Let's Play Yoshi's Island DS (NDS) Ep 6: Wall Bug Nº2 and The Giant Testicle.
| Yoshi's New Island | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Arzest |
| Publisher(s) | Nintendo |
| Director(s) | Masahide Kobayashi |
| Producer(s) | |
| Programmer(s) | Yuki Hatakeyama |
| Artist(s) | Masamichi Harada |
| Composer(s) | Masayoshi Ishi |
| Series | Yoshi |
| Platform(s) | Nintendo 3DS |
| Release |
|
| Genre(s) | Platform |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
Yoshi's New Island[a] is a 2014 platform game developed by Arzest and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 3DShandheld game console. First released in Europe and North America on March 2014, Yoshi's New Island is the successor to the 1995 game Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island and the 2006 game Yoshi's Island DS, but chronologically takes place between them.
The gameplay focuses on controlling Yoshi characters who must escort Baby Mario through a series of levels. Like similar Yoshi games, the game features a hand-drawn art style, with level designs and backgrounds stylized as oil paintings, watercolors, and crayon drawings.[1]
Gameplay[edit]
The gameplay is similar to other Yoshi's Island games, involving Yoshi needing to reach the goal at the end of each stage while protecting Baby Mario from enemies by throwing eggs as a weapon, and sometimes transforming into a vehicle. There are six vehicle forms in the game: Hot Air Balloon, Helicopter, Jackhammer, Mine Cart, Bobsled, and Submarine. They are controlled using the console's gyroscope. A new feature to this game are Mega Eggdozers, larger than usual Yoshi eggs, which are able to hit and destroy some obstacles in the way, as well as Metal Eggdozers, which are slightly smaller and roll across terrain. Yoshi obtains these by eating Giant and Metal Shy Guys, respectively. Underwater stages, where Yoshi must walk on the seafloor, are another new addition. If the player is having difficulty completing a stage, Yoshi can obtain Flutter Wings, which allow for indefinite hovering, and Golden Flutter Wings, which give Yoshi invincibility as well.
Plot[edit]
Yoshi's New Island takes place immediately following the events of Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, where a stork delivers twins Baby Mario and Baby Luigi to a couple in the Mushroom Kingdom assumed to be their parents. The opening of Yoshi's New Island reveals that the stork had delivered the babies to the wrong couple. The stork reclaims the babies and sets off to locate their real parents, but is ambushed by Kamek in mid-flight. Kamek captures the stork and Baby Luigi, but Baby Mario falls and reunites with the Yoshi clan on Egg Island, a floating island that was conquered by Baby Bowser. Baby Mario can telepathically sense Baby Luigi's location; the Yoshi clan agrees to escort Baby Mario across the island and rescue Baby Luigi. Once Baby Mario and Yoshi make it to Baby Bowser's castle, Baby Bowser wakes up and jumps on Kamek who attempted to get Baby Mario and Yoshi out. When Baby Bowser tries to ride Yoshi, Baby Bowser is defeated. Kamek uses a Giant Magical Hammer to make Baby Bowser gigantic. After defeating Giant Baby Bowser, Yoshi proceeds to rescue the captured stork and save Baby Luigi only to be met by Adult Bowser, who appeared after warping through space and time. After Yoshi defeats Adult Bowser, Kamek once again uses a Giant Magical Hammer to make adult Bowser gigantic. After defeating Adult Bowser, Yoshi once again comes to the stork and Baby Luigi, and the stork delivers Baby Mario and Luigi back to their true home. The moving helping warp pipe, who helped Yoshi throughout the journey, is seen at the end is revealed to be adult Mario who also travelled back through time and space to help Yoshi to succeed and returns to his own timeline.
