I liked it a lot back then, although I didn't like the fact that you had to collect fruits to finish a level, not reach the end of the level like it is in other platformers.

But the level design was fantastic and the Yoshis were really sweet and I absolutely hated loosing the black and white Yoshis...

I think it is a fine game but i should not have been SMW 2. I was expecting a game similar to SMW and Yoshi's Story was totally different and it's not that i didn't like the game but i would have preferred a game like SMW and Yoshi's story as a game on it's own. I am still confused why it was called SMW2.

That's awesome.

It wasn't a bad game but it was very much geared toward a younger audience.

My wife and I both loved Yoshi's Story. It's a great game!

I'm thinking of rebuying all my N64 games on the VC just to get them in higher resolution. LoZ: OoT and MM look much better on the GC Collector's Edition disc than they do on the N64.

The biggest problem was it seemed like it would be Yoshi's Island 2.

Bah, now I see why I'm the only person who liked Chrono Cross. (Yeah, I went there.)

@John Lucas: Owning the game back in the day, I understand your points that's Yoshi's Story is a good game on its merits and tends to get bashed by being compared to a great game Yoshi's Island (or choose your degree of corresponding adjectives), Nonetheless, I have a couple questions concerning your that last two lines of your post.  (Which should not be taken to have much bearing on how good Yoshi's Story if for the above reason.)

 Ignoring the huge discrepancy in critical acclaim for the titles (I guess you're saying reviewers are biased in favor of more mature audiences, which makes quite a bit of sense), if Nintendo's decision to make the gameplay easier contributed to the alienation of YI's fans which helped contribute to a drop of sales from 4.12 million to 2.85 (though the attach rates are much closer) can one not fault Nintendo's implementation of this decision? 

 Also I don't quite understand your last statement, does it mean something along the lines of:
    Business-strategy-wise, kids will always dominate the Video Game market so any alienation of older players is ok so long has the benefits for kids outweigh the loses.
    Design-wise, what appeals best to kids will also appeal best to a largest audience, so alienating older players is ok so long as the benefits for kids and those who also enjoy games which kids enjoy outweight the loses.
   Some sort of ideal: Video games are a kid's medium, and should be designed for kids, irrespective of market forces.
     Or something else entirely?

I think what bothers me about your statement is that I was assuming that its never always about any one group, even kids.  If someone can make Halo for violence loving young adult men, why not?  Of course, it would be even better if that creator could make games that appeals to everyone, but if they cannot always do so in every case without losing some other audience, can't one justifiably make games that do appeal to those audiences?

P.S. Anecdotally, although I enjoyed the game myself at the time, I also felt dissapointed with it due to the large reduction in number of levels, and the changes in egg throwing, especially as they resulted in the removal of the ability to rebound eggs off walls.

I LOVE YOSHI'S STORY! Seriously, I probably liked it because I haven't heard of Yoshi's Island before I played it. Still a great game; I even brokr a controller from the frusteration of the game.....

I liked Yoshi's Story back when I was younger. I haven't played it in a really long time, but I assume that it would still be fun. I always used the Pink Yoshi first because if he (or she) got killed, it wouldn't upset me so much.

Sure, I'll explain.

What happened in Yoshi's Story is exactly what is happening right now with this whole Wii/DS thing. Making gaming accessible to new audiences.

There's something that happens when you cater to a set group for too long. You can get stale and outmoded. Madden rarely significantly changes from year to year and slowly sales are gradually declining from year to year. It still sells because of the NFL license in a country that worships football. And since they've cornered the market on the NFL name they will get bought from those who like to live out their football fantasies vicariously through the real life players.

But I've read some financial statements from EA over the past few years and their profits are slowly declining. Activision has taken over their spot as the Borg of the 3rd Party. This began right when EA secured the rights to all the major sports licenses exclusively a few years back drowning out the competition like those from the 2K Sports variety. Why would things start ebbing when they're the go-to must-have source for all your realistic sports sim needs? They make sure not to rock the boat too much for the established players so as to maintain already built audience. They are expected every year on the year like always. But for some reason slowly they are declining. What's up with that?

