Playing A Game Yoshi's Island DS NDS

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island for SNES, though at the time overlooked because of its deviation from the first SMW, is now widely recognized as canon in the platform genre (and as such was re-released in the Super Mario Advance series of remakes for GBA). But it took just over a decade for the superfun Yoshi-meets-infant-Mario model to be revisited.

Yoshi's Island DS is, so far, extremely similar to its progenitor, which is a very good thing. I just finished the first world, and though the bosses were pretty wimpy, I can already feel the platform jumping challenge warming up.

Architecturally, the only significant difference between Yoshi's Island DS and SMW2 is that there's more than one baby. Currently I can use special baby changing stations (pun surely intended) placed strategically in certain stages to change between Baby Mario and Baby Peach. Each baby has certain characteristics and abilities, for instance Baby Mario can help Yoshi run fast and hit special "M"-labelled blocks, while Baby Peach can deploy her parasol to help Yoshi stay aloft longer and catch air drafts. I haven't encountered them yet, but the manual tells me that Baby Donkey Kong, Baby Wario, and Baby Bowser will also come into play at some point. The implementation of baby abilities and baby-switching is so fluid and intuitive that it doesn't even feel like a new feature.

So far my only qualm with this guy is the camera, which is an unusual complaint for a sidescroller. What we in "the biz" call the Viewport scrolls within itself, which means that sometimes when you near the far left, right, top or bottom of a platform, it can be difficult to see your surroundings. It can be corrected by moving around a little but it feels weird not having a centered camera view.

Also, you can use the X button and up/down on the D-pad to switch the top and bottom screens; this has encouraged the level designers to make several vertically-oriented areas. Coming from a history of left-to-right platforming, this is very cool.

Progress: Stage 2-1

Rating: Awesome