GOICA: The Intensely Personal Yoshi's Story Thing

Games Only I Care About: The Intensely Personal Yoshi’s Story Retrospective/Dissection (Part 1)

Introduction, or: I Attempt To Encapsulate a Bunch of Vague Feelings About a Game For the Benefit of People Who Aren’t Me

                Hoo boy. This is gonna be a toughie.

                In the popular consciousness, Yoshi’s Story is generally not considered to be a very good game. It’s often regarded as mediocre at best, and an abhorrent blot on the Mario escutcheon at worst; certainly it’s no patch on the venerable Super Nintendo classic Yoshi’s Island. Critics have all manner of dismissals for it: Too easy, too kiddie, too generic, too short. Just play Yoshi’s Island, they say. Or that new Woolly World thing; I hear that’s a good one. But there’s no need to waste your time with Yoshi’s Story.

                I goddamn love it. Zero-hesitation desert island pick for sure.

                But I’ve thought and thought how to best explain my love for Yoshi’s Story to other people, and it isn’t easy. Yoshi’s Story isn’t merely something that I like. It’s a game that means something to me. Phrasing it like that, it certainly makes it sound as if there’s some melodramatic backstory behind my attachment to the game—like I got it as a present from a now-deceased relative, or I played it a lot with a kid who later got into an accident and died, or this bright and cheerful game is somehow connected in some other way to the concept of death. But the truth is far less morbid, and probably a lot less dramatic than you were expecting: This game, maybe moreso than any other, represents the very essence of childhood to me. Liquid childhood, if you will.

                I played this game an awful lot growing up, but there’s more to it than that. Everything about this game just encapsulates its era for me. This game’s brilliant, not-of-this-world color palette and pre-rendered CGI sprites are the sort of thing only the 90’s could have produced. Rather than have you travel from one end of the level to another to complete it, the game instead puts its focus on collecting as many things as possible, and we all know how much collecting stuff was in vogue in the 90’s.

                And yet, there’s something delightfully anachronistic about it. At a time when video games were desperate to prove to the world that they were big boy toys, that they were growing up as much as anyone else—when they were piling on the blood and boobs and swear words and going full throttle with the new 3D technology that they had available in a teenager’s desperate bid to prove that dammit, he’s an adult too—Yoshi’s Story said nuts to that. It’s a bright and cheerful, unapologetically introductory 2D game that lets you play it at your pace. It offers you the easy path at first, letting you just eat things with Yoshi’s tongue willy-nilly, and you’ll beat it eventually. But with gentle nudges, it encourages you to grow up, to try the harder challenges, to see more of what it has to offer you at the price of making things more difficult. When I first played the game, I was just grappling with the realization that I, too, was getting older—my age had only just hit the double digits, after all—and maybe that helped it resonate with me. The storybook motif and toylike graphics gave me a way to hold onto my childhood just that little bit longer, while the thrill of the game’s thirty-melon runs encouraged me to keep on growing and challenging myself. Or something.

                But even more so than that, this game was my introduction to the concept of an aesthetic before I even knew what an aesthetic was. I think in my youth, I referred to this game as having “atmosphere” or something of the sort. Yoshi’s Story is well-known for its graphical style, where all of the backgrounds and platforms in the game are made up to look like different materials—cardboard, cloth, wood, papier-mâché, even plastic inflatables. And almost every music track in the game is a cleverly-disguised variation on the same basic melody, whether it’s rap, reggae, a lullaby, or whatever the hell genre rhythmic burping is. Even as a kid, I knew that Yoshi’s Story had some ineffable audiovisual quality to it that other games just didn’t have. It honestly haunted me. For a long time, I never actually owned this game—it was just an astonishingly frequent rental, right alongside the likes of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Donkey Kong 64. But I’d see things everywhere that reminded me of Yoshi’s Story—like three trees on a hill that reminded me of the placement of trees on a hill in this game’s first level, or a sunset over a palm tree the same color as the sunset over the palm trees in one of the jungle levels, and it would remind me that, right at that moment, I couldn’t play Yoshi’s Story.

                I don’t honestly remember what age I was when I finally owned this game for myself. I know that the GameCube had been out for a couple of years, because the prices of Nintendo 64 games had fallen a fair bit on the resale market. I may have well been in high school by that point. I also might have cried tears of joy. (And that might be an exaggeration, but how would you know? You’re not me. That’s why I’m writing this.)  