Well while staying secure with the established audience they've created a wall which blocks out new people from entering the fold. It becomes a clubhouse, a country club, a VIP area with a velvet rope that exists only for the established membership. Sometimes some of this membership gets lazy paying dues or attending the meetings and one by one attendance drops off. Before you know it, you're living in a shell of an establishment with crusty old members curmudgeon-ish to change and hostile to newcomers who may want to learn more about the club.

It's like aging/the generation gap. It begins in the mid-20's/early 30's. Eventually you catch yourself calling the music of the new younger kids junk and how things were cooler back in your youth period. You don't watch any the shows they watch or wear any of the fashions they wear or participate in any of the mannerisms they perform. You wall yourself off from the erupting youth beneath you. You—a person who is still young in the larger scheme of things. Everything the newer youngsters do is not junk but you throw the baby out with the bathwater discarding the whole indiscriminately. Before long you end up just like those old people who looked down on the things you did. And when you TRULY become old as in elderly, you've stuck with your familiar friends so long that you have no connection to the younger sets. You simply can't relate to them and don't know how even if you wanted to. One by one your friends die due to disease natural causes or whatever and  you find yourself left all alone unable to relate to the younger generations. Elder loneliness is common problem and it all begins in those 20s when we begin totally separating ourselves from the newer youth.

Here's a quote from Reggie Fils-Aime from E3 2006 that hits this right on the head. Scroll to 2:26 on this clip to hear it in person.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2kt3h8b6yE

If you don't change, while in the short term you'll do fine, in the long term you will doom yourself. Sequelitis sets in when the next iterations become too predictable. It might sound like nonsense marketing talk but Reggie was speaking the God's honest truth on that conference.

There's something to be said for respect for the past and just because something is established doesn't mean it should be discarded for everything new either. But you have to shift gears in some way eventually or your product goes stale. The young can learn from the old and the old can learn from the young. There are old people who are afraid of computers thinking it's only a young person's thing. Even if the youngster reaches out to the oldster trying to initiate them the oldster will refuse out of fear and doubt in their ability to pick up on the process. The young can learn timeless lessons from the old but the young will disregard the information thinking they can do everything differently. Then down the road they come to learn that the older were wiser in these regards. It must be reciprocal. You must change and stay fresh while also keeping intact the time-honored principles that set the framework for any production. Make a new style of pie but don't forget the basics in how to make a pie altogether.

Yoshi's Story changed the style of game approach which opened up its accessibility to new audiences. New children are being born everyday and some will not be hip to the games of the 1980s and the reflexes it demands. So unless you only want to sell to the people who remembered playing these types of games as they grow up, you will have to adjust. Zelda: A Link to the Past is nowhere NEAR as challenging as the original Legend of Zelda was. You got lost in original Zelda & HARD. Yoshi's Island wasn't as hard as Super Mario Bros. 1. Mega Man 1 was hand-breaking! Mega Man X was just a little challenging. Contra III had NOTHING on Contra 1 & Super C.

Games of the 1980's were very unforgiving. Donkey Kong NES ain't shit compared Donkey Kong Arcade. DK Arcade was an ass-kicker as you see from the movie King of Kong. I used to hit 5 go-rounds easily on NES but Arcade showed me how lousy my DK skills REALLY were. Games of the 1990's lowered the difficulty bar to open up accessibility. I mean back in the day it was 3 lives and you're done. If you messed up too may times you had to start right from the very beginning. SMB? You run out of lives, your ass is starting from jump, kid. SMW? There's a continue option after you find certain points. SM64 it saves everytime you complete a level. Can you imagine F'in up on SM64 and ending up having to play the whole thing from the very beginning? People would toss those systems out the door!

