So riddle me this, Batman.
Yoshi first appeared in Super Mario World, on the SNES, in 1991.
So in 1992, what was that joker doing, slumming around on the original NES?
It’s not like we had a dearth of green dinosaurs and needed to fulfill a quota, we had that
covered with Bubble Bobble.
But Yoshi’s not here in a platformer, or an action game, or even a dissertation on
dinosaur metabolism as it pertains to cookies.
Nope, he’s here... in a puzzle game.
A kinda crappy puzzle game at that.
But that’s not the thing that’s nagging at me right now.
Right now, my primary thought is... why does that music sound so familiar?
Seriously.
Do you hear it?
I know what you’re thinking, “How did they manage to slip forward in time and swipe
Pokemon’s soundtrack?
It’s an excellent question, but since we don’t live in a paradigm in which time travel
is feasible, we have to look for a different answer.
How about, “Why does Pokemon sound so much like that old Yoshi game on the NES?”
Much better.
Turns out, this strange offshoot of Nintendo’s key franchise was entrusted to an up-and-coming
devleoper called Game Freak, which started out publishing gaming magazines under the
same name.
Said magazine was started by Satoshi Tajiri - the creator of Pokemon - and illustrated
by Ken Sugimori - the art director for Pokemon.
A couple years after Yoshi, they’d produce a quirky little RPG for the Game Boy, and
you can guess the rest.
But that’s all backstory.
I suppose I should actually talk about the game for a while.
Here’s how it works: Mario-franchise monsters fall from the top of the screen in pairs,
toward the platforms at the bottom which are manned by the main man Mario himself.
Pairing two monsters of the same type eliminates them both, while sandwiching monsters between
the halves of a Yoshi egg eliminates all such monsters, and out hatches a Yoshi under circumstances
I’d rather not think about too hard about it.
Anyway, as with most falling-block puzzle games of the sort, you tread water in pursuit
of a high score, and then you fail.
That’s pretty much the size of the whole game.
Though much like Tetris, there’s also a B-mode that gives you a pre-set stack of monsters
and challenges you to dig through them and clear the board entirely.
But here’s where the problem sets in.
The playing space itself is very small, and if a bad run of drops sees you without any
shell-tops...
well, you’re screwed.
Hard.
You can go way too long without seeing any shell parts, which are kinda crucial to the
elimination of monsters in a timely fashion.
It’s not any real problem with the player, as it is with the random number generator,
thus turning what should be a skill-based challenge into one entirely of luck.
And not all the tricks in the world, up to and including the fast-switch to eliminate
two monsters from the same platform at once, are going to help you.
Just sit back and listen to the music, and pretend you’re in Celadon City or something.
Game Freak moved on to bigger and better things.
Nintendo moved on to bigger and better things.
Hell, even Puzzle Games Featuring Yoshi moved on, with Yoshi’s Cookie bringing some much-needed
balance (and carbs) to the table.
Even though you can obtain it rather readily for the NES, Wii Virtual Console, or even
the 3DS Virtual Console, I wouldn’t suggest dropping everything to do so.
Unless you just really like Pokemon music.