Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
Overview
Despite some dubious sequels and its departure from Super Mario World, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island from the late era of the Super Nintendo. Under the old rating system, I ranked this as "GOOD".
Review
Many, many, years ago, there was a time when Nintendo's new Mario games actually featured truly new mechanics and functions, and it didn't feel like they were dredging old stuff out of their past like they do now. Sonic was brand-new (the hedgehog, not the drive-in with the best ice) and was actually seen as a threat to Mario's sales. In August 1991, the Super Nintendo was released in America, and with it, came Super Mario World, also known as Super Mario Bros. 4: Super Mario World in Japan. It was a great game, even if it's very clearly "8-bit esque" ("12-bit", to borrow a phrase from Sega's Al Nielsen). The star of the show was of course, Yoshi, who Mario could hop on. Yoshi could eat enemies with his tongue, and depending on color and/or shells eaten, could stomp to kill enemies, breath fire, or fly. Yoshi was thus inducted into the Mario canon and a few years later was given a platformer of his very own, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. Yoshi's Island was a game that used the Super FX chip (the second iteration of the SFX) with beautiful artwork, an egg-throwing mechanic, and much more. It wasn't the traditional Mario hop-and-bop adventure, but it was a game well-received and innovative.
While Yoshi's other platformer outings have been consistently disappointing, Yoshi's Island still is a very different game than Super Mario World is. It's not quite different in the same way Super Mario Brothers 2 was, but it follows the spirit. The plot follows how Baby Mario (long before he became hated on Mario Kart: Double Dash!! and beyond) falls into an island of Yoshi (Yoshi plural, that is) after Kamek captures Baby Luigi (he was aiming for both). There's no Princess Peach, but there is a faceoff with Baby Bowser at the end. Besides the egg-throwing mechanic, if you get hit, you have anywhere from 10 seconds to around 30 to get back the crying Mario before you lose the level (spikes and bottomless pits, are of course instant deaths as well). Either way, it's an interesting mechanic rather than just the "hit and die" result.
Another thing I like is the level select music gets bigger and more triumphant with every world you beat, which is fun. Plus, some rather intriguing stuff has been leaked since the original review was written. The game actually appears to have been based on a game called Super Donkey (probably also a prototype to Donkey Kong Country in some ways too). There's a whole slew of unused content and prototypes including a different Baby Mario design ("Animations of Baby Mario, with a baby bonnet and... a mustache. Moving on.") or a different character who wasn't even Mario at all...and of course, I can't go without mentioning the nauseating commercial when it came stateside.
Player Notes
This is the third version of this review. It was originally written in 2015 with Yoshi's Island DS, then received a 2023 update. One of the things I will say I actually first completed this game on the Game Boy Advance, and thus am not as hard on the Super Mario Advance port as I was on Super Mario World. Besides, it didn't screw up as many things. It is also one of the few games I genuinely enjoyed 100% completing and I did more than once.
Port & Rerelease Notes
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island has been through the usual Virtual Console and a somewhat botched showing on the "Super NES Classic" mini-console, but its main port is the Game Boy Advance port, Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3(released 2002) which I played through circa 2006. For a port, it wasn't bad (compared to the issues of Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2, at least), and I have to admit that it actually made sense to use the voices from Yoshi's Story, an N64 game that was the first time Yoshi let people down (even for the time, letters in the old issues of Nintendo Power I have complained about how short and easy it was). On the other hand, one of the reasons I hated the Game Boy Advance port of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was because of the voice samples. The Game Boy Advance version has six extra levels that unlock after beating level 6-8 (the last level). It would be nice if these were patched in (they don't introduce new mechanics) by ROM patchers but I can't find any. A pity.
While the Super NES version is still superior (see screenshots to compare how much the color palette is washed out), to this day I still want to use R for egg aiming as that was what the Game Boy Advance version did.
Screenshots
Recommended Guide
Nintendo did publish a Nintendo Player's Guide for the game; unfortunately it has been out of print for years and the scan on Archive.org (not on Retromags) is crummy, though if you download the "Comic Book Zip" file you get the uncompressed version. But if you don't actually have a print copy, then the best option is probably VGMaps for when you can't find those last coins. VGMaps has stuff for the GBA-exclusive levels but not Secret 6, "Endless World of Yoshis" (or "Crazy Maze Days" in the European version). The only thing I could find is a level sketch from Imasara Yoshi's Island Guide (and it appears to be the only game covered in the website that has an English version).