One of the bosses actually requires you to ricochet an egg off the wall and skip it across the water to hit his weak point.
The eggs just seem like a convenient ranged attack early on, but in the latter half of the game you’re avoiding enemy projectiles while carefully taking aim with your eggs. What really saved the game for me were the egg throwing mechanics. While I didn’t take on the task of finding all these collectibles, it seems that getting all of them in each world unlocks more levels at the end of the game.īeyond world three, the more open-ended nature of the levels becomes ingrained in the game’s design. Fully exploring these zones leads to finding red coins and hidden flowers to improve your score at the end of each level. The game doesn’t even have a level timer, which does away with usual “just go right fast” mentality of most platformers. Some of the individual rooms have an emphasis on exploration and the developers play with vertical level design. What drove me to keep going was that Yoshi’s Island seemed to be laying the groundwork for Super Mario 64’s structure. I just came out of playing Mega Man X a few months ago and I felt a bit lukewarm about that experience as well.
I almost gave up on the game during World 3 and started questioning whether I was still interested in trying out 16-bit classic platformers. I’ve always been someone who hates more of the same in games and nothing was really pulling me in. New mechanics, like throwing eggs, are available to you, but aren’t really used in any significant way in these early levels. However, the early level design plays it safe with a large focus on standard platforming. The game plays very much like Super Mario World with a focus precise and challenging platforming, but goes well beyond with its presentation by creating essentially a virtual coloring book to explore. It’s underplayed in the game’s title, but Yoshi’s Island is a sequel to Super Mario World.