Yoshi's New Problems

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Please stop telling Arzest to work on these games.

The last time I really talked about Yoshi's New Island, it was... kind of on a positive note? An article claimed it was like the Super Nintendo classic Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. Well, now we know a bit more about the game since July 2013. Watch this sickening trailer.

Yoshi's sprite and movements are bland and lifeless. The graphical style is still saturated Skittles. Things just aren't looking good. Let's look to some information.

"After a quick recap of the first game, the final screen, where the baby heroes are held high is shown. But then it scrolls down to show the proud new parents. "These aren't our babies!" they exclaim. "WHAAAAT?" The stork screwed up! Off on a new flight to find the Mario bros. real parents, the bird is ambushed by Kamek, who manages to fly off with Luigi. Mario falls towards the ocean below, landing on Floating Egg Island, which happens to be a second home for the Yoshis. In a carbon copy of the first game, the herd decides to take Mario from level to level in search of his brother, while Bowser wants to turn the island into a resort."

So are they just retconning Yoshi's Island DS? Because I'm totally fine with that. YIDS is supposed to come after YI, but YNI is a minutes-later sequel to YI. So perhaps this makes Yoshi's New Island a prequel to Yoshi's Island DS and not a retcon... in which case...

The house the baby brother brats are being snatched from is the same house at the end of Yoshi's Island.

If it's not a retcon, we can conclude what the ending to Yoshi's New Island will be already: The stork realizes it actually DID deliver the babies to the right house, and the parents are morons. And if they are morons, then it explains how stunted the bastard brothers grew up to be. Having a good family has a very high correlation with not being in poverty or being a societal nuisance. That means a mother and a father. No single parents here! And both parents have to be competent at what they do, so they shouldn't be in jail the whole time or something.

Anyway, apparently Bowser wants to make "Floating Egg Island" a resort. That's Bowser, not Kamek or Baby Bowser. ...Does that mean we must suffer through more time-travel and canon timeline destruction? 'cause getting rid of all the trouble Yoshi's Island DS created just to replace it with the same disgusting actions isn't accomplishing much. For another perspective on ruining series canon, see this NSider2 thread by my colleague RawkHawk2010.

Let's look at gameplay. There is a gyro-based egg-throwing style, and the vehicles are exclusively gyro-based. It goes without saying this is a terrible idea. We still have 5 Flowers, 20 Red Coins and 30 Stars. The binoculars we knew about from my last dedicated article are stage-specific.

Here's a very interesting quote from the IGN article I just linked.

"[...] I do have one major concern with Yoshi’s New Island: It’s the first Nintendo game I’ve played in a long time that feels like it was made only for kids. [...] The simplicity, the art style, and in most cases, the lack of difficulty made it feel more like “My First Yoshi Game,” an odd outcome since the original Yoshi’s Island managed to balance a cute presentation with challenging gameplay at the same time."

Does this sound familiar? It sure does to me. Recall my "What's OUR Goodnight Moon?" article. This is pretty much exactly that concept. One problem, though. The game to promote a lifelong pursuit of gaming at a young age should be a good game. Yoshi's New Island is not going to be a good game.

I'm still going to get it, though. It comes out March 14. I don't think I'll get it right away... I mean, I'm not particularly excited about basically losing 40 dollars for very little return. But it'll be a good lesson in game design... or what NOT to do, anyway. Yoshi's Island DS applies to that too, of course.

Speaking of returns, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze will be a much better platformer and will come out February 21 on the Wii U. And it's only $50.

Ludwig has publicly maintained that there is a timeline to the Mario series for over a decade now. He really doesn't like it when it gets screwed up.


The game is out now. How did it do?