Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island

The Good
Okay, so I'm male, but big deal. I've got a weakness for cute. Not only is Yoshi's Island sickeningly, ridiculously cute, but there's one thing it's got in that cute undercoating: a fun as hell, challenging platformer starring Mario's dinosaur buddy, Yoshi!

The game opens with a cute little story of two babies being carried in the early dawn hours to their parents by the stork, when the evil MagiKoopa, Kamek, zooms by and snatches one of them. The other baby drops to the ground, landing on Yoshi's back. When Kamek realizes he only caught one baby, he sends his goons out to find the other! Meanwhile, Yoshi brings the baby to his friends and discovers a map the baby has with him. Yoshi and his friends decide to reunite the two brothers, and they set off to bring them together!

So in every world, you have eight stages, with one different color Yoshi per stage. The gameplay is basic platformer stuff: walk, run, jump, you know. Yoshi can lash out his tongue and swallow enemies, and either turn them into eggs to hurl at more enemies or parts of the stage, or just spit them out again. He can also transform into different forms (a sub, a borer, a helicopter) to get through various stages as well! But his one big concern is Baby Mario, who quietly sits on his back throughout the game. If Yoshi gets hit by an enemy, Mario gets knocked off his back and starts wailing, and if Yoshi doesn't get him back quickly, Kamek will come by and snatch Mario, costing Yoshi a life.

So what also makes this game a winner? One word: secrets. Yoshi's Island is so chock full of secrets that it's almost insane. You can spend an eternity searching out every single nook and cranny, and to make it even better, you can constantly go back through stages and attempt to beat them with a perfect score. With 60 stages to play through, I don't think anyone's gonna get too bored anytime soon!

So, onward to graphics, sounds, and music. The graphics in YI deserve special mention. They are absolutely BEAUTIFUL! The SNES version of the game is powered by the SuperF/X2 chip, making for a TON of wonderfully animated effects, especially the morphing effects of Yoshi's transformations and parts of certain stages. The colors and styles of the backgrounds and foreground make the whole game look like a giant picture book, and definitely have their own unique style to them. The music is simplistic, but very cute and fitting. Thanks to Koji Kondo's score, YI is made double cute. And the sounds are for the most part very well done, save for one...

The Bad
Hearing Baby Mario wail when he gets knocked off Yoshi gets really grating after a while.

The Bottom Line
Yoshi's Island is great for girlfriends, old-time Mario fans, or people who just want a wonderfully crafted platformer from one of the greatest game companies to exist in this modern world.

Now you wonder why the name Nintendo was chosen: "acsend to heavenly temple"!