Yoshi's Island

[mr_sockochris]

Yoshi's Island is one of the few games ever created that I could describe as perfect. I seriously cannot imagine a platformer to be any better. The game remains so varied, yet is consistantly superb throughout with fresh ideas popping up in practically every level. The bosses were delight too, while the score system is what makes it special for more experienced gamers

[Richard.John]

The art direction was a stroke of genius by NCL, considering that every game of the time was trying to copy Rare's uber CG look from DKC. Can you imagine the scene at Kyoto when SM said that rather than producing the graphics on a spanky SGI machine, he wanted to scan them out of his kid's sketch book.
Genius, indeed.

I am quite sure it didn't reach the lofty sales heights of DKC, but we the fans know which was the better game.

[tokyochojin]

I am quite sure it didn't reach the lofty sales heights of DKC, but we the fans know which was the better game.

Ｉ?ｍ　ｓｕｒｅ　ＮＣＬ　ｓｅｅ　ｉｔ　ｌｉｋｅ　ｔｈａｔ　ｔｏｏ．．．

[Richard.John]

They were both in development at roughly the same time, weren't they? It must have been ****ty for NCL to see their own project so outsold by Rare's effort.

[tokyochojin]

Was it outsold in Japan though...?

[Richard.John]

I have no idea as I wasn't here when it launched, but worldwide, I reckon DKC murdered it.

[tokyochojin]

Dude it was a question not a statement, I'll have a quick scour.

[Ady]

Anyone like Yoshi's Story? It's pish easy and faaaar too short but I love it regardless, if for nothing else than Yoshi's singing...

I despised that game with a fiery passion.

As for DKC, it was a great tech demo. Yoshi's Island, OTOH is a great game.

[anephric]

I despised that game with a fiery passion.

But... but... the Yoshis... singing... soooooooo kute.

[brokeback]

Imagine how cool it would have been if, for the PAL relesease of Yoshi's island, THey exchanged the Yoshi sprite for B.Orchid from killer instinct! That would have made the game 50 times cooler and more accessable to the games buying public. Oh nintendo, why did you make so many mistakes?

[Ady]

But... but... the Yoshis... singing... soooooooo kute.

It's horrid. Positively Satanic.

Ah... I get it now...

[peeveen]

Yoshi's Story:

It was a neat game, for sure. Slightly broken by the fact that it was supposed to be a score attack game in the long run, but the methods of getting those high scores were tedious in the extreme.

I definitely agree with this comment. After the SNES classic, I bought "Yoshi's Island 64" (or Yoshi's Story as it was called here) the day it appeared in my local import store. Gorgeous packaging, and some of the best-looking and most imaginative graphics I've ever seen in any game still to this day. I was in love with it for a few days, but it didn't last.

The biggest flaw for me was, as you say, the somewhat open-ended score attack. In the YI-SNES, the goal was clear ... there was a set amount of gold coins, red coins, stars and flowers to obtain to ensure you had 100% completed a level. I spent hour upon hour maxing out every level ... and it was an absolute joy ... the only way to play the game, IMO.

However, the N64 version sadly lacked this. Sure, there was the challenge of collecting the "special" fruit, being careful not to pick up any other kind, but having to stop just about everywhere and perform that dopey "sniff" action to find the hidden stuff was absolutely tedious and unintuitive and made the game less "fluid". Also, there didn't seem to be any maximum score for a level, so, as far as I could see, there was no way of knowing whether you had 100%-cleared it, which lessened the desire to revisit levels and improve your score.

Still a great little platform game to pick up and play for a half-hour now and then, even just for eye-candy value, but a definite missed opportunity.

[Richard.John]

I bought Yoshi's Island 64 and GE at the same time, so you can imagine which one got the most play time. I never even finished Yoshi, too busy with GE.