22 – Yoshi’s Story
I know, I know, Yoshi’s Story has a bad reputation, but I can’t help to appreciate it. First of all, it’s the game that made me ask my parents a Nintendo 64: After seeing a gorgeous image of the game I felt that I needed to play it. Also, I was in the perfect age to appreciate it, since I didn’t mind the game’s exiguous difficulty. Also, I didn’t have a SNES, so I skipped the original Yoshi’s island (I’m trying to fix that, but I haven’t played it yetL)
Ok, let’s start my apology with the most obvious virtue of the game: it’s very beautiful. The pre-rendered graphics simulate different materials in order to create gorgeous levels that seem to have been hand-crafted. In a generation fascinated with the 3-D transition, Yoshi’s Story demonstrated that 2-D games could still offer a lot of graphical awesomeness. Also, it features Yoshi, that’s always a 10 out of 10 in my book.
One of the main fails of the game is that it’s very easy and short. About difficulty level, there’s no doubt: the game is really easy (Yes, there’s a boss that gives Yoshi health each time you lick him, and the Final Battle scenario has a tree whose fruits make Yoshi invincible), but I was just a kid when I played so I didn’t mind (actually, the game was clearly targeted to kids like me). About shortness, yes, 24 levels are too few, and you just need to clear 6 in order to beat the game. But as in many Nintendo games, the key in this game is trying to find all secrets and maximizing the punctuation. While the story mode is the one where the player unlocks the different levels and the additional yoshis, trial mode is perfect to replay each level trying to do the best score. Well, I know that not everybody would enjoy it, but I spent hundreds of hours replaying its 24 levels, and I enjoyed it.
Of course, I know the game is not perfect, but I liked it a lot. I think that its focus in exploration instead of ability could have been a great way to revive the 2D platformers, in the lower moment of the genre. The fact that the game didn’t succeed was (deservedly, I know), in my opinion, a missed opportunity.
