Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 2/3/2022)

[Image from igdb.com]

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: SNES

Release Date: August 5, 1995

Super Mario World on the SNES was a massive success as an early title for the 16-bit system. It quickly became one of the best-selling video games of all time, outselling the previous titles of the series by quite a substantial margin. It ushered in the new era of advanced gaming hardware with flying colors, and I’d be willing to bet that at least a fraction of its success was due to the inclusion of Yoshi. The adorable scamp won over everyone’s hearts as Mario’s disposable, reptilian steed in Super Mario World. Since his debut, the litmus test for an exceptional Mario game is whether or not Yoshi is present. Why do you think many people prefer Galaxy 2 over the first one? I’m convinced Yoshi’s influx of popularity was intentional on the part of Nintendo, using the cute, green dinosaur as a way to increase their sales margin. How else can you explain why Yoshi was featured on the front cover of Super Mario World? Mario usually doesn’t share the space of any box art, even when the plural title of Super Mario Bros. implies that there’s more than one brother with as much precedence in the game as Mario. Luigi’s immortal status as a secondary character was cemented by not appearing on the box art for four straight games, even when his namesake was in the title. Meanwhile, Yoshi is front and center with Mario in his debut. Nintendo ostensibly had high hopes for Yoshi and their ambitious goals to follow his likely success. Mach 1 of the Yoshi cultural takeover was Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island on the SNES, a sequel/prequel/spinoff of the first Super Mario World. While the game may seem like a direct sequel considering the number on the end of the title, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island is a stark deviation from mostly all the familiarities of Super Mario World, except Yoshi. This means that the sequel here feels like an entirely different experience, which comes with varying degrees of quality.

The only aspect of Super Mario World 2 that shares a commonality with the former World title is the setting of Yoshi’s Island. The remote, sunny land of the chubby-cheeked dinosaurs proved to be a stellar location that gave the first Super Mario World a certain brightness never before seen in a Mario game. The brightness displayed in the “sequel” isn’t after the events of Mario dismantling Bowser’s control over the island in the first game. Super Mario World 2 is a prequel filled with lore about the island’s role in the Mario universe and with Mario as a character. A stork loses both Baby Mario and Baby Luigi to a Magikoopa named Kamek on the way to being delivered to his parents, playing out the biggest white lie scenario that will amusingly affirm any child player’s theories about where babies come from. Kamek accidentally drops Baby Mario, and he briskly lands on the back of an unsuspecting Yoshi. The Yoshi and his tribe take it upon themselves to protect this infant from the Koopas and trek through the island to reunite Baby Mario with the stork and his brother.

It’s sometimes difficult to realize that Yoshi is not a singular character. Yoshi is a species of creature in the Mario universe, just like the Goombas and the Koopas. The Yoshi that hatches out of the eggs in Super Mario World is not the same one respawning after falling off the map. The thing that might throw people off in this regard is that these Yoshi's only come in green, their signature color that has become synonymous with the character. It’s much more apparent that Yoshi is a collective character here because we are introduced to a society of them that live on the island. Black, orange, red, green: the different complexions of the Yoshis run the gamut of a box of Crayola crayons. The radiant range of Yoshi skins is a perfect segway into discussing how vibrant this game is. Like the Yoshis that reside here, the island is a variegated slew of bright pigments with the aesthetic tone of a coloring book. Outlines of various things in the background like clouds, hills, and flowers look warbled to emulate the charm of crude animation. The graphics look like the developers colored in the pixel art with crayon, and this unlocks a previously unknown potential of what 16-bit graphics could look like. Everything in Super Mario World 2 looks so clear and vivacious. The crayon aesthetic was meant to make the game appear more juvenile, but the eye-candy visuals are just as appealing to an adult like myself.

The island world depicted here is much more linear this time around. The Yoshi’s journey is more of a straightaway route this time around as opposed to discovering the hidden areas of the island and uncovering Star Road in the first Super Mario World. Six main levels are divided into a menu with eight sublevels per world. The player navigates this menu like a level select and unlocks each sublevel in order until the end of the eighth sublevel when they move onto the next world. Sublevels on the menu come with individual pictures depicting a vague representation of what to expect from the level, like an enemy, and become colored in once the player completes them. For a game that looks so lively and flamboyant, this menu feels quite rigid. Super Mario World 2 is a much larger game than its predecessor, so I can imagine it would’ve been a struggle to replicate the world map of the former game and maintain some kind of geographical consistency per level. The menu here somewhat maintains the colorful brightness of the overall game, but the more streamlined approach to level selection does not match the vibrant tone of the game.

