Fruit of the Gloom - Episode 1: Convicted Melon
0Originally recorded: March 17, 2022 (Happy St. Patrick's Day!)
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Incoming hot take: as far as I'm concerned, the best platformer on the SNES wasn't Super Mario World. In my humble opinion, it's a toss-up between the second Donkey Kong Country game or Yoshi's Island. Clearly, someone in Nintendo decided my hubris was worth punishing, because they utterly sabotaged both burgeoning franchises when they moved onto the Nintendo's 64-bit powerhouse. Last year, I tackled Donkey Kong 64... and this time, Yoshi's Story's number has come up.
Honestly, I thought letting Rare turn Donkey Kong 64 into an eldritch abomination of a collect-a-thon was bad enough, but what Nintendo themselves did with Yoshi's Story... might actually be worse.
Where do I even begin? The controls are way more slippery than one would expect for a 2D platformer. I mean, it's bad enough that you have to control the game from the analog stick, but seriously, at times, the game felt like the original Bubsy... the one on 16-bit consoles. The sheer amount of precision platforming, coupled with just how weird the flutter jump feels in this game only manages to make things much, much worse.
I was pretty much always aware of the stage clear gimmick -- that is, you need to collect 30 pieces of fruit in order to end the stage -- but it's actually even more annoying than that. In order to unlock the next world's stages, you also have to find giant heart power-ups. There are three in each level and finding each one unlocks another stage in the next world. You only get to play a single level in each "world" per game cycle. And as I so disastrously learned, running out of Yoshis leaves you with a Game Over, that straight up erases all of your progress and plops you back to World 1. Oh well, at least all the stages you beat remain permanently unlocked in Trial Mode. I mean, these are interesting concepts, but in practice, they're just aggravating. Especially considering the game's reputation for being "a platformer for toddlers". Yoshi's Story just ends up feeling like a Kirby game's evil twin.
I've got 7 stages down, 17 to go. Pray for me.
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