Yoshi’s Story is a game developed by Nintendo for the N64 in 1998. It’s a semi follow-up to Yoshi’s Island and one of the few games on the N64 not in 3D. It’s an odd game, sticking to its 2D sidescroller gameplay with a focus on collection. With cute characters everywhere and Baby Bowser stealing a tree, will the Yoshi’s ever be happy again? Let’s find out in my Mighty Review of… Yoshi’s Story!

    The story of the game is really simple. Baby Bowser steals the super happy tree from the Yoshi’s home, making all of the adult Yoshis sad, so it’s up to a group of newborn Yoshis to make themselves happier by eating fruit while making their way towards Baby Bowser for the final showdown. That’s all well and good, but I prefer my own take on the story.

Clears throat. One day, the Yoshi’s were tripping balls. All of a sudden, Baby Bowser came down and sold them some nasty shit and the grown ups went on a bad trip. This left the crack babies free to sneak into Baby Bowsers hood and show him you don’t fuck with the Yoshi clan. ...but that’s just my interpretation from the artwork.

The visuals are strange. I like the environments and the cutesy characters everywhere, but the game does cross into creepy territory at times. Case and point: the first boss… Is is creepy? Is it adorable? I have no clue. The graphics are alright, but a little too dedicated to the pop-up book style for my taste. They border on crude and lazy as opposed to stylized at times. And the world progression is downright strange. Who though that world 1 should be a happy land with fields and puppies and world 2 should have lava pits and a bone dragon? I was NOT ready for that!

The music is another mixed bag. The songs sometimes remind me of Grant Kirkhope’s work with bouncy tunes that really suit the levels, but then the Yoshis start to sing and I want to blow my brains out. Overall the presentation is okay. I can see what Nintendo was going for, but it’s execution wasn’t exactly on point.

    Yoshi’s Story is a basic 2D sidescroller in which you go through the levels eating fruit to continue. Each level requires the player to eat 30 pieces of fruit to move on. It’s actually really simple. When damaged, the fruit Yoshi eats can heal them as well. And while any fruit can be eaten to progress through the level, you’ll only get the most points by eating melons. There are plenty of opportunities to find them, but sometimes they can be hard to track down. Each color of Yoshi also has their own favorite fruit that heals more than the others, like my yellow Yoshi here who like bananas the most. I love this little guy. He’s just so cute.

    Alright, so to save Yellow Yoshi, we have to just get through the levels. Each of which is really varied and quite big. Luckily, we have the creepiest Nintendo characters since Tingle here to use as teleporters to different parts of the stage. Each world has four stages in it, but only the first has them all unlocked. To open the other stages you have to collect big hearts during the level. Each level has three and more hearts collected means more levels are available in the next world. This gives us 24 worlds in total, but only 6 required to beat the game.

    The game is short, with little in replay value unless you want to open all of the worlds or get the highest score, but it is a fun ride all the way though. The few boss fights that do exist are actually pretty easy and forgettable, but decently fun. Navigation is fun, but the movement feels stiff a lot of the time and in the end, this is a game that’s full of good ideas, but also full of strange design choices.

    Overall, I had fun with Yoshi’s story. Is it a game I’m dying to go back to? No, but it was fun while it lasted. It’s full of contradictions in tone and gameplay, but that doesn’t detract from the Nintendo charm at its core. It may not have captured the true spirit of the original, but it is respectable as a follow up. That’s why I’m giving Yoshi’s Story for the Nintendo 64... 7.5 Yoshis on drugs out of 10. I hope you liked this review, if you did, be sure to subscribe for more and be on the lookout for next week’s Nifty recipe based on this game. And as always, have a mighty nifty day today!