Actually named 'Super Mario World 2', but hardly a real successor, 'Yoshi's Island' was the start of the character's own series of platformers. And an excellent start it was. People often seem to complain of a certain baby-noise, but the gameplay is so perfect, that it doesn't even matter to me and my ears have grown deaf to the sound as a nuisance. Though of course, it does still do it's job of making me make mistakes that get me killed perfectly.
Not a Mario game, not a Donkey Kong one, nor classic Sonic the Hedgehog; 'Yoshi's Island' is the best 2D platformer. It's originality slips through into it's gameplay. The concepts of the game have all been implemented in perfect ways and it should be the textbook example for developers about how to make a 2D game. The music is terrific and memorably catchy, the art direction is one of the best to ever come out of a video game and it still makes this beautiful game look good today. One of the prettiest looking games ever in fact.
I played this game plenty of times when it had come out on Super Nintendo and together with 'The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past' it is most likely my most played game on the system and even of that generation. It is a long game however, so as a kid I never finished it. It wasn't until many years later when I was happy to buy the port to GameBoy Advance, when I finally saw the final boss. And then I wanted to play it again. And again.
