Author's Notes: So, I'm going to do a very ambitious project. I am going to FINISH this fanfic so I can start on a new one. I can't believe a new yoshi game already came out! Man, I was not expecting that. I am full of ideas so, I hope you all enjoy the story! ^^ These chapters are gonna be relatively short for now, but that's because I'm just getting warmed up.
Dec 02, 2017 Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3 was re-released on the 3DS's Virtual Console exclusively to 3DS Ambassadors in Australia on December.
Windblown Wilderness
'Alright Baby DK, let's get you to Sirius!' shouted Sapphira rather enthusiastically.
The baby chimp clapped and giggled from her enthusiasm. Sapphira smiled at the baby and continued to walk ahead.
Meanwhile, Mitch would be spying on the light blue yoshi with his binoculars. He carefully followed the yoshi's movement, attempting to learn her tactics.
'You know all the yoshi does is jump from platform to platform. Maybe swallow some enemies? And then jump more platform? What is there to learn?' said Bob.
'Hold on Bob, I need to observe his movements. That is a male yoshi, right?' replied Mitch.
Yoshi's Island Kangaroo Park
Bob became momentarily quiet. 'I don't know. Maybe it's a boy?'
'It's a boy! Come on, it should be obvious,' said Carl.
'Might be a girl, though. You never know,' said Mitch.
Bob pushes Mitch away from him and snatched the binoculars. He peered through the binoculars and observed the yoshi himself. 'Hmmm...I think it's a boy.'
Mitch slowly stood up and wiped his robe. 'You know, you may be right Bob. We shouldn't jump to conclusions though. We don't have any decisive evidence,' said Mitch.
'Oh, so you're challenging me now!?' shouted Bob all of a sudden.
'What, challenging you on what?' replied Mitch, being rather confused.
'I will prove to you that the yoshi is a male!' Bob immediately flew away.
Carl immediately follow Bob behind. 'Ooooh, I wanna help!'
Mitch reluctantly followed as well. 'I don't think this is going to end well,' he mumbled to himself.
Sapphira stood next to the stork stop and waited. A few minutes passed and the stork did not arrive. The light blue yoshi sat down and just stared at the sky.
'I wonder what is taking the stork so long. I would expect him to follow us,' said Sapphira to Baby DK. The baby chimp would just be sleeping on her back.
'Oh my goodness, I am so sorry!' cried out the stork from afar. He flew above Sapphira and immediately grabbed Baby DK and threw Baby Peach onto Sapphira's back.
'By now!' shouted the stork, flying away in a rush.
'I wonder what he's rushing for,' said Sapphira.
The stork placed the babies below a tree and quickly flew up to a female stork, who was perched onto the tree.
'So, where were we?' said the stork in a flirtatious manner.
Sapphira traversed through the windy area with no problem. Baby Peach instinctively opened up her parasol, allowing the yoshi to fly up much higher. She scaled through the cliff and used the wind and parasol to fly up higher. She eventually saw some conveniently placed arrows and followed it.
She saw a large skull that stood over a small gap.
'I wonder what sort of creature that skull belonged too,' said Sapphira. She purposefully fell into the gap and landed near a door. She opened the door and walked inside.
A kangaroo with a rather large pouch stared at the yoshi. Sapphira walked up to the kangaroo and stared at it back.
After a few minutes of awkward staring Sapphira blinked and shook her head.
'I do not know what I'm supposed to do here,' said Sapphira. She looked at the baby on her back, hoping for some enlightenment.
Me: *facepalm*
'I want to ride the kangaroo!' shouted Carl all of a sudden.
'No, Carl! That's not what we're here for!' cried out Bob as he chased after Carl.
'Uhm, I believe the pouch is only for the infant, if it has one. Kangaroos can also be rather defensive creatures so I wouldn't try to get so close to one,' said Sapphira. 'The pouch is used strictly for nursing and protecting its child.'
Carl jumps into the kangaroo's pouch. He waved his arm and shouted as if he was in an amusement park ride. The kangaroo stared at Carl for a few moment. Suddenly, it flashed its sharp teeth at Carl.
'Come on, jump!' shouted Carl. He kicked the Kangaroo's belly within the pouch. Suddenly, the kangaroo shrieked and bit Carl's head.
'Aaaaaaaaah!' cried out Carl in pain. He jumped out of the Kangaroo and runs around in circles, having the kangaroo still biting onto his head.