                I wouldn’t call Yoshi’s Story my favorite N64 game, but I wouldn’t call it that not by a long shot. (Ah, double negatives. Always a fun time. Even I’m not sure if what I’ve written is correct.) While a lot of N64 games have passed into the hallowed halls of my favorites in a quieter manner, Yoshi’s Story is the only one that remains a nostalgic punch to the gut every time I play it. I can play the likes of Banjo-Kazooie or Super Mario 64 on their own merits without thinking back the way the game used to make me feel, to the way I felt when I did certain things for the first time, to what I was doing the first time I found certain things or went certain places. But some part of Yoshi’s Story is always anchored in the past for me. Even though I’ve since played the game in ways I never would have imagined doing as a kid, and I have a new grown-up appreciation for the game’s level design (yes, appeciation—I’ve done an awful lot of thinking about the way this game is set up, and trust me, it’s a lot smarter than most people give it credit for), playing it still makes me feel like I’m ten and guzzling Goldfish crackers with a three-pronged nightmare of plastic in my hands.

                Thus, I’m writing a retrospective/dissection thing. I plan to go over every single level in the game—yes, every one—and talk about it in detail. I see this as serving two purposes: One, I want to actually talk about the game design present here, and highlight some of this game’s more clever choices and the things it does to teach the player how to play it and to make itself fun. Not in any particular academic way, mind. In that casual, pensive tone you use when you’re observing the world with friends and seeing if you find yourself intellectually stimulated. But I’m also in it to talk about what all of these levels mean to me. True to what I said, almost every level in this game has some deep memories and feelings associated with it. Most of them I’ve never talked about with another living soul. And now I’m putting them on the Internet for all to see.

                Wish me luck. And you’d better do it now, because once you read further into this mess of words and nostalgia vomit, you’ll probably left thinking it wouldn’t be so bad if my luck suddenly ran out.

                Without further ado, let us begin.

Level 0-0: Practice

                Hey. I did say every level. What, did you think I stuttered?

                You know, it wasn’t so very long ago (I say that, but this game is nearly twenty years old) that in-game tutorials were actually fairly rare. I know I’m going to get a lot of hate for saying this, but you know what? I don’t mind in-game tutorials at all, and I never have. Back when I was a kid, I bought a lot of games second-hand, since preteens are not particularly known for being made of money. And game boxes back then weren’t made to be permanent receptacles for games and all their accoutrements. Lots of secondhand games (and rentals!) came without manuals, so how were you gonna figure out how to play the game if the game didn’t tell you? Not that I needed instruction for Yoshi’s Story. Whenever my parents went shopping, I made a beeline for the electronics section and devoured the strategy guides, and this game’s was one of them.

                Besides, not even the grumpiest tutorial-hater could be mad at this tutorial. You never have to touch it if you don’t want to.

                Yoshi’s Story’s practice level drops you right down into the middle of a cardboard forest, the level background I consider to be the definitive look for Yoshi’s Story—but we’ll talk more about that when we get to this game’s actual first level. For the uninitiated, this is the general gameplay flow of the game: In order to complete each level of the game, you have to use Yoshi’s long and supple tongue to slurp up 30 fruit. There are 60 fruit in every level, so, generally speaking, you only have to play half of any given level to beat it. 30 of those fruits are “normal” fruits—apples, bananas, watermelons, and grapes—and you’ll get extra points if you eat a fruit that matches the color of the Yoshi you’ve chosen to peruse a particular level with. (So Green Yoshi likes watermelons, Yellow Yoshi likes bananas, Red and Pink Yoshi like apples, and Dark and Light Blue Yoshi like grapes.) Three of those ordinary fruits only appear in packets of six, but the first time you pop the game open on each playthrough, a roulette will cycle through the four core fruits and name one of them the “Lucky Fruit.” Lucky Fruit appears twelve times to a stage and is worth a whopping eight points (compared to one for a plain fruit and three for a favorite, color-matched fruit). But you can do even better than Lucky: The other 30 fruits in the stage are sweet, sweet cantaloupe melons. Every Yoshi is a fan of these. Each one is worth special “Melon Points” all on its own. And if you’re a picky eater and limit yourself to only melons, you’ll not only see the entirety of the level, you’ll also earn a truly titanic score.

                 The practice level introduces you to most of these basics by plopping you down in the middle of a simplified level with Green Yoshi as your playable Yosh and lets you run wild. Rather than assail you with countless popups that command you to “press the A button to jump!,” the game instead peppers the level with the marshmallow-like façade of the Tip Blocks, happy, wobbling bricks that are glad to dispense information so long as you smack your head on the bottom of them. They even have nice, rounded corners so your ickle Yoshis won’t get a cut on them. But the game takes a rather brute-force approach to showing off most of the basics, like giving you a cloud of coins right off the bat to teach you that you can do a flutter jump to gain more height and distance, so aside from what buttons to press, it’s pretty easy to pick up the necessities just by looking at the stage and rubbing all your different abilities on things. Which I actually rather like; it doesn’t just show you what to do, but how it feels doing the right thing. There’s a lot of feel-good in this tutorial, actually, as like most Nintendo games do, this game rewards you for doing things that are naturally fun on their own. Like popping bubbles, or breaking rocks into big blue crumbs, or collecting coins that go “ding.” Although I’m sure a few sriracha fanatics would cry foul at this game considering chili peppers “yucky” food that will actually harm the Yoshis. Hey, they’re babies. Cut their tongues some slack.

