My original SNES was sold at a car-boot many years ago along with some other consoles, and any gaming these days is kept to a minimal setup. For convenience sake, I use OpenEmu for the majority of games on my MacBook - and as much I love an actual SNES and an old CRT monitor, the monitors mess with my eyes, and not having to tidy it away or watch out for any cables now that it’s all built into my laptop is a real bonus.
Besides, having bought a nice inexpensive SNES-style USB controller from The Pi Hut it’s increasingly difficult to care about not owning the real thing. Check it out.
Right now I’m playing Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island (1995).
Yeah, it’s a sequel (err… prequel…) to Super Mario World, and Mario is a baby which I guess makes this chronologically the first Mario game of the franchise. Whatever. I’ve been revisiting this over the past week or so, and with it came a massive wave of nostalgia that I stupidly didn’t expect thanks to how amazing the game looks and sounds, but more on that a little later.
Back as a kid, I was getting tired of the ‘save the Princess’ lark that’s commonly used to motivate these games, and remember enjoying the fact that the purpose of this one was simply to traverse 6 worlds and reunite two baby brothers. Not a massive leap by any stretch, but a nice touch all the same and there’s a lot going on, with wee bonus stages and collectables which stack up the replay value along with the levels themselves being long enough to warrant a mid-level checkpoint so that if you lose a life you can carry on from that point. Admittedly nothing new, but still pretty neat.
Over the 6 worlds there’s 8 stages that include halfway and end of world boss levels. There’s also 6 secret levels and 6 bonus stages - one of each available in each world, only available by scoring 100 points in each stage by locating 5 flowers, 20 red coins and 30 stars.
Unlike a lot of games of its time, it’s beautiful. It stands the test of time, and if it were released today I’d have no complaints thanks to the art direction. Each level’s like a page from a colouring book, rough around the edges, a 2D platformer with 3D elements, a varied and tasteful colour palette, and the character animations are on point all thanks to the SNES’s Mode 7 effects and Super FX 2 hardware meaning this game wouldn’t have looked out of place on a 32-bit system, which when you think about it is rad for 16-bit tech. That said, developers had a fair amount of time to push the console to it’s limits as Yoshi’s Island was released 5 years after the console launched.
Even in moments of absolute chaos on screen, triggering different sounds from jumping on enemies, pushin’ out eggs, aiming and shooting, hitting coins, and getting got by an enemy, all the while the background music is playing, the sound palette manages to make it all work together. It’s rarely irritating, even the galling cry of an endangered Baby Mario initially managed to trigger a warm pulse of nostalgia, until I snapped out of it and remembered it’s game over unless I grab him back - I swear, the countdown timer coupled with Baby Mario’s cries is second only to the fear you get as Sonic struggles to reach an air-bubble before imminent death in Chemical Plant.