Development and release[edit]
Yoshi's New Island was developed by Arzest, which consists of key members involved in the development of its predecessor Yoshi's Island DS.[2] Masahide Kobayashi directed the game, and Takashi Tezuka was producer.[2][3]
Yoshi's Island Bad Guys Lyrics
The game was announced in a Nintendo Direct presentation in April 2013.[4] Its official name was revealed at E3 2013; a trailer of the game was also featured.[5]Yoshi's New Island was released in both North America and Europe on March 14, 2014,[6][7] and in Australia on March 21.[8] It was released in Japan on July 24, 2014.[9]
Reception[edit]
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Yoshi's New Island has received mixed reviews, with its familiarity to Yoshi's Island being met with both praise and criticism. Among the most positive reviews came from Joystiq, giving it 4 out of 5 stars, and IGN, giving it a 7.9 out of 10. Giant Bomb's Patrick Klepeck was more mixed and rated it 3 out of 5 stars, stating 'at its core, Yoshi's New Island is not a bad game. This is an acceptable, middle-of-the-road platformer, and one that I had an OK time with. But it's not particularly memorable until it's ready to say goodbye, and you're given a fleeting, tantalizing glimpse into the game that might have been.'[20]
Conversely, Eurogamer's Chris Schilling was more critical. Rating it 4 out 10, Schilling criticized the game's visuals, soundtrack and pacing as well as Arzest themselves, stating that 'It's startling that a game so outwardly similar to the Super Nintendo original can be so very inferior.'[14]GameSpot's Tom Mc Shea, who rated it 5 out of 10, echoed similar sentiments when discussing how Yoshi's New Island's similarities with Yoshi's Island were more of a hindrance than a boon. Mc Shea further elaborated that while Yoshi's Island DS 'had its own problems, it also had an identity' by citing that game's variety of babies and the unique abilities they possessed before concluding that Yoshi's New Island 'has no such identity.'[16] Many reviewers have criticized the game's soundtrack for the use of the kazoo as a primary instrument.[14][17][21]
Despite receiving middling reviews from critics, the game was added to the Nintendo Selects label on October 16, 2015 in Europe, and March 11, 2016 in North America.[22]
The game debuted at number two in the Japanese sales charts, with 58,285 copies sold.[23] By October 2014, it had sold 197,108 copies in Japan.[24]
Notes[edit]
- ^Known in Japan as Yoshi New Island (Japanese: ヨッシー New アイランド, Hepburn: Yosshī Nyū Airando)
References[edit]
- ^'Arzest Developing Yoshi's New Island - News'. Nintendo World Report. 2013-06-11. Retrieved 2013-06-15.
- ^ ab'E3 2013: Discovering Yoshi's Island (Again)'. IGN. 2013-06-12. Retrieved 2013-06-15.
- ^'Archived copy'. Archived from the original on March 13, 2014. Retrieved March 12, 2014.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
- ^Robinson, Martin (2013-04-17). 'New Yoshi's Island announced for 3DS • News • 3DS •'. Eurogamer.net. Retrieved 2013-06-15.
- ^Ishaan. 'Yoshi's Island For 3DS Gets A New Name And A New Trailer'. Siliconera. Retrieved September 9, 2016.
- ^''Yoshi's New Island' Set for March 14 in North America and Europe'. Crunchyroll. January 10, 2014. Retrieved January 25, 2020.
- ^'VIDEO: 'Yoshi's New Island' Transforms in Latest Trailer'. Crunchyroll. January 25, 2014. Retrieved January 25, 2020.
- ^Whitehead, Thomas (2014-01-23). 'Yoshi's New Island Hatches in Europe on 14th March'. Nintendo Life. Retrieved 2014-01-23.
- ^'ヨッシー New アイランド'. Nintendo. Retrieved July 10, 2014.
- ^'Yoshi's New Island for 3DS'. GameRankings. Retrieved March 14, 2014.
- ^'Yoshi's New Island Critic Reviews for 3DS'. Metacritic. Retrieved March 14, 2014.
- ^Carter, Chris (March 13, 2014). 'Review: Yoshi's New Island'. Destructoid. Retrieved March 14, 2014.
- ^'Yoshi's New Island review'. March 13, 2014. Retrieved March 14, 2014.
- ^ abcSchilling, Chris (March 13, 2014). 'Yoshi's New Island review'. Eurogamer. Retrieved March 14, 2014.
- ^Ryckert, Dan (March 13, 2014). 'Yoshi's New Island review'. Game Informer. Retrieved March 14, 2014.
- ^ abMc Shea, Tom (March 14, 2014). 'Yoshi's New Island Review'. GameSpot. Retrieved March 14, 2014.