The overall structure of the individual levels is much more familiar. Despite the character change, Super Mario World 2 is another 2D platformer whose objective is to make it to the end of the level without losing every life given to the player. Whether or not the player has played the former game, Yoshi’s control scheme will still seem alien to any Super Mario veteran. Yoshi can jump as high as the Italian plumber, and he can dispose of enemies with his impressive hops as well. Yoshi can also flutter his legs for a short time, acting as a glide move. This makes Yoshi seemingly more agile and more capable than Mario, but it sadly makes him feel all the more slippery to control. At times, the game will offer segments where Yoshi can transform into a smattering of objects and vehicles, including a helicopter, mole, toy train, etc. Baby Mario even gets in on the action by running around with an invincibility star.

Any player of Super Mario World will already be familiar with Yoshi’s ravenous appetite, sticking and dragging other creatures with his tongue like a super mutant frog. Yoshi decides to save his calories this time as eating the numerous enemies on the island would be a waste of resources. Yoshi can either spit enemies out, knocking them into other enemies, or turn them into eggs to use as projectiles. The confusing aspect of Yoshi’s digestive system acting the same as their reproductive system aside, chucking these freshly hatched eggs is the central mechanic of both combat and getting past obstacles in the game. The player will be given a moving cursor that shows the trajectory of an egg and can aim more accurately by holding down a trigger button. The eggs can defeat most enemies on impact or knock some more stubborn enemies off of platforms. The eggs can also cause a chain reaction of damage by hitting several enemies into each other. Additionally, the eggs are thrown at objects either to gain collectibles or to pass obstacles. The egg mechanic is unique and certainly fits Yoshi, but I never found myself mastering it even near the end of the game. Having to defeat enemies with pinpoint accuracy conflicts with the quick-natured pace of the 2D platformer game. I only used the eggs when I had to, opting to swallow enemies instead.

Super Mario World 2 has an interesting concept of pacing for a Mario game. Aiming the eggs consistently interrupt movement, but the game is never in any hurry to get anywhere. One might notice the omission of a timer here, a mechanic in the previous Mario games that caused players to be wary of their pacing. In Super Mario World 2, players can take their sweet time in any of the levels, mostly to look for collectibles. In each level, there are 20 red coins, 30 stars, and five flowers to collect, and the player must thoroughly examine every crevice of the level to gather all of these things. The total amount of all three collectibles combined add up to a score out of 100 that is displayed on the opposite side of the level’s menu icon. I wish there was more of an incentive to collect them. The flowers tend to be in hard-to-reach places and hazardous spots that could result in death. Getting a bad score on a level might conjure up some PTSD from my school days, but that’s the extent of my motivation to collect everything. The lack of a timer lets the player relax as they collect everything, but the caveat is that many levels feel bloated. They extend past a certain run time that works for an individual 2D platformer level and become a bit of a slog. While the timer in previous Mario titles may have caused anxiety to many players, it at least keeps every level at a reasonable length.

