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.
