Previously Pwn’d is our column about retro video games. You’ll see old favorites and unappreciated classics. Get your button mashing fingers ready.
I was raised in a non-video game, non-cable TV household until the age of 12, when my parents finally experienced a change of heart and bought a dish. I know this sort of upbringing seems horribly backwards in a world where even books are showing up on screens (à la the Kindle), but for a long time, I lived in blissful ignorance. I read books and amassed a good vocabulary. The closest I got to the world of button-mashing was through educational computer games like Odell Down Under, which taught me the species of many a tropical fish.
Red piranhas and cleaner fish were just dandy, until, one day, I went to a new friend’s house. Hannah had a Nintendo 64, and she asked if I wanted to play Yoshi’s Story. When she popped in the game, a large colorful picture book propped itself up, and the shrill voices of several Yoshis started to sing. Hannah selected a pink Yoshi whose lucky fruit was a banana. As it scampered about, occasionally grunting and singing, growling at Shy Guys, gulping down fruit suspended in the air, hurling eggs and springing and popping on the ground, I realized how much I wanted to play in this fantasy-land unlike any I’d ever read about in a book.
What captivated me — and still captivates me — about this game was that absolutely everything was cute. The eggs are cute (white with colored spots that match the color of the chosen Yoshi), the bad guys are cute (from toddling Shy Guys to long, smiling worms), the suspended fruit and occasional hearts are cute, and the Yoshis themselves are the cutest. All the Yoshis — dinosaurs, though I didn’t realize it for years — are small, bulbous creatures with huge eyes and short limbs. They come in every color, like Skittles, and sing a victory song at the close of every level or story.
For a kid who understood how books worked, the storybook layout of the game presented itself as a gratifyingly accessible feature. In “Story Mode,” one has to beat six stories in order to win the game. As one gains access to new stories, Yoshi’s trials and tribulations increase in difficulty. Groaning ghosts in underground caverns replace innocuous Shy Guys. In different levels, different landscapes and different villains emerge: floating bee-like stingers in jungles, flying escalator-like worms in the sky and underwater monsters in submerged caves. Throughout all this, Yoshi never fails to sustain an optimistic attitude in the face of danger. It was only when I failed — and Yoshi was carried off to a foreboding castle by several batlike creatures, sad and defeated and accompanied by the villainous laughter of Baby Bowser — that I ever felt less than enthusiastic about the game.
But for veterans of the gaming world, like Hannah’s younger brother, Henry, Yoshi’s Story ultimately failed to hit the mark. In fact, Yoshi’s Story failed to garner good critical reception upon its initial release. Most gaming critics complained that it lacked depth with only 24 levels, and they were convinced that it failed to live up to its predecessor, Yoshi’s Island. Yoshi’s Story was also relatively easy to beat, which encouraged its reputation as nothing more than a kids’ game. Some critics even complained about the quality of the music.
I concede that the game wasn’t extremely difficult, but the music was one of its best features. From the opening song to the victorious “Happy Song,” the warbling Yoshis’ voices so captured the essence of the game that I found myself humming along within minutes.
“Be happy, be happy,” the Yoshis sang. I was happy escaping to Yoshi’s Island for a few hours in Hannah’s basement. True, true: What made the game so fun was in part my limited access to it. But apart from the superfluous cuteness of the game, I loved the randomness of it. Who other than the Japanese would think to create a world in which one’s enemies can be gulped up with a hyperextended tongue? Furthermore, the visual aspects of the game added to its overall appeal. While Yoshiland was technically 2D, the fabric of the patchy landscapes seemed to pop off the screen with a 3D-like quality.
I forgot about this game until I walked into a friend’s dorm room a few weeks ago to find him playing Yoshi’s Story on his computer. He had plugged in a Nintendo console into his laptop, and his Yoshi was gulping melons to the lively music I hadn’t heard for years. He explained, much to my delight, that with an emulator, one could play old Nintendo 64 games on a computer. This was news to me, but I still haven’t managed to find a .rar version of the game that works on my Mac.
On YouTube, a host of people have devoted themselves to giving the game a proper tribute. One guy has even filmed himself playing through all the levels of the game. But for me, the best of all are the YouTube clips of the Yoshis’ song, so that when I’m feeling especially down, I can click a button to hear the chorus of off-pitch Yoshis heralding to victory.