and thinking you're going to, or that dinosaur. But I think you're not going to

get it. It was a very specific era. I think Nintendo has shown what they want modern 2D games to be, and it's not Yoshi's Island. They wouldn't put their top people on a game to be Yoshi's Island. I don't think they would make it. And they've shown that if they would make it, they would hire somebody else to do it. They wouldn't want to do it internally. It's the same of like you, everybody wants to Star Fox 642. They don't want to make it.

And I don't think if they did want to make it though, I think you can look at Sonic and see that they, you won't like it when you get Sonic for her. You won't like it when you actually get this thing. Because you can't. It can't really be replicated. That's my feeling. I feel like what made Yoshi's Island great was not that it's Yoshi's Island. It's that it was this game that came out of left field was so counter to the prevailing wisdom and sentiment and direction of game development and design at that point. And nevertheless, had expert level design, had technology gimmicks that really pushed the edge of what that system could do.

It was this really unique combination of, you know, technical advancement and, like, saying, what different can we do with this existing Mario universe? What can we do to really shake things up? Every Yoshi's Island, you know, every Yoshi's Island sequel we've gotten since then has pretty much been more of the same. Yeah, that's true. But that's not what made Yoshi's Island great. And I feel like Nintendo still does make games like Yoshi's Island, but they're not Yoshi's Island. Right. They are Splatoon.

arms or something like that. Like games that, you know, push things in new directions in unexpected ways. Whatever Nintendo does that, you know, captures that spirit of Yoshi's Island is not going to be Yoshi's Island because that exists and they've clearly developed a template for it and an idea of what Yoshi's Island has to be.

So there will never be that level of innovation with this line of games. But I'm open to seeing more sequels if they're as good as Yoshi's Willey World. Like, that's a great game. I love that. How about you, Ray? How do you feel about the true Yoshi's Island sequel or just iterating on it?

I think it's totally possible. They did it with Metroid and they did with Donkey Kong Country. I mean, the problem was they realized too late that Goodfield should have been making them the whole time. Wow. But, I mean, that's the thing, right? We always have Mario and Zelda and then we have our third string platformer series, which is Donkey Kong, Yoshi, Kirby, and so on and so forth. And those just kind of, you know, fill in the gaps the whole way.

And those can be totally fine, but, you know, the fact that, you know, they didn't have the right developer. tethered to Yoshi for the longest time, just really kind of hurt it. And I think also you have a problem with, like, those Yoshi games adhering too much to gimmicks. And that seems to be exacerbated when you have a developer who, you know, is just kind of like being tossed into the fire

and like, okay, figure out how to make this gimmick work with Yoshi or whatever. And you just don't get a great good game out of it. But yes, we can totally make a fine, acceptable sequel to Yoshi's Island. We just haven't seen it yet. But I think we are closer than ever. Well, Ray, you've given me some hope now.

Yeah, Ray's, I... I feel good about life again. Yeah. I should have thought about DKC returns and Tropical Freeze. As proof, you can, you can go back again. Yeah. And make a better thing than the first time. And if the Switch really is for Nintendo fans,

maybe we will get a Yoshi's Island too made by Tazuka and all of the game. We'll be Fire Emblem Island. Yes, Fire Emple Island. And you can rub every Yoshi. And they can all be your wives. Hey, you know what? Yoshi Muso sounds a good idea.

There's so many different... Colored ones are ready. Don't give them any ideas. Mart's magical fabric world. So with that, we're going to wrap up again. There will be Ochi's Island episode. I do want to talk about how it reminds me a lot of Super Metroid in a way that will astound Jeremy.

Spoilers. Yes, so stay tuned for that. As for me, you can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. I also host the podcast Talking Simpsons every Wednesday on the Laser Time Podcast Network. It's a chronological exploration of the Simpsons. Every episode is a new episode of The Simpsons. By the time you listen to this, we should be into season five. A great season, so please listen to that.

Go to Talking Simpsons.com or search for Talking Simpsons in your podcast machine. I also rate for fandom and somethingoffal.com. Go to fandom.com for my video game stuff and something awful. com every other Thursday for comedy. And again, this podcast is brought to you completely by listeners like you and maybe some listeners who don't like you. But still, you should give to our Patreon. It supports the show. It gets all these guys into the room.

It buys all over equipment. And it flies Jeremy out here. We couldn't do the show without you. We do have incentives for people who want to give a little more. But if you just want to give a dollar a month, that would be awesome. If all of you gave a dollar a month, we can do some amazing things with this show. There are still tears we're trying to meet. So please go to patreon.com slash retronauts and see how you can help the show.

We really, really appreciate it. And Jeremy, quit his damn job to do this full time. So do it out of respect for Jeremy, please. Everybody. Out of respect for my wife who needs health care. Yes, exactly. So please, everybody jump in. Where can we find you?

You can find me here at Retronaut. and Retronauts.com, which is a site that I am building into more than just a blog that shows updates on the podcast. So, yeah, do that. Please check our site and listen to our podcast and listen to us on iTunes. You can find me on Twitter as GameSpite. And also, I'm doing the video Patreon, the kind of counterpart for Retronauts doing Game Boy World and good intentions and that sort of thing. Maybe eventually a Nintendo 64 show, I don't know. We'll see if I can get that to that level. of production time

on the videos, but that's Patreon.com slash Gamesbyte, so please help. Ray, how about you? I'm on Twitter, R-D-B-A-A-A-A, and I do a podcast called No More Whoppers, but, you know, just go to the Twitter.

You'll see links to all the stuff I do. And Henry. H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G is my Twitter handle. You'll find all my thoughts there. I promise it'll only be 80% political moaning, but also I write for fandom along with Bob. That's where you'll find my regular video game thoughts. And I'm a regular up here on Talking Simpsons.

I co-host that with PowerBops. Anyway, and that's supported by its own Patreon, patreon.com slash Lasertime. And there's a ton of great Lasertime shows that I have been involved in, including Lasertime 30-2010, tons of great podcast listening if you are looking for more cool podcasts.

And, oh, I almost forgot. If you liked all this talk about Yoshi, one of those podcasts is V-G Empire, which is hosted by Brad Elston, a guest on the show of the past, who does a show about just classic video game music and his love of them. I co-produced with him the Yoshi's music episodes.

So we talk about our favorite music from all solo Yoshi games. It's really good. Just search V-V-G-M-P-I-R-E Yoshi, and you'll find that episode. It's a really good one. I like to think of laser time as the emptiness to our golden girl. occasionally one of us strolls over it makes an appearance so maybe not the yoshi to our super

Mario world oh yeah that could work too no i'm just saying maybe not okay maybe not okay yes too insulting that could be too insulting as long as it's not the aftermash to our mash as long as we're not writing you it's fine by me so we'll be back next week with a brand new episode and we'll see you then thanks for listening everybody You know, I'm sorry, You know, I'm

going to know I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm

I'm I'm I'm on Oh, I'm I don't know.