Yoshi's Cookie

"C is for Cookie, that's good enough for me"

You want to talk about cheap gimmicks? I got your cheap gimmick right here. It's a sad thing when the sudden popularity of any given video game character is used only as a way of creating another cash cow that will be faded like a pair of jeans in just a few years' time (often faster than that). Before it happened to Pikachu just recently, it happened to the lovable green dinosaur Yoshi in the early nineties. One can hardly see straight when they see some of the crap Nintendo cranked out for the reptile with the iron stomach - remember Yoshi's Safari? At least this fairly engaging puzzler was a cut above the rest in its own humble ways. Yoshi's Cookie had more to offer than the average gimmick game. It was a little too sugary, but it wasn't just a bland cookie-cutter product either.

Mario and Yoshi team up once again in this Game Boy release, this time in a cookie factory gone horribly out of whack. There are one hundred different levels divided up into sets of ten, and after completing a set of ten levels a short cinema will play wherein Yoshi and Mario try to catch a renegade bouncy ball. Some of the cartoons provide a lighthearted chuckle; other times you'll be scratching your head wondering, ''Where was the humor in THAT?'' Anyway, in each of these hundred stages, you have to clear the assembly line (playing field) of cookies by lining up similar confections in rows or columns of at least two. Unfortunately, this is way too easy for most of the game. It only starts to get remotely difficult around the sixth set, and finally attains a respectable semblance of difficulty in the final set. If you start to take too long on any given level, the cookies coming in will predictably speed up, though never to an overtly frustrating extent. Also in a predictable turn, you get more points for longer row/column eliminations. Considering the batch of puzzlers out there, this one probably won't turn many heads. It doesn't batter you into the ground with intense gameplay and insane difficulty. I think Yoshi's Cookie was just meant to provide a bit of fun for the younger audience while employing proven standbys we've all come to love. In all fairness, the Keebler Elves run a more efficient operation than these fellows.

But say one-player puzzle mode excitement just isn't your bag. Well, luckily, YC comes with a multiplayer mode, which is where the strength of most puzzle games lies. Here is where the game becomes more feverish than ever. You are given a 5x5 grid of cookies, and you and your friends - or an AI opponent - try to make enough matches to fill up a small meter to your right. This requires you to keep an eye on both your cookies and your friends'/opponent's meter and try to get in gear or stay ahead. Three random hurdles will also hamper your progress: Panic, which jumbles your cookies up in a screwy arrangement; Blind, which puts a majorly inconvenient box over the action; and Slave, which puts your cookies under the control of another player. These are triggered by signs from your character who sits in the top-right corner of the screen. An X means that none of these moves are available at that point, while an O gives you the go-ahead to unleash havoc on your opponent's cookie grid. I think these features would have been way cooler if they were somehow incorporated into the single-player mode (Blind especially), but there's no use in complaining about what has already passed. Also, when you think about how many people actually own this game, you'll know how hard it is to link up with buddies for this game's best feature, and often you'll end up lonely and playing with the loathsome AI. A great feature gone to waste. It's a crying shame, really.

If asked to give a fair description, I'd say the graphics are about on par with an average NES title, except done in the old clunky Game Boy monochrome tints. Mario and Yoshi both look a bit funky and somewhat chubby, as if forced into the small spaces they are given on the screen. The cookies come in a small number of standard shapes (five, I think) and are the most dominant things on the screen. Of course, the little animations do their part in spicing up the game, but they don't help out a whole lot, since none of them are truly worthy of a belly laugh. If you play versus mode, you can see little funky fat versions of Peach and Bowser as well. If translated to other consoles, it could probably pass as a VERY old Super Nintendo game, but more than likely would be NES fodder.

Music in this game takes off for a little bit and then crashes to the ground in a brilliant explosion of utter crap. The fast song admittedly works up a lot of adrenaline and gets you in a real puzzle-playing mood, but the slower circus style song should be brutally massacred with a rolling pin. Four different songs inhabit this game, and they all get annoying after a short time, with the fast tune being only slightly less pestering than its three siblings. Fortunately, there's that volume control that kindly reminds you how golden silence is, and you can eliminate your sweet treats in peace and quiet or play to the sounds of your CD collection, although a game like this and a group like Green Day seem somewhat anachronistic. No noticeable effort appears to have been put into the sound. All you hear is the movement of the cursor and the weird noise cookies make when a row of similar ones leave the screen. The only unique effects are heard in the cartoon shorts (the one where Mario tumbles into the ball stands out in my mind right now), which are sort of the big reward for playing this game. If I wanted to play a game to see the cinemas, though, I'd play Final Fantasy X.

Nintendo has never disappointed when it comes to silky smoothness of control in their puzzle games. It was a godsend in Tetris Attack and Dr. Mario and it's a godsend here. The fluid movement of the cursor actually helps make the game easier. The A button will switch cookie positions, and the B button moves the cookies faster if you begin to tire of the default pace, which is reminiscent of a garden snail with a double hernia. Both the speed-up button and the ease of use of the cursor allow cookies to be stacked up to the very limits only to have a row of eight knocked out. So yes, strategy actually is important in this game! This simplicity of control is almost too good for the early levels where you have 2x2 blocks of cookies to work with. Some of this unintentional alleviation of difficulty makes you think, ''D'oh!''

Yoshi's Cookie is not a notable puzzle game in terms of gameplay, originality, or anything else. It's as bland and average as a game like it gets, and anything remarkable that had potential was put to utter waste. Plus, it was just another way to capitalize on the unexpected popularity of Yoshi, along with all the other products from the original Yoshi game right on down to the Super Mario World cartoon. (Remember that? He had a caveman friend named Utar and all the cars were powered by Goombas? Okay, maybe you don't.) If it had dipped a bit more into the Deep Barrel of Originality and done a lot more with the more unique features such as those found in the multi-player game, it could have taken home a much higher score from me. But as it stands, Yoshi's Cookie is just another face in the crowd. I own it and enjoyed it for a while, but it is too average to have lasting appeal.

Mmmm, That's Good Cookie
--Decent graphics for Old Grandpa Game Boy
--Multiplayer mode moves fast and is rife with action
--The little cartoon are kind of good

Kneads Improvement
--Most of the musical ditties are really grating
--Not enough done with multiplayer and its features
--So average it's sickening

By the way, other than the word ''cookie,'' I was able to cram six other cookie-related words into this review. Can you find them all?

Score: 6

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/27/02, Updated 06/27/02