Games > Nintendo 64 > Yoshi's Story
Hear the songs of the Yoshies, the song of the high-pitched, "Ee-aaah-ooooh, Ee-aaah-ooooh, Ee-aaah-ooooh, Ee-aaah-ooooh" and the "Wah, wah-wah, wah, wooah! Wah, wah-wah, wah, wooah! Wah, wah-wah, wah, wooah, wah, wah-wah, wah, wooah, wah, wah-wah, wah, wooah!" Annoying, huh? Well, how about havig to play the game at least four times to truly beat the game? That's right, you would have to hear the songs of the Yoshies so many times to beat the game while exploring the pop-up book of Yoshi's Island. Guess what? All of these qualities are pretty much what you will expect when playing the "sugary-sweet sequel" of Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, Yoshi's Story.
In Yoshi's Story, it's all about the Yoshies and Baby Bowser who ruins the lives of the Yoshies. Every day, the Yoshies live happily thanks to the Super Happy Tree, a magical tree with special fruit that makes anyone happy when he or she eats them. One day, Baby Bowser came to Yoshi's Island and stole the special tree. With the tree gone, all the Yoshies became depressed. Luckily for them, a group of newborn Yoshies were unaffected by the spell of woe because they were born after the tree went missing. With the spirits up in the air, the baby Yoshies travel across the island to get the tree back from Baby Bowser.
This game has got to be the most unusual Mario platform game yet. The objective of the game is to collect fruit; these fruit also replenish a Yoshi's happiness level. That's right. A Yoshi's health is its happiness. When it gets very unhappy, it collapses and the Toadies take it away to Baby Bowser's castle. Anyway, thirty of these happy fruits will allow them to reach a boss level that is at the end of each level. Here's the thing. When a Yoshi completes a level, they pretty much beat the world, or "pages" as they are called in this game. There are four levels in each page, but in order to play the later levels, you would have to beat the game and start over again. In other words, the first time you play it, you would only play the first level in each page; there are six pages altogether in this game. After beating the game, you can play the second level, which is a little more difficult than the first. This cycle continues until you reach the fourth level of each page. Complicated concept? Yes. Of course, there are some things that haven't changed since Yoshi's Island. The Yoshies can gobble up some bad guys to get eggs so they can solve puzzles and beat up stronger bad guys. They can also butt-stomp and flutter through some diverse-difficult, platform levels.
The graphics of the game is like a pop-up book of some fairy tale, created by some first-grader who made it in arts and crafts, or at home for a reading assignment. For example, the first page looks like it was constructed with yarn and construction paper. At the same time, the characters are 3D. So basically, you might say it's like a dioramma. The overall cutscenes are basically a turning of the page while a text narration, told in rhyme, displays the events of Yoshi's Story.
The game also features some sound that can either pull you into a trance like Teletubbies or can torture you like a college math class. In every page you complete, you will hear the "Ee-aaah-oooh" song, the song that reminds you of "the most annoying sound in the world" from Dumb and Dumber in a song format. That means you would hear that ear-splitting song six times. Yoshi's Story is also the first game that introduces the language of the Yoshies, which, cute sometimes, makes me miss the Yoshi that spoke broken English in the Super Mario World cartoons. The soundtrack, while slow and catchy, is mostly the same melody played in a different style, depending on what world you are in. These songs, overall, are like a lullaby (as in guitars and music boxes) or in a slow trance, songs that are most likely enjoyed by babies, composed by Raffi. Don't get me wrong, though, I did enjoy the ending songs; they are so peaceful to listen and enjoy.
I must warn you before playing this game. If you don't have a childish mind, a mind yearning for all things simple, peaceful, colorful, and fun (like a day in Disney Land), then this game is not for you. The game is basically short that requires beating it at least four times to complete it, full of worlds that looked like it should be hung on a bulletin board in or just outside a classroom or an elementary school library, and contains a soundtrack that reminds me of the episodes on The Simpsons and Tiny Toon Adventures that had Raffi look-alikes, entertaining a bunch of kids with hilarious-for-us, disasterous-for-them, results. Be warned: once you played it, it's like tasting junk food, especially sugar drinks and potato chips; you just can't get enough.
