Yoshi

"Yoshi lays an egg"

Super Mario Land spawned the first breakout star of the SNES era, a sleepy-eyed green dinosaur named Yoshi. By this point, the little guy is as much a mascot as Mario himself, appearing almost everywhere his plumber pal appears, and even headlining some games of his own. The first of these was a puzzle game, following up another Nintendo success, Dr. Mario. Unfortunately, the third time for Nintendo’s puzzle game series was not the charm.

You play as Mario (or Luigi in 2 player mode), and you’re trying to keep the screen from filling up with Goombas, Piranna Plants, Boo Buddies and Bloopers. Put in layman’s terms, triangular frowny faces with legs, Venus flytraps with teeth, little ghosts and big-eyed squids. Nobody ever said Mario’s adversaries would make the cover of GQ, folks. Anyhow, these things drop at a starting rate of two at a time onto the four spots at the bottom where they’re allowed to land, and putting two of the same creature together, one on top of the other, eliminates them. In theory, these guys will start to pile up after a while. To fight this, you can move each pile around after they’ve landed so that the next falling critter matches up with another of its breed. As the game goes along, it starts to pick up speed, and soon you’ll have to contend with three objects dropping at once.

These aren’t the only things falling down on top of you, though. There are halves of eggs falling, too. Complete an egg, and little baby Yoshi appears. Complete an egg with some of the critters in-between the shells, and a more grown up Yoshi shows up. Four in the middle or more gives him wings, and if you can get a total of seven under the bottom shell before the top comes down on it, Yoshi has a star behind him and becomes a bass singer.

The game offers two modes of single player gameplay. Type A is the basic “keep the screen as clear as possible” style that Tetris fans have known and loved since they first rotated a tetrad. Type B has you clearing out everything on the screen before you’re allowed to advance to the next round. You get a measly bonus for clearing each round, and get to watch Yoshi eat something like a Super Mushroom or Fire Flower. That’s about it.

That’s really all there is to the game. Spin the piles to match up enemies and shells, hatch Yoshis, don’t let the screen fill up. Simple stuff. Tetris and Dr. Mario were pretty simple, too. What separates this game from those two, though, is the fact that the strategy is so linear. Everything that happens is so straightforward, there isn’t any room for complex maneuvering on the same level of, say, getting a chain reaction in Dr. Mario. It’s not like the game is exactly easy, since increased speed and the jump from two to three dropping graphics at a time will make things more difficult from a Tet-stress standpoint. It’s just that the limited amount of techniques relegates this game into one of the worst things you can call a puzzle game: simple to learn, simple to master.

The graphics aren’t anything too special, but nothing very horrible, either. Backgrounds are non-existent save for the checkered pattern around the scoring information and the diagonal stripes around the set-up menu. Mario, Yoshi and the various critters are all either derived directly from Super Mario World, or drawn simply enough for the 8-bit system to handle. They don’t really animate much, in fact, Mario probably has the most frames of animation for spinning the columns around, and he isn’t even what you focus on while playing the game!

I will give the devil its due with regards to sound. The music on this cartridge actually plays longer without repeating itself than it does in the NES version, for some reason. The other sounds are basic thumps and clinks, with the only other notable exception being a metallic-sounding attempt at recreating the trademark Yoshi sound from Super Mario World. Unfortunately, it sounds more like someone trying to use a hacksaw on a piece of lead piping in an echo chamber than the zippy sound effect found on the SNES.

I guess the best thing I could call Yoshi is a puzzle game for young beginners. There’s plenty of cute, large graphics, the mechanics are simple enough for them to get a hold of it easily, and it has it’s own charm to it. The more devout puzzle game fans may want to hang onto their copies of Tetris and Dr. Mario, however. Yoshi can be worthwhile for a quick diversion, but extended play is hardly its strong suit, and it's overt simplicity without anything advanced to really master will leave you wanting for more.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 04/23/03, Updated 04/23/03