VOICE OVER: Riccardo Tucci WRITTEN BY: Caitlin Johnson
Secret History of Yoshi
The cutesy, green dinosaur has been one of Nintendo’s flagship characters for generations. He’s appeared as Mario and Luigi’s trusty steed, headlined no small number of his own games, and has featured in every “Mario Party,” “Super Smash Bros.,” and “Mario Kart” game – 101 separate titles all in all. But when did Yoshi jump out of the SNES and into our hearts?
Yoshi had been on the brain of Nintendo veteran Shigeru Miyamoto for years before he finally debuted in “Super Mario World”. In fact, Miyamoto tried to add Yoshi in both the original “Super Mario Bros.” in 1985 and in “Super Mario Bros. 3” in 1990. But the NES just wasn’t capable of handling what Miyamoto wanted Yoshi to do – be Mario’s quirky ‘horse.’ But finally he arrived in 1991, and not just the green Yoshi we see most of the time. “Super Mario World” introduced the entire race of hidden multi-colored Yoshis, it just happened that the very first one was the green one, and the color stuck from then on. Players spent the game rescuing Yoshi eggs from Bowser and his army of Koopas, positioning Yoshi as a brave hero for the first time.
It would be a few years until Yoshi’s status as a major character was cemented, however. In the interim years between “Super Mario World” and its sequel, he’d appear in a few spin off titles. The forgettable, falling-block puzzler “Yoshi” in 1992, and the much more bizarre “Yoshi’s Cookie” in 1993. Then he starred in “Yoshi’s Safari” which was an on rail shooter notable for being one of the few games to support SNES’s infamous battery drainer: The Super Scope. Then in 1993 Yoshi made his strangest appearance to date in “Super Mario Bros.: The Movie”, universally considered one of the worst things to ever make it to the big screen, as a gold coated malnourished dinosaur. For a creature that’s supposed to be a steed, that poor tiny little thing looks like it couldn’t support a chicken on it’s back.
Thankfully, after hitting a few bum notes along the way, we got “Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island” in 1995, a prequel to the original “Super Mario World” detailing Yoshi’s origins. With Mario and Luigi were just babies, it was the Yoshi’s mission to rescue Luigi from Kamek and reunite the two brothers. This was the game that made Yoshi what he is, and one people keep coming back to, but we’re still only at the beginning of this dino’s decorated career. The following year he made a cameo appearance in “Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars” – alongside his evil counterpart, Boshi, whom we’ve never seen since – and in 3D for the first time in “Super Mario 64,” but again it was only as a minor cameo.
In 1998, as a direct response to “Yoshi’s Island’s” overwhelming popularity, Nintendo released “Yoshi’s Story”, his first standalone adventure on the N64. But it didn’t live up to the hype. The game garnered criticism mostly for its short length and for being way too easy, though credit where it’s due, it did give us the first instance of the Yoshi’s making cute humming noises. After the game, Yoshi on the back-burner for a while, and he was relegated to appearing only in Nintendo’s ensemble games. Such as “Super Smash Bros.,” “Mario Party,” & “Mario Kart”. Though he returned as Mario’s steed in “Super Mario Sunshine”. Only this time he now had the ability project vomited juice as an attack. He also showed up in the DS re-release of “Super Mario 64”, this time as a playable character.
In a lot of ways, however, 2005 became the year of Yoshi, and to-date it’s the year where he made his most appearances. On top of “Super Mario 64 DS” there was “Yoshi’s Topsy-Turvy” on the Game Boy Advance, which used a unique tilt sensor built into the cartridge so that players could rotate the whole world on a whim. He also starred in “Yoshi Touch & Go” on the Nintendo DS, an auto running game where players used the touch screen in various ways to support the green hero. These successful titles led to another mainstream portable outing in the form of “Yoshi’s Island DS” in 2006. This time around, all your favorite “Mario” characters were babies, including Princess Peach and Donkey Kong, and would grant Yoshi unique abilities depending on who he was carrying. But again, despite the innovation of the next “Island” game, Yoshi disappeared from standalone titles for a while.
Yoshi would next become a staple selectable character in a new Nintendo series with “Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games”, but remained off the radar until “New Super Mario Bros. Wii” in 2009. Which saw Nintendo finally bring back the classic 2D Mario platformers to home consoles after the successful Nintendo DS predecessor. In this game; he was, once again, a steed, back to his old ways, with flutter jumps and an insatiable hunger. He played this similar but familiar role the following year in “Super Mario Galaxy 2”.
But then there was yet another Yoshi drought. Until “Yoshi’s New Island” in 2014, his grand return to form, eight years after “Yoshi’s Island DS”, and was another baby-saving, egg-throwing, flutter-jumping adventure on the 3DS, though some were critical about the game’s lack of innovation. The following year, he came to the Wii U in a long-awaited home-console standalone: “Yoshi’s Woolly World,” which followed a similar design principle as the earlier “Kirby’s Epic Yarn,” and was a huge success. The Yoshi’s were made even more adorable after being turned into woollen dolls, and Yoshi was once again the big hero saving his fellow dinos from Bowser’s wrath. A 3DS port of “Woolly World” was released 2 years later and included a series of adorable stop motion animated shorts starring the Yarn Yoshi’s and their dog Poochy.
Now Yoshi is back for more adorable adventures in “Yoshi’s Crafted World”. Almost thirty years after his arrival on consoles, Yoshi is still going strong as one of Nintendo’s best-loved characters – and is easily the most famous dinosaur in gaming.
And yes Internet: Yoshi files his taxes on time. Okay? Good! Oh crap that reminds me … gotta go!