- ^ abOtero, Jose (March 13, 2014). 'Yoshi's New Island Review'. IGN. Retrieved March 14, 2014.
- ^'Yoshi's New Island review'. Nintendo World Report. Retrieved March 13, 2014.
- ^'Yoshi's New Island for Nintendo 3DS review'. Nintendo Life. Retrieved March 13, 2014.
- ^Klepeck, Patrick (March 13, 2014). 'Yoshi's New Island Review'. Giant Bomb. Retrieved March 19, 2014.
- ^Orland, Kyle (13 March 2014). 'Review: Yoshi's New Island is a solid new Yoshi's Island'. Retrieved 14 August 2016.
- ^'Nintendo of America Officially Announces New Nintendo Select Titles'. February 29, 2016. Retrieved March 13, 2016.
- ^Ishaan (July 30, 2014). 'This Week In Sales: Yoshi's New Island Arrives In Time For A Corpse Party'. Siliconera. Retrieved August 25, 2017.
- ^Ishaan (October 22, 2014). 'This Week In Sales: Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate Week 2'. Siliconera. Retrieved August 25, 2017.
External links[edit]
- Yoshi's New Island at Nintendo.com
- Official Site for North America(in English)
- Official Site for Europe(in English)
- Official Site for Australia(in English)
- Official Site for Japan(in Japanese)
Nintendo has tried to follow up on the perfection of Yoshi's Island a few times in the past. I had high hopes for Yoshi's Story on the Nintendo 64, but that spiritual sequel took a hard turn toward overly simplistic level designs, sloppy controls, and a presentation that turned the cuteness dial well past cloying (oh god, that level-ending music). Yoshi's Island DS was a bit better at capturing the essence of the original, but it felt a bit gimmicky in its use of new character powers and just a bit off in the control department. The best follow-up so far may actually be Super Mario Advance 3, a Game Boy Advance port which added six excellent new secret levels on top of those already hidden in the original game.
Yoshi's New Island is Nintendo's latest attempt to recapture lightning in a bottle, and it does a solid if imperfect job of doing just that. Familiar without being overly familiar and faithful without being a mere carbon copy, Yoshi's New Island doesn't quite live up to its namesake, but it doesn't really mess too much with what isn't broken, either.
A remixed expansion pack
This means, of course, that those looking for something completely new won't find much of what they're looking for in Yoshi's New Island. The game does nearly the opposite of reinventing the wheel, instead seeming to take familiar pieces of the first game and reassembling them into new patterns, to the point where an attentive player can start picking out the tropes and design elements they expect to resurface.
Oh look, here's a few levels with those annoying monkeys jumping among the trees, just like in Yoshi's Island. And here's one with those floating penguins that Yoshi can bounce off harmlessly. Here are those overly flappy goonie birds that you can ride like a floating platform. Here's a level where a giant chain chomp chases Yoshi down a series of floating platforms. Here's another extremely long and slow auto-scrolling level in a lava-filled cave (thankfully there's only one of these, and it's not nearly as annoying as in the first game).
Just because the overall design and the individual set pieces are familiar, though, doesn't mean the game is just directly copying levels from the title that inspired it. Much like New Super Mario Bros. before it, the levels in Yoshi's New Island feel like modern remixes of familiar patterns and arrangements that were proven timeless decades ago. Platforms and enemies are placed with a certain care and deliberation, and nothing feels thrown together haphazardly just to fill space. There's a natural flow to each level, and the game never dwells too long on any one type of enemy or design theme.
In short, it feels like the expansion pack that Yoshi's Island never got, full of new levels that iterate on the same great old themes established in the original game. It might feel a bit too familiar to some, but there are much worse games to evoke the memory of.
Like the original Yoshi's Island, the challenge in Yoshi's New Island isn't simply in getting to the end of the levels. There wasn't a single area in the game that cost me more than three or four lives to get through, in stark contrast to a game like Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze, where I could lose four lives on a single jump.
Instead, the challenge is in finding the 20 red coins and five giant flowers hidden within each level (not to mention finishing the stage with a perfect health meter of 30 stars). Some of these items practically smack you in the face with obvious placement, but plenty are squirreled away in out-of-the-way or hidden areas. Collecting these items constantly requires going outside the run-left-to-right comfort zone in terms of both platforming and puzzle solving.