The omission of a timer in the levels may also be due to the developers decreasing the overall difficulty. This game was designed with a very young demographic in mind, with the crayon-drawing aesthetic, an infant character at the center of the story, and a cutesy dinosaur as the game's protagonist as evidence. On top of having no timer, checkpoints are more common for the longer levels, and an abundance of coins are everywhere, so the player can easily stock up on extra lives. Super Mario World 2 isn’t an entirely facile experience, however. The primary source of difficulty here pertains to Baby Mario. The entirety of Super Mario World 2 is a glorified escort mission, a common method of gameplay that makes many gamers groan. Carrying Baby Mario through the island is the highest point of contention with this game, even for those who put the game in high regard. When Yoshi gets hit by anything, Baby Mario will detach from his back and float around in a bubble making an ear-piercing crying sound that’s excruciating enough to make someone play the entire game on mute. The sound of a baby crying is enough to strike dread and irritation in most people, and it’s a great motivation to get the player to catch him. However, Baby Mario's crying is not one of my main complaints. I’d like to think I’m a person with normal, human emotions who would react strongly to a baby crying as most non-sociopaths would. It’s grating, but not enough to heavily criticize the game for it. The problem is how lenient the game is with getting hit and losing Baby Mario. The game gives the player more than an ample amount of time to retrieve Baby Mario, and the time can be extended by collecting stars. If Yoshi gets hit while trying to recover Baby Mario, he is only slightly deterred. It would be one thing if having Baby Mario acted as damage insurance, but Yoshi can easily get back up and pop Baby Mario’s bubble after several hits. The only things that will instantly kill Yoshi are spikes, lava, and pits, with or without Baby Mario in his captivity. The whole charade of recapturing Baby Mario left me feeling a bit cheated. I’d be more inclined to keep Baby Mario safe if the penalty for losing him was more strict or the time limit was decreased. Getting hit several times and still recovering Baby Mario with ten whole seconds on the clock becomes disillusioning, and I never felt panicked due to my mistakes in this game.

The one aspect of Super Mario World 2 that triumphs over any preceding Mario game are the bosses. The two fiery, labyrinthian castles that divide each world will always conclude with a boss encounter. The start of each fight will place Yoshi against a common enemy, and Kamek will usually show up and sprinkle his magic to mutate that enemy to a more formidable size. The Mario series, until this point, had an unfortunate habit of repetitive boss fights with a reskinned enemy of a different name as if the player wasn’t bright enough to tell that they were padding the game. All of the bosses in Super Mario World 2 are unique from one another, offering an entirely different challenge for each encounter. Each of them also offers different methods of beating them. Some of my favorites are the tug-of-war match with the ghost pot, the giant, gooey amoeba with its heart as a weakness, and chucking eggs at a giant frog’s uvula from the inside of his throat. Not only are these bosses varied and exciting, but many of them expertly use the egg-throwing mechanic without breaking any pacing. While I cherish most of the bosses in this game for different reasons, the final battle against Baby Bowser is the real tour de force. The first phase against Baby Bowser is enclosed in his playpen as the spoiled brat tries to mount Yoshi with no regard for Yoshi’s personal space. Once Yoshi bats him off enough times, the second phase begins, as does the real meat of the final battle. Kamek once again interrupts the battle to use his Magikoopa dust on Baby Bowser, which results in him erupting through the foundation of the entire castle like the Hulk ripping through his shirt. A luminescent sunset setting is the backdrop of Yoshi facing the now gigantic, behemoth-sized Baby Bowser, who is now slowly closing in on Yoshi with ominous yellow eyes and a dastardly smirk on his face. Yoshi now has to lob eggs at seemingly insurmountable distances at Baby Bowser, all the while avoiding his fireballs and watching his step on the crumbling foundation. This is an intense final battle that throws all painless conventions the game had before out the window, testing the player’s abilities in every way. Not only is this boss the biggest standout battle in any Mario game thus far, but it’s still one of Nintendo’s greatest from their entire run as a video game developer.

I choose to see Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island not as a direct sequel to Super Mario World or any of the Super Mario games. Nintendo was intentionally executing something completely different here, putting Yoshi at the helm with a whole other smattering of new mechanics. The developers simply used the Mario brand and Yoshi’s island setting to support the jumpstart of a new IP. Considering the slew of Yoshi-centric spinoffs this game has inspired, Nintendo’s goal seems pretty obvious to me. As of writing this, I have not played any of those Yoshi games, but my experience with this game makes me apprehensive about playing any of the others. This title is considered the best Yoshi game by a large margin, and some even consider it better than Super Mario World. I’m not sure if it’s due to a difference in preferences, but I was consistently underwhelmed by this game. I much prefer the faster-paced direction of the mainline Mario series to the slower, easier direction presents here. Aspects like the art style and the boss fights are impressive, but it’s only enough to slightly beguile me with its puerile charm. Super Mario World 2 is different from the typical Mario experience, but it wasn’t the change-up I wanted.