GENRE
	Platformer
	DEVELOPER
	Nintendo
	PUBLISHER
	Nintendo
	NUMBER OF PLAYERS
	1
	CONTROLLER PAK
	no
	RUMBLE PAK
	yes
	RAM PAK
	no
	BUY NOW AT

I purchased Yoshi's Story on the day of it's release fearing the worst. The criticisms of the top reviewers of the industry bouncing around my skull, evoking a preliminary feeling of regret. But Nintendo rarely lets me down with their in- house developed games, and I thought, how could Yoshi's Story be so different? It's different, all right, but in nothing but a positive sense. Yoshi has flaws, but still turns out to be better than most of the junk that dangles from the shelves...

Rumble Pack Note: Fortunately, the rumble pak is superbly utilized in this Nintendo effort. Responding to almost everything that is happening during the game, I am surprised that my batteries haven't dried up yet. You'll feel the ground as you pound it, you experience the tingle of digested Shy Guys, and you'll finally understand what Yoshi feels when he hits a swaying spiked mace at full speed. Nice job with the shakey-quake.

visuals

As you boot up Yoshi's Story for the first time, you'll be treated to a plethora of colors, animations, mini-cinemas, and a style that cannot be seen anywhere else in the industry. Yoshi's Story is the closest thing to Electronical Impressionism, in terms of it's visual and artistic display. In the cut scenes between levels, the 2D cut-out sprites represent a story book without flaw and the 3D rendered characters, backdrops, and effects bring life to what could have easily been a lazy attempt to worm out of 2D traditional animation.

Vibrant shades and hues at a crisp resolution make the pages of this story book pop-up. Nowhere throughout the 24 stages of the quest is there ever a poor showing of pixelated messes, or bland worlds. The level structures are designed to look like textiles, paper mache', clay, cardboard, ceramic tiles, cotton, and other strange crafts. This all combines to emit a "homemade" aura and a style that no other game has. Much props, Nintendo.

Animation comes through with an overabundance of motion. Yoshi hops and bumbles along as fluid as a Saturday morning cartoon, and the enemies and bosses make chase on an equal level of quality. I was amazed at the smoothness the characters, objects, and effects in the game oozed across the screen as if it were happening in front of me. Even certain matter that hindered in the backdrops went from foreground to background as it would in real-time 3D space. For example, the Shy-Guy's Ship stage. In this stage you can see the pirate clothed Shy Guy in the background ocean in his little pirate ship. Upon your arrival in that area of the level he fires countless Bob-ombs at your presence, which scale from way back-to up close distinctly. I'm sure you get the idea, and know that there's little things like that throughout the game.

Other boastable graphic features include the morphmation that made Yoshi's Island so charming and captivating. The skewing, scaling, bending, distorting, imploding, rotating, animating, and the like, are as innovative for 2D games as motion-captured animation was for all 3D genres. Morphmation pulls out all the stops and never fails to "ooh and ahhh" any gamer.

audio

Like the graphics before it, the audible qualities of Yoshi's Story are some of the best yet heard on the system. Yoshi sing-a-long-songs and tracks a plenty invade your cute little cartridge like the tunes were Godzilla in Tokyo... extreme melody mayhem here. folks! Not only do you get many thorough themes in Yoshi's Story, but there represented in full stereo and will have you humming forever and ever. I can never rid the title theme from my memory even if I suffered a fatal case of amnesia.

But beyond normal good tunes, the tracks Nintendo has supplied span across all music genres. You're bound to be pleased if you like Island, Instrumental, Hip-Hop, Rap, Reggae, Rock, Pop, Classical, and or Country. It appeals to all eardrums.

The very, very sad part of the musical portion of the game is the fact that it recycles only about two or three themes throughout the entire game. If they could have been a bit more original, I'd give it a perfect score in the audio department.

Sound Effects also hang on a high note, with plenty of Yoshi chants and voices to recall. Finish a stage, you'll hear the rascal squeal. Get hit, listen as he snorts and shakes. Eat a bunch of melons, he'll go nuts. Yoshi's a cool guy. But back to the FX, you'll hear fabulous gulps and gobbles as Yoshi eats everything in sight. Pounds and little tinker drums, and the greatest rock invincibility music I've ever heard. You'll hear lots of cartoony stuff, squeaks, bings, and bongs... and an annoying bonus game whistle. But most of all, I really dislike many of the boss noises... but that's just me.

gameplay

Where Yoshi's Story turns into a two-faced monster is in it's gameplay. You have some of the greatest and yet simplistic control ever and then you give the game some of the most mindless intelligence in the world. The game is designed so that children can enjoy it, without it being overly difficult. But where does that leave everyone else? It leaves you doing odd tasks that nobody, I think, has the patience to do. Allow me to indulge you...

The Yoshis' island has been transformed by Bowser, who has stolen their most sacred possession, the Super Happy Tree. I guess you could relate it to as if someone stole your Nintendo 64. The core of the game requires the six colored Yoshi's to travel throughout a storybook adaptation of their island and spread happiness to those who are dazed and confused. To do this, Yoshi (the player) must eat 30 fruit on each stage of a six page course, to get super happy. If you ask me, though, the fruits are drugged. Anyway, as you probably know by now, you do not play all 24 of the game's levels at one time, you go through 6 worlds, or pages if you will, each with 4 sub-stages of which you can only choose one. The levels have no end so you can go on-and-on forever and ever till your eyes bleed, and the only way to uncover all four stages of each proceeding page is to find three happy hearts on the stage you are currently playing. The hearts are sometimes terribly obvious other times you need a nuclear physicist to find their location. On to the fruit situation... Nintendo's way of "appealing to the older audience" is forcing you to make the 30 fruit you collect on a stage be a uniform group of 30 melons. And because there are only 30 melons in each stage, it's extremely tough and annoying finding those last two or three that are hidden in the stupidest are of the level underground. A poor attempt to broaden the enjoyment ages, and supposedly all this helps for a better ending... supposedly.

Yoshi's of all colors come equipped with a few moves. The familiar pound-the- ground, air flutter, and egg toss. If you've played Yoshi's Island you know what to expect, so I won't go into much detail here. The surprising part of Yoshi's movement is the analog stick support. Barely touch the stick, and yoshi creeps cautiously. Medium shove on the stick produces a casual walk. Full crank spurts Yoshi into a rampaging loon, and you can do all this while looking up or down. Neat to watch.

To sum up my thoughts on the gameplay in quick, short ideas, I give you the following:

• The artificial intelligence is definitely lacking, even kids will notice
• The level design is genius, as always with Nintendo's side-scrollers
• The controls and abilities of Yoshi are easy, useful, wisely implemented, but somewhat unoriginal (direct rips from Yoshi's Island)
• The melon system just doesn't fit
• The pitiful attempt to appeal to all ages of the world just didn't work... it's truly for kids.

multiplayer

N/A

overall

Let me just say Yoshi's Story is better than what the magazines, sites, and Nintendo naysayers claim it to be. It is original, it is addicting, it is beautiful... but the fact remains that Yoshi's Story is different. It goes about it's game layout differently, it produces visuals and audio differently, it appeals to different people differently. And different can be good or bad, depending on the person. Yoshi's Story has satisfied me, and although it might not be fair to compare it to Yoshi's Island, YS falls short of YI's brilliance. You absolutely must play Yoshi's Story... the question is, do you have to own it? Give it a rent, if you still desire it's play long after it's been due, feel free to purchase the shortest story of Yoshi.

7.5/10