In the greatest Mario tradition, it always feels like there's something just beyond the surface waiting to be discovered if you look hard enough. I wasn't scouring levels with a fine-toothed comb or anything, but despite looking in the most obvious likely hiding spots, I still finished my first playthrough missing a few items in almost every level. Finding the rest will be an enjoyable reason to go back and really explore the well-designed levels once more.
Yoshi's Island Game
Nitpicks and changes
That's not to say nothing has changed since 1995. Nintendo has thrown some new game mechanics into the mix, seemingly out of a sense of duty to satisfy an 'innovation' checkbox. The most notable new feature is the gargantuan, screen-filling eggs that can take out solid concrete blocks as they fly. It's a promising idea, but it's used exclusively in extremely contrived situations, where the game gives you as many giant eggs as you need to easily clear a roadblock and move on.
Yoshi's New Island also makes a slight modification to the sections where Yoshi transforms into a number of different machines (a submarine, a jackhammer, a bobsled etc.) These sections are now somewhat annoyingly controlled by tilting the entire 3DS to change Yoshi's direction, with occasional button taps to slow or advance his progress. Overall, these sections aren't integrated very well into the rest of the game, and they feel like distractions from the platforming and puzzle solving it does best.
Most of the things I didn't like about Yoshi's New Island were primarily disappointments when compared to the near perfection of the original game. (Have I mentioned how much I liked the original Yoshi's Island recently? In case it was unclear, I liked it a lot). The new game's bosses, for instance, alternate between battles with the Magikoopa Kamek and fights against giant-sized versions of familiar enemies from recent levels.
Each battle requires a unique strategy, and some show off especially clever design, like a battlefield littered with arrow-clouds that redirect both your projectile eggs and the incoming blasts of the boss in hard-to-follow patterns. Still, the bad guys seem a little less animated than those in the first Yoshi's Island, and they don't show the same level of inventiveness in the strategies needed for their defeat (throwing an egg at the right place/time is pretty much always the way to go).
It also feels like the developers are trying a little too hard to emulate the unique, hand-drawn art style and animation that made Yoshi's Island so distinctive. It's as if the artists took basic 3D models of all the characters and layered a crude 'paintbrush stroke effect' filter on top to imbue them with a slightly uncanny facsimile of a human touch. Everything animates a bit too perfectly as well, like the morphing shapes and stiff movements of the early days of Flash animation. It doesn't look bad, exactly, just a little overdone and lifeless compared to the effortless verve and charm of the original game, or even Yoshi's Island DS.
Since we're still in nitpicking territory, I feel I have to mention the slight changes to the tight, pitch-perfect controls found in the original Yoshi's Island. When Yoshi starts aiming an egg, for instance, there's now a half-second or so of animation before the targeting reticle is fully extended and ready to fire. It's not the end of the world, but it's a distracting alteration that messes with any muscle memory left over from the original game. The same goes for Yoshi's now-familiar mid-air flutter, which is now just a little harder to execute multiple times on a single jump.
These are minor issues, though, compared to the relative failure of the game's music. Compared to the vibrant, catchy tunes of the original, the new background songs are overproduced, meandering ditties, often featuring a sort of high-pitched kazoo effect that comes across like nails on a chalkboard to my ears. At least the sound effects are comfortingly familiar.
If it feels like I'm being hard on a game I enjoyed, it's only because it shares most of its name with a game that I feel sets the standard for its genre. Even judged on that lofty scale, Yoshi's New Island holds its own quite well, serving as a solid alteration and extension of a true classic, with a minimal amount of changes to screw things up.
The Good
- Largely captures everything that made Yoshi's Island brilliant
- Level design that shows care and deliberation
- Plenty of well-hidden items that encourage exploration and discovery
The Bad
- General design and set pieces may be too familiar for some players
- New game mechanics seem thrown together and unecessary
- Controls are off ever so slightly from Yoshi's Island's perfection
The Ugly
- The background music—load up the original game's soundtrack on your phone instead
Verdict: Buy it, but don't expect another flawless masterpiece like its predecessor (which I loved).