"ATTN: Nintendo. Stop messing up my classics, please."

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. A classic tale of the adventures of Baby Mario and a tag team of Yoshis who relay him across Yoshi's Island to Baby Bowser's Castle for the final confrontation with Baby Bowser. An epic tale. By all means, a classic. Over 10 years ago, gamers were first hooked by this incredible game. It also just happened to be the first game I ever beat as a poor gaming-deprived child. This game was just FUN.

So naturally I was just thrilled when last year Nintendo announced they were making a sequel. I wanted this game more than I'd wanted a sequel in... as long as I can remember, really. Perhaps I wanted it too much. Perhaps my utter adoration of the original Yoshi's Island blinded me into believing that no wrong could be done? That nothing could possibly taint this much-awaited sequel?

Whatever the reason, I was on the road to disappointment.

==Story==

As anyone who's played to original Yoshi's Island knows (and I might add, anyone who HASN'T played the original should stop reading this review and go do that now, it's seriously like $10 for the GBA and worth every penny), the plot involved Baby Mario and a team of multicolored Yoshis journeying to rescue Baby Luigi. After they succeeded, the two plumbers-to-be returned to their parents and lived happily ever after.

...Or not. Turns out Kamek and his Toadies are back to no good, kidnapping seemingly random babies from their homes. What kind of random villains are these? What sort of sinister plot could involve.... Random babies? Ah well. Much love for Kamek and his squad. Included among the stolen infants are Baby Mario, Baby Luigi, Baby Peach, and Baby Donkey Kong. But the Toadies are careless and start dropping babies left and right, allowing little Mario to be reunited with his Yoshi pals. They set out once again to, well, rescue Baby Luigi. Poor tyke. Along the way, they meet up with Babies Peach, Donkey Kong, and even Wario and Bowser, all of whom I'll discuss my disgust with a bit later on. So here we are again- adventure to save Baby Luigi. Just this time, Yoshi has his hands even more tied up.

==Gameplay==

Ah, none of that rehashed story matters, you say! The gameplay's where it's at! And as it so happened, Yoshi's Island for the SNES happened to have some of the finest gameplay this side of Super Mario Bros. 3, so its DS sequel should be simply stellar by default, no? Ah, wrong again, my friend. Wrong again. Sure, it takes the same basic formula as its SNES ancestor. You play as Yoshi with a baby on your back. You can jump, which can translate into a bit of a hovering flutter. You can lash Yoshi's trademark tongue out at enemies and pull them to your mouth, where you can either spit them back out or swallow them to turn into Yoshi's weapon of choice: eggs. Ah, lovely eggs. If you run into an enemy, the baby you're carrying is flung from your back into a bubble, which you have 10 seconds to reclaim before the Toadies whisk them away. The 10 second limit can be increased by collecting little stars, like in the original.

However, this time around, you've got the new babies to factor into things. I guess this was their idea of a way to freshen things up. Each baby has been given unique abilities that affect the way Yoshi moves. Several of the abilities taken for granted in the original have become unfortunately exclusive to Mario- namely the ability to dash, and the ability for eggs to bounce. The loss of the dash ability really gets on my nerves. Whenever I'm forced to play with Peach or DK for an extended period of time, Yoshi just feels so much slower. For this reason (and perhaps just for the sake of nostalgia), I found myself switching to Baby Mario at every possible opportunity. He's fast. He's stylish. He's still got that cool ability to turn into Super Baby Mario when he touches one of those star thingies. He BELONGS on Yoshi. Another trait of Mario's that's new to the DS game is the ability to hit special Mario blocks. Kind of unnecessary, but at least it's something, I guess.

Baby Peach uses her parasol which serves no apparent purpose until you reach a fan blowing gust of wind that will carry you upwards. And really, that's all little Peachy has going for her. She can't dash. There is really no reason whatsoever to play as Peach unless you're expecting a fan to pop up any time soon.

Baby DK... He's more interesting that Peach, to say the least. He can climb vines. Rather swiftly, I might add. However, the novelty of vine-climbing will soon wear off. At least they made the effort to make him usable outside of situations where vines are prevalent. He's the most powerful of the babies, as made evident by his ability to completely destroy those little wooden posts that you'll occasionally find sticking out of the ground, and this little shoulder thrust move that I find myself more often tha not unintentionally performing when trying to swiftly swallow some Shy Guys as they pop up from a pipe. Also, he can't dash. And yes, I'm going to bring this up every time because it's incredibly annoying.

As for Baby Bowser and Wario, there's really not much to be said. They were both obviously tacked on at the very last minute, as made obvious by the fact that they're only found in three levels each and that no official source mentioned them until shortly before the game's release. Baby Wario has a magnet that attracts coins and metal platforms, Baby Bowser can spit fireballs. Neither of them can dash.

And in addition to some of Yoshi's 'standard' abilities from the SNES game being made 'Mario-exclusive', several other features have disappeared- items that you win in minigames and keep with you, such as extra stars or melons. The melons themselves have also mysteriously disappeared. They were always so fun to use, too... Yoshi's ability to transform into a number of vehicles returns, although the selection is cut to just a helicopter, submarine, and mole tank, and none of them are really fully realized.

==Graphics==

I really bared my soul there in the gameplay section... Graphics, however, are another disappointment. They are much more similar to Yoshi Touch & Go than the original SNES game. And I guess it's not exactly logical to hope for 10-year old graphics to show up on a modern-day handheld, but... There's nothing really WRONG with them, they just didn't live up to my expectations. Or rather, I suppose, they went way over and beyond my expectations in a way that I didn't particularly like.

==Sound==

I always find it difficult to comment on a game's sound. Either it was good or it wasn't, right? As much as others will complain, I actually found myself more endeared to the game's music than... most everything else. It was disappointingly light on the original tracks, however. At least the babies' constant cry of 'HEY! HEY! HEY!' whenever they're thrown for Yoshi's back wasn't quite as mind-numbing as it was in the original.

==Final Verdict==

What can I say? I expected an utter masterpiece- DS Game of the Year and whatnot. I was unfortunately forced to face that these ambitions were nothing more than idle hopes upon completing the first world of the game. Perhaps it's just because I have the original Yoshi's Island on such a pedestal in my mind that any sequel couldn't hope to compare? Or is it truly that Yoshi's Island DS is a bad game? If you're up to it, see for yourself.

Sorry Yoshi, better luck next time, pal. And sorry to you too Baby Mario, for getting all your spotlight hogged. So after everything's been said and done and played through... It really pains me to do this (before I'd played the game I wholeheartedly expected it to be 10/10 material), but I'm going to give Yoshi's Island DS a 5/10.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 01/08/07