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The use of the dual screens is a little gimmicky
The use of the dual screens is a little gimmickyThe use of the dual screens is a little gimmicky

There is more to it of course. Artoon has tried to spice things up a bit by adding some interesting features that vary in success. You now have access to five different babies, and each gives Yoshi special skills. Baby Mario can dash and hit Mario blocks, Baby Peach can use her umbrella to float, Baby Donkey Kong can swing on vines and has a dash attack, Wario has a fairly useless magnet which attracts coins and Bowser has a fire attack. The premise here is simple: you need to use certain characters to solve certain puzzles.

At the beginning of the game it's pretty obvious which character you should be using in each level (if there are wind turbines, use Baby Peach to float, if there are vines, use Baby DK to swing), but as you progress through the game this process becomes more elaborate, and often involves switching characters a number of times within the same level to get every yellow and red coin, flower and special character-specific coin. But you'll never be stuck for too long as Artoon has kept things pretty simple. It's not until fairly late in the game that you'll find yourself dying with any regularity.

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It's here that I'd like to point out the flaws in the game which stop it challenging New Super Mario Bros. as the No. 1 platformer on the DS. On more than one occasion during my time with the game I was hit when I thought I shouldn't have been. Maybe slightly dodgy collision detection. Maybe me being slack. Most likely a bit of both. It just doesn't seem as fluid and precise as NSMB. Mixing it up with different babies and different skills also seems a bit gimmicky, only because there are no really clever challenges where you have to think about combining and switching characters to any degree beyond the obvious. At no point did I think, 'wow, that was nicely done'. While we're on the subject, I'm not sure why only Mario can run. It's a bit annoying when you've only got 10 minutes on the bus to finish a level.

It also seems as if Artoon has suffered from trying to be a bit too clever with the dual screen system. The levels are played out on both screens, so by holding down 'x' and pressing up or down, you can see above or below Yoshi. It's here that you'll discover most of the game's secrets, but instead of becoming intuitive, it often grates and you constantly keep stopping to look around. This becomes even more apparent once you finish the game and begin the 100 percent hunt. You then have some items that are deliberately hidden behind the bit of plastic between the DS' two screens. I can see what they're trying to do, but holding 'x' and pressing up and down to reveal an item because it's hidden behind a blind spot isn't my idea of amazing level design.


... Artoon has suffered from trying to be a bit too clever with the dual screen system.

Because the game is quite long, it can often feel repetitive. There isn't really much variety in gameplay, and while this criticism can most certainly be applied to plenty of other great games, and indeed NSMB, there is no scope for online play, or multiplayer. You'll be doing pretty much the same thing the entire time, notwithstanding the mini-games, which won't hold your attention for too long.

The boss battles are a notable disappointment too. As it was in the original, when you get to the end of a castle, Kamek comes along and sprinkles evil dust on the sprite of a bog-standard enemy, for example a piranha plant or a fish, and they just grow to fill the screen. Yes, you guessed it, three hits and they're dead.

Not quite up to NSMB's brilliance, but well worth adding to your collection.Not quite up to NSMB's brilliance, but well worth adding to your collection.

So I guess the main flaw is a rather subtle one. Yoshi's Island DS doesn't really do anything new with the genre, even if it does look as if it's been drawn by some crazed crayon-wielding baby genius. Yes, I know it's played out on dual screens, but that's not enough for me. NSMB suffered from the same lack of real originality, but it features such tight controls that it simply didn't matter.

It's getting a bit too negative. Let me finish by saying that Yoshi's Island DS is a thoroughly enjoyable platformer. It's not going to make the same impact as its illustrious predecessor, which amazed gamers by using the SNES' Super FX 2 microchip to create sprite scaling and polygon effects which were advanced for the time, but it's not going to make you bawl like a baby if Santy drops it down the chimney this Christmas either.

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