Yes I know Yoshi's Island was a 1995 release and Yoshi's Story was a 1998 release but many players of Yoshi's Island grew up playing the hard-assed games of the past making the game only marginally difficult for them. They were either grown or near grown and by 1998 they would probably be full grown (I was 22 in 1998). Continuing to make games with them only in mind would end up excluding the new players who would run up into a wall of difficulty trying to access the game.

Like in fighting games. I'm used to all those crazy complicated motions. I grew up with Street Fighter II & all that. The complex control appealed to me back then. Mortal Kombat's complicated inputs and all that. It was fun because the control on the Beat-Em-Up predecessors to this genre were comparitively simple so the complexity made things new. Over the years I got tired of memorizing complicated controls for fighting games just to pull off the simplest of moves. Having to read a bible of move inputs to play a game. A control set which is not always intuitive. I remember the Street Fighter Alpha games and all that Marvel XMen tie-in stuff. I remembered the Hadoken motion, the Yoga Flame motion, & maybe the ShoRyuKen motion. I applied this well-learned principles to each character I fought with and if they didn't operate like that I would just play basic without special moves cause I didn't feel like breaking my hands with all that complicated input.

Then Super Smash Bros. came along where all special moves were simple inputs on one button with regular moves on another. Much more simplified and easier to keep in your head on command. Soul Calibur II was a flawless game in presentation but I just didn't feel like learning all that stuff when I'm playing the sequel Melee with its much more simplified design. Reminds me of wrestling games I played in the 90's. Acclaim's WWF War Zone & WWF Attitude vs. the THQ/Asmik/AKI series of WCW vs. nWo World Tour, WCW/nWo Revenge, WWF Wrestlemania 2000, WWF No Mercy. The Asmik/AKI games were simple inputs with complex strategy and the Acclaim games were complex inputs with complex strategy. I ended up preferring the Asmik/AKI wrestling games for that reason among many others. I could just jump in and play off of instinct instead of memorizing a bunch of unnatural inputs.

I feel those who complain games are being made too easy to placate the "noobs" are those who are well-versed in the gaming conventions of that series. Wind Waker probably was not easy to a newcomer playing it as a youngster his/her first time playing a Zelda title. It was all new to him. But for veterans growing up on the series and its iterations over the years we basically breezed through it with little problem. I remember saying to myself that I totally loved Wind Waker but God is it easy playing Zelda now! The hardest challenge was trying to spar with Orca on Outset Island with all my showing off (I used to break L-targeting jumping off tables and throwing chairs in the middle of the spar to make it REALLY look good). I had to think for a minute and remember that I had little adjustment to make to get used to the control style. It's basically the same as it was in Ocarina of Time. And Zelda always keeps similar current playing strategies throughout all of its titles. I had played this series for 20 years. Of COURSE it was a breeze to me! This title is not JUST for me. There are new players growing up everyday and the game must be able to reach them too.

This is what happened with Yoshi's Story. They changed the point of the game and made it accessible to newer people. The lower sales were more because of N64's relative unpopularity more than just disgust from Yoshi's Island afficionados. Yet still we have a thread about people feeling nostalgia and warm fuzzies over a game rated low and a failure in its time by dense-headed gaming press.

All games are not exactly for young children, no. But gaming is all about the child and the child-at-heart. You're playing a role, escaping into a fantasy and letting your imagination run wild. No matter if you're a football all-star, a thug running the streets of Liberty City, an overweight plumber jumping around in a mushroom filled fantasy land, or a fictional mayor of a city called Sim. Play is for kids. And each adult has a kid buried inside of them. Puppies play bite to train themselves to bite for survival. Cats paw at a ball of yarn to practice becoming living weapons to defend themselves in nature. All play and all games are originally designed for training for real life. Girls playing house and boys playing army. When life became a little easier some of these routines weren't as important as they once were so now we do the play routines more for pleasure. But games that use your brain, test your reflexes, use your body all have a use in reality.

In reality the term "Adult Gaming" is an oxymoron. Gaming, Play is always for Kids whether literal or figurative.

John Lucas