                And speaking of rewarding what feels good. Since humans like patterns and they especially like making them, the game offers you a special treat if you eat six of the same fruit in a row. If you make a lovely monocolored line on the border that shows your stomach’s progress through the level, a heart-shaped Super Happy Fruit will descend from the heavens on a marvelous parachute, ready to tickle your taste buds with its majesty. Being Super Happy offers a sweet smattering of benefits: You’re invincible, your flutter jump goes further, you can throw unlimited eggs, your Ground Pound move pops goodie-holding bubbles, and most important of all, the music gets replaced with a sweet shredding guitar remix. This is something I’ve always liked about the game. Given that my first video game ever was Tetris Attack (another Yoshi vehicle, at least if you’re American), I naturally enjoy matching colors, and it’s pleasant to get a reward for doing so that’s more than just an inflated score. And being Super Happy just feels nice; the boosts to speed and jumping you get make moving around in that tiny window all the more pleasant, but the state offers so much good stuff that you feel obliged to make the most of every new ability to have. And while you might think that the rock remixes would all sound identical, given that every tune in the game has the same basic melody, Kazumi Totaka managed to achieve a shocking amount of variety with just guitar samples and some drum riffs. Plus, Super Happiness is one of the few ways to actually create more fruit in a level, since Ground Pounding near certain enemies (primarily Shy Guys) while sugar high will pop them into whatever fruit got chosen to be “Lucky” this game around. Practice is sure to line up lots of melons so you can see this magical effect for yourself, but just in case you can’t take an obvious hint, it also gives you a free Super Happy Fruit (as some levels do) so you can have a literal taste of the majesty.

                There are a couple holes in its demonstrations that do cut slightly into Practice’s efficacy as a tutorial. Although it goes so far as to explain the White Shy Guys, the game’s quirky one-up system, it never shows off the collectibles you have to pick up to unlock levels (which I’ll go into more detail on in the future). And while the Tip Blocks do mention that Yoshis like the color of fruit that matches them (which is a bit of an odd concept, if you think about it; I don’t particularly like peaches any more than normal despite being fairly pink-colored), it doesn’t really drive home the fact that in Yoshi’s Story scoring, color is king. Yoshis like everything that matches their color, including enemies. Shy Guys are fairly obvious about this, since they come in four different great fruit flavors to match the four different great fruits that Yoshis like (or, you know, as great as fruits that aren’t melons can be), but maybe it’s not as obvious that Pink Yoshis in particular go ape for the pink Teehee Butterflies, or that Green Yoshis crave the taste of the mace-throwing Gabons (or Spikes, as the rest of the Mario universe knows them). But then again, maybe that’s part of the beauty of this game. Rather than spell these things out for you, it gives you a trail of breadcrumbs and leaves you to extrapolate on your own: Hmm, Red Yoshi likes Apples and red Shy Guys… I wonder if he also likes red Cheep Cheeps? Of course, this doesn’t explain why Yoshis who really love eating particular enemies are absolutely ecstatic when you bomp them on the noggin instead of munching them, earning you double the points, but questioning the internal logic of game design elements meant to reward the player for trying new ways to play the game is probably not a good idea.

                I give the game no marks in the melon department, though, since the practice level doesn’t contain enough melons to let you finish the level. One of the most important aspects of the game is trying to find all the melons hidden in each level, and the tutorial level doesn’t even let you do that? Psh, I say! It would’ve been nice if the game let you experience the thrill of getting all melons early on to bait you into trying it later—I know that for at least the first few times I played this game, I was too intimidated to try going for all melons in a regular level since it seemed so daunting. But there are only twenty-three melons here, and the non-existence of the other seven has driven me mad for years. I can’t tell you how many times I fruitlessly searched high and low for them, literally sniffing in every corner (seriously, sniffing is a mechanic in this game; we’ll talk about it in the first real level) for something I’ve missed. There are three types of “melon minigames” you can find in the levels of this game, and each gives out seven melons as a prize; the tutorial introduces one of them (that infernal box-balancing minigame, which we’ll get to in due time), and I was so, so sure that there was another of them hidden somewhere. Alas, it was not to be, and I can only guess that the reason for this is because they wanted to make damn sure you tried eating other fruits and saw their effects on Yoshi.

                I don’t want to spend too much time lingering on the aesthetics of this level, because I have loads to say about this particular level “look,” and I don’t want to blow that “loads” yet. But I have to say, I kind of like it. Because the level’s designed to get you trying out different kinds of jumps, it’s interestingly craggy. Yet those crags lead to a lot of little nooks in the ground that somehow feel… cozy? I’m going with cozy. I wouldn’t mind eating a picnic in some of them, is all I’m saying.