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| Name: Yoshi Year: 1991 Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Game Freak Genre: Abstract Puzzler Hours Played: Countless Beaten: N/A |
The idea is simple: you have only four columns in which to arrange four types of famous Mario enemies (Boos, Bloopers, Goombas, Piranha). Two stacked on each other makes a match. The gimmick is there's also top and bottom halves of Yoshi eggs. Line up a top and bottom, and a Yoshi hatches for extra points. Stack enemies between the two halves and you get even more.
The first problem is, for a game in the vein of Columns, the gameplay is pretty boring. Only having four columns to maneuver in adds some challenge, but only needing two characters to make a match means you can clear out the well pretty fast. The egg hatching mechanic doesn't add much to the game; I tried playing once where I made the biggest combos possible, and a second time where I completely ignoring the eggs. My level was higher in the second game, but my score was almost identical.
The second and much bigger problem is the game's AI. There was a fad in the nineties to make video games "intelligent", meaning the game adjusted the difficulty during play to meet your skill level. That sounds pretty cool in theory, but what it usually translated into is you'd start to do really well and then the game would throw a ton of crap at you to take you out. It always came off as unfair, and it was the predecessor of the "forced fair" tactics still found in Mario Kart and Mario Party games today. Yoshi makes heavy use of this tactic; if you're doing too well, the game will temporarily speed up and increase the number of falling enemies, as if to say "here, deal with this!" Since there's four columns and four enemies types, the biggest annoyance is getting two enemies of the same type at once. So when the game decides to start throwing trios of the same enemy at speeds too fast to react to, it kind of feels like getting the finger for doing too well.
The bottom line is that Yoshi feels like a chore to play. Five minutes of boring, too-easy gameplay, followed by thirty seconds of unfairly challenging gameplay, does not equal a good game. It's hard to believe in today's oversaturated world of mobile puzzle games, but in the nineties everyone was still desperately trying to create the next Tetris and no one quite knew how to pull it off. This is definitely one of the weaker attempts.
Graphics & Animation: 2 (Average)
The best thing about this game is the graphics. The Mario enemies present have never looked better, and it's the first time we ever saw Yoshi (the character) on the NES.
Music & Sound: 1 (Bad)
Remember how Dr. Mario was an average, kind of boring game, but they still gave it fantastic music that sticks with you way afterwards? Yeah, not so much here. I've been playing the game all day and I can't even hum you a note.
Controls & Level Design: 0 (Bad)
Instead of controlling the falling enemies directly, you shuffle the board around from below, giving you pretty precise control of where you want things to land. That's good controls. Bad controls is getting slammed with six or seven waves of enemies because it's impossible to place them in time. Either change the controls or change the speed, but stop punishing me for making progress!
Story & Presentation: 1 (Bad)
Remember in Yoshi's Cookie for the NES, how they tried to give the game personality by making it look like a bakery and having Mario in a chef's outfit? Yeah, there's nothing like that here. The menus look exactly like the ones in Dr. Mario or Tetris... it's just very uninspired. There are at least cut scenes if you play Game Type B... they tell the very exciting story of Yoshi eating a different power-up each time. Pac-Man had more interesting cutscenes then this.
Length & Replayability: 0 (Awful)
There's not much to do here except play a very poor excuse for a puzzle game.
Total: 4 (Bad)
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