Mitch and Bob grabbed onto the Kangaroo's feet and attempted to pull the Kangaroo off of Carl's head. Pulling only caused more pain for Carl, so the Toadies stopped immediately.
Mitch pondered for a moment. A light bulb lit over his head. 'Ah hah! '
Mitch flew over to the light blue yoshi and grabbed one of her eggs. 'I need to borrow this.' he said. He quickly threw the egg at the kangaroo. The kangaroo let go of Carl and glared at Mitch.
'Run away!' shouted Mitch.
Yoshi Island Mario
All of the Toadies flew away. As soon as the Toadies were out of sight, the Kangaroo calmed down and hoped closer to Sapphira. The Kangaroo picked up Sapphira and placed her into its pouch.
'Thanks,' said Sapphira, smiling at the Kangaroo.
The Kangaroo jumped high into the air and hovered over the wall briefly, allowing Sapphira to grab the coins up in the air. Sapphira held onto the kangaroo's pouch while baby Peach giggled by the thrills of riding the kangaroo. Eventually, the kangaroo made one final jump and landed hard on the ground. Sapphira instinctively jumped out of the pouch and entered through the door at the dead end.
The rest of the way would be rather eventless. The orange sky gradually turned darker and the stars began to appear one-by-one. She jumped into the air and Baby Peach opened up her parasol, allowing the yoshi to soar much higher into the air. Sapphira finally reached her goal and spotted Sirius lying under the familiar tree.
Sapphira walked up to Sirius and places the baby next to her.
'Well, I made it safely. I hope you had a nice rest,' said Sapphira.
Sirius stood up and placed the baby onto her saddle. 'Yep, I'm ready to kick some butt!'
The toadies arrived at Hector the Reflector's Haunted House. They landed near the entrance and banged on the door as hard as they could.
'Kaaaaaammmeeeeeeek!' shouted the Toadies simultaneously.
Kamek reluctantly opened the door. 'What do you freaks want?'
Kamek dropped his wand as soon as he saw an angry kangaroo staring down at the Toadies from behind. He slowly picked up his wand and closed the door shut.
Color of the day: Light blue
Light (sky) blue: peace, serenity,
As you can tell from this chapter, Sapphira avoids any sort of problems. She prefers to keep peace, but of course that is not always possible. I really admire her calm and peaceful personality. It sometimes reflect myself at times. Even though Sapphira doesn't always resolve peace, she does at least have enough influence to prevent situations from getting far worse.
Anyways, I hope you enjoy this chapter! For now, I am going to keep these chapters short because I rather not use up all of my ideas in one single chapter. See you next update! As for the 'challenge' to determine the gender of a Yoshi, I am going to save that for next chapter. I realize that it will be a lot more funnier if they try to mess with Sirius.
Yes, the Kangaroo is vicious.
My boyfriend is also going out of country, so I'm going to take advantage of my alone time to make more wonderful stories for my readers!
I expect the standard thing to do here is to remark that Yoshi's Island was the most astounding, mesmerising, stunningly inventive 2D platform game of its generation, and then go on to talk about how Yoshi's Island DS does the same things with a few more additions and is therefore also excellent.
But I don't really feel that way, and I suppose it's because a sequel to Yoshi's Island is self-defeating. The first one was, in effect, Super Mario World 2, and it was made at a time when Nintendo still understood that to truly improve on something of that game's incredible significance meant ripping it up completely, and proceeding with only the most fundamental elements intact: in Yoshi's case, the controls, and the collectibles. Of course, back in 1995 they were doing this on two fronts, with Super Mario 64's development running parallel.
Artoon's attempt to rework Yoshi as a DS title doesn't do this. You're looking in the wrong place if you're after a DS platformer that has the SNES Yoshi's determination to use the technology - without being brash about it - to create brilliant new scenarios, and new experiences that turn convention on its head (or rather, get it drunk, pull its trousers down, and generally fart all over it). For that, you're better off looking to New Super Mario Bros., which comes closer even if it doesn't get there either. This is like a distended version of Yoshi, and its appeal is ultimately a bit limited.
That's not to say Artoon hasn't worked hard to fill out the DS game, mind you. Yoshi retains his usual abilities (running, jumping, hovering with well-timed B-button flutters, converting enemies into eggs and firing them using an aiming cursor, and of course bouncing on heads), but this time it's not just Mario and Luigi he and the rest of the Yoshi clan are worried about. There are now five babies, with Yoshi carrying one at any given time, and able to swap it over for another at special 'stork points', where his beaky companion offers him a choice of baby Peach, Donkey Kong, Bowser and Wario depending on how far you've gone.
