Yoshi's Island DS - Nintendo DS

Haven't had much time to play a game all the way through, good games anyway. lots of crappy ones out there. So I figure a little Nintendo DS game would do the job. While there are tons of crappy games for that as well, most of the good games are almost always Mario related.

Yoshi's Island is no different. A spin off from the Mario series, where all the Mario characters are babies, baby Mario, Luigi, princess, Donkey Kong, Wario and Boswer. Yoshi and all his Yoshi friends have some story where babies stars (actually stars over the babies head) are stolen by Bowser from the future. (Great story line) Which brings up my next question, if Bowser wants all these stars from the babies and the main point of the game is for Yoshi and the Mario babies to rescue the other babies, couldn't Bowser have taken the stars away from the babies by the time we get to the end of the game??

Instead we find Bowser talking about what hes going to do when he gets the power of the stars, but still hasn't done it yet.......hes an idiot and deserves to get his ass handed to him by a baby in shitty diapers riding a sissy green dragon.


The game is set up much like anyone would expect a Mario type game to be. There are 5 worlds, each with 3 levels before we get to a castle with a mini boss, then some more levels and another final castle with another mini boss, then you go to the next world. Al though you don't get the feeling like the new worlds have a theme. It never felt like one was water world or plant world or Ice world, the levels were pretty much just scattered throughout the game. But they all still felt like Mario levels, with the tricky jumps and enemies hitting you just at the right time when you jump.

Instead of having just Mario riding Yoshi, he could be ridden by 5 baby characters, each one gives you a special ability/abilities. Throwing strength, speed, jumping, fire breath, enough to keep quite a bit of variety in the game. Of course having the different characters with different abilities meant there were tons of specific levels and pieces withing levels that were character specific.

The game play is pretty fun, pretty much what you expect from these type of games. For the first, 2nd and even the 3rd world, we all know that the closer we get towards the end, the harder these levels get. Well Yoshi's Island is an exception. Has I was playing this game, I noticed that "Holy COW!.....I have 147 lives!"..get to world 4," holy shit!!..I have 280 lives, whats the deal with all the lives?". Here lies the exception, in all other Mario games, when you get to the last world and all the levels are (scale of difficulty from 1-10) difficulty of around 8-10. Something that anyone who has played a Mario game would know. Well the difficulty level when you get the last world on Yoshi's Island is a 15.
It was my first attempt at level 1 world 5 (that's has far has Yoshi's worlds went and seeing how hard level 5 was, I wouldn't want to see world 8) and 10 min has gone by and I have lost 23 lives. I'm still not even finished the level...and when I finally do finish the first level on world 5, I had lost 33 lives. Holy Crap!!!....I am now down to 250 lives...that's still enough ....right?!

Every level in world 5 took me on average 25-40 lives to complete a level. The most lives I lost on one level was 52. Now I understand why getting all those lives through the first of the game was essential. The games later levels are insane. They are mental, idiot savant hard!!

In all the worlds, it says, that if you find all the 20 red coins, the 5 flowers and complete the level with full health and find the secret character coin in each level and you will unlock a great surprise. The surprise are new levels in each world. But I was trying to do this in world 1, the easiest world that one could possible do this. I did all, but 2 of the levels in world 1. The last 2 were just little things, I miss a coin, I get hit by doing something stupid at the end, etc. so when I finished the level, I didn't do what I needed to get 100%. So I said I will go on with the rest of the game and come back to this.




After finishing the game, I thought, there's no way in hell, that someone could possibly find all the secret shit and not get hit in harder levels, let alone even think about doing it in world 5. So I didn't even bother to go back to world 1 and try to fill the requirements. The only people who can do this are kids and maybe adults, who have nothing else better to do, no job, no life, nothing but the love of a little green dragon.




Now saying that this game or the end of the game is hard, exceptional hard. Doesn't mean its not a good game. Its quite fun and entertaining and I recommend it to all Mario fans. But!..be prepared for some hard ass shit levels that will make you curse the Mary mother of Jesus when you get towards the end.

7.5/10