Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island

Yoshi's Island is one of those games that tricks you. You look at the pastel crayon visuals, the cutesy music, the baby protagonist, and you think, "Ah, this will be a gentle, relaxing ride." Then the gameplay slaps you with flying monkeys, lava monsters, and that horrifying crying sound that echoes through your soul every time Baby Mario floats away in a bubble.

The core concept is bizarre but brilliant. You play as a line of heroic Yoshis passing around a helpless infant like a scaly green relay team. Baby Mario doesn't do much except wail like a car alarm, but Yoshi does everything else: ground-pounding, flutter-jumping, and turning enemies into eggs like some kind of adorable bio-weapon specialist.

The game shines with its creativity. Each level feels like it was dreamed up by an over-caffeinated artist with access to crayons and nightmares. There's a boss fight inside a giant frog's stomach. There's a level where everything is spinning. There are transformations. There's that awful monkey water level. It's chaos, but the kind that makes you smile through clenched teeth.

The art style is still gorgeous today. That hand-drawn aesthetic hasn't aged a day. It's like a children's book that someone threw into a blender with a Super Nintendo and a handful of sugar.

Sure, it's not as tight or polished as the original Super Mario World, and yes, Baby Mario's scream still haunts many childhood memories. But this game takes risks and has fun doing it.

8/10. Beautiful, bonkers, and occasionally stressful in a very specific diaper-wearing way.

The pinnacle of 2D platformers and still unmatched in level design. I've never seen a game that has 56 completely unique levels with individual concepts. It's quite amazing the variety in Yoshi's Island. I'm amazed when it's not mentioned on a list or discussion of games that hold up well still today, Yoshi's Island should be THE standard answer. It's gorgeous art style, catchy music, plus brilliant controls & physics make it an absolute delight to play through from start to finish. My personal favourite game of all time!

I first played this way back as a kid, but Baby Mario's ear-piercing cries were so annoying, I couldn't finish it. I tried it again a few years later and finally got the hang of it enough to finish the game.

The story explains Mario and Luigi's origins and shows how their feud with Bowser all began and how Yoshi knows them.

Thanks to the Super FX2 chip, the games graphics are a step up from the SMW. The sprites are much better detailed and had beautifully fluid movements that reminded me of Donkey Kong Country. There were even some pre-rendered 3D graphics used cutscenes and for Baby Bowsers supersized advancing boss sprite.

I loved the cartoonish level layouts and backgrounds. The scenery is all hand drawn. The boss fights are more challenging, especially the final one where you must carefully and aim and throw red eggs at Baby Bowsers face before he destroys the platform you're standing on.

As a substitute for Mario, Yoshi really shines in this game with his very own move set that involves jumping, ground pounding, hovering, and throwing eggs at enemies. It really helped build him up as a true game character and hero instead of just a gimmick character to assist Mario.

There are more advanced and quirky vocalizations, like Yoshi's record-scratch call and tongue slurping sound, Kameks jabbering and Baby Bowser's high-pitched roars and growls. And, infamously, we've got Baby Mario's ear-piercing cries. I'm guessing the designers wanted to make him as annoying as possible to keep you on your toes and avoid losing him.

Returning composer Koji Kondo gave the game a soundtrack is as awesome as the predecessor like the catchy and playful Flower Garden and Athletic level themes. But best of all was the rapid and pulse-pounding heavy metal song played during the final battle against the super-sized baby Bowser.

Just like the prequel, Yoshi's Island is still fun to play and is available on the Nintendo Switch.

This one surprised me. When I heard that the next Mario game would star Yoshi, I was a bit skeptical. Sure, I like that rascal, but hey, you can't upstage Mario (unless you're Luigi. How many other people out there prefer to be player 2?)! Well, once I played it, all my doubts went out the window. Original gameplay (flawless as always for the big N), beautiful and lively graphics, and shyguys a-plenty (my personal fave). Now, for anyone that says this game is too easy, I can assure you that they did not collect all the items in the game. Each stage has a letter rating, based on the amount of red coins, flowers, etc. you collect. The process of collection is never tedious, but always challenging, especially near the end. Sure, tearing through the game from start to finish might be a medium challenge, but doing it right is a challenge worthy of most gamers, one which will be a joy to complete.

Yoshi's Island is not as good as the previous game (Super Mario World). This mainly because instead of playing as Mario you play as Yoshi. Graphics are pretty standard and game play is okay. The various levels are not that difficult, so the game shouldn't take long to beat. The game is worth playing, but I prefer Super Mario World.