The benefit of swapping babies is that each augments Yoshi's basic skills with one or two of their own. Mario allows Yoshi to dash (useful on disintegrating platforms), while egg projectiles fired while he's onboard will bounce off walls, allowing you to tag far off collectible flowers and cloud-blocks to help reach new areas. Peach can hold out her umbrella to help you float upward on gusts of wind, while DK's explosive eggs are only part of his appeal - unlocking as he does the ability to clamber along vines and chains, swing from hanging ropes and shoulder-charge through walls. I don't want to spoil everything, but let's say Bowser and Wario also have a sort of fiery magnetism to them.
Yoshi's Island Theme
The game is still split into eight stages set across five different worlds, with a pair of boss castles for each, unlockable extra levels and mini-games to find too. Individually the levels are much bigger, with greater complexity brought about through the addition of new types of collectible (like the Big Golden Coin, and red coins hidden among all the regular ones), and the constituent parts of each are certainly diverse enough to sustain their girth. No one can claim Yoshi's Island DS isn't varied. There are pressure-switch platforms that you can stand on as long as you want, but which will only bear your weight a certain number of times; there are competing wind currents to ride; there are circular moving platforms with arrows on them that continually spin and follow the direction they're pointing whenever you're standing on them; there are Yoshi's traditional vehicle morphs like the mole and helicopter, and a new bouncing kangaroo; there are swinging bits and flapping bits and swollen others, and really every flavour of platform imaginable.
Principally it's all about getting to the end and leaping through the flowery goal to pass your current baby to the next Yoshi in line, but of course that's barely half of it - with the real challenge coming from scouring the level for coins, flowers and mini-game doorways. The tantalising sight of a door you can't reach or a flower that's beyond your grasp is the closest thing the platform genre has to Zelda's perpetual hook, and Artoon's new concepts are used to help amplify the effect - with certain collectibles plainly within reach of a particular baby (Mario, for example, whose presence turns useless outlines into solid 'M' blocks). The use of both screens, too, means you can look further afar for things to acquire - and the decision to acknowledge the gap between the DS' two screens, rather than pretending it isn't there, means that aiming always makes sense to your brain, avoiding the pitfalls of games like Bubble Bobble Revolution.
But then Artoon takes things a bit too far. It hides things in the gap between screens, which is, I suppose, a clever acknowledgement of the fourth wall, but at the same time it also means you're constantly looking up and down to make sure you've not missed anything. You have the ability to switch Yoshi between top and bottom screens to see what's lurking above or below him, but relying upon it to make up for the designer's conceitedness does it no favours.
There's a similar feel to the baby-swapping idea - it's clearly there to encourage replay value (when you get DK, your first reaction is to think, 'gosh, where have I see those vines before?'), but the process then becomes backtracking and not exploring. Yoshi's original charm wasn't just that completing each level to 100 percent was satisfying, it was that you knew the developers were off-screen squeezing surprises into every last secret pixel. You trusted them. They were there to make sure you had fun. Artoon clearly wants to play that role, but ends up creating doubt with some of its design decisions - the trust isn't there, and instead you're constantly wasting time casting about to make sure they're not trying to trick you again.
There's certainly great depth to what's been achieved, and like New Super Mario Bros. it's not a mean-spirited game. It does get very tricky later on, but you always have far more lives than you really need, and the traditional system of having Yoshi drop his baby and have to pick it up again within a time limit, rather than simply dying if he brushes too many enemies, means that losing masses of progress is relatively rare. That's also helped by nicely spaced save points, which sensibly also checkpoint you just before boss battles.
But really it all comes back to the fact that Yoshi's Island was doing almost everything for the first time, and Artoon is cribbing from the same notes. It's a shame, because there are times when you catch glimpses of the sort of thing the Japanese team is really capable of - like a ghost boss in the second world who is invisible on the top screen, and has to be tackled by using an upside-down reflection in the touch-screen to judge his position. With each strike, he cracks the mirror to make things more difficult. When Yoshi's Island DS does things like this, you smile. It's compelling.
The problem is that it's a sensation that you felt all the time in Yoshi's Island. You gave up counting the ways. Counting them here would result in a much smaller number, like, ooh...
7 /10