Yoshi’s Story has an intriguing enough game progression. Levels are unlocked through Story Mode - quite literally a story book retelling of events.

Gone are the start to finish level progression, Yoshi is free to roam around through branching paths with levels reaching finality when 30 pieces of fruit are collected.

Additional levels become available when Hearts are collected in each stage - so while you can finish the game once without exploration you’d only be playing through a quarter of the game. Explore levels and collect hearts to unlock the whole game. Levels are numbered 1 to 4, this is dependent on how many hearts you find, find 2 and you will have access to Level 3 of the next Stage.

Once you’ve unlocked all levels the game is reliant on pulling you back for completing high scores for individual level in Trials or Story Mode for a combined score across the 6 Stages.

It’s an interesting approach to accessibility, beginners may do the bare essentials to finish the game whereas more advanced gamers may take the time to collect all Hearts and 30 Melons to attain a high score.

I actually really enjoy Yoshi’s Story and think it gets unfairly compared to Yoshi’s Island, it probably ranks just below Mischief Makers in terms of 2-2.5D platformers on N64

Yoshi’s Story is an incredibly cute game that just oozes charm. On a quest to save their magical fruit tree from Baby Bowser, the Yoshi’s journey across a book across six worlds, eating a lot of fruit along the way.

In each level, your goal isn’t to make it to the end, it’s to eat 30 fruit. Fruit is also health – apart from chillies, which the Yoshis hate (shame, they’re delicious). Getting the 30th one ends the level no matter where you are, so if you’re after finding the super hearts or just more points, you’ll want to hold off. The platforming is great (other than some blind jumps) and there are lots of little secrets to discover.

The biggest issue with Yoshi’s Story is the game’s structure. In a similar style to Star Fox 64, you only play a portion of the levels – one from each of the six worlds. So reaching the Baby Bowser (who is ridiculously easy to defeat) does not take long at all if you’re munching up fruit whenever you see it. I feel like it does Yoshi’s Story a massive disservice, and many people will miss a lot of the game due to this.

In order to unlock more levels, you need to search the levels for giant hearts – needing to find three each time if you want the fourth stage in each world. There’s also an additional challenge of only eating melons – there are exactly 30 in each level. This all adds to the replayability, but as much as I love the game, I just really hate its structure.

Pros
- Brief but enjoyable for what it is.
- That start menu music pops.
- Yoshi movements feel simple and fluid.

Cons
- Not the sort of game for me I can come back to.
- Not enough diversity in the levels for me to appreciate.

Surprisingly looks like it was ahead of it's time the day it came out while I was still in diapers, but of course, playing it for the first time for real as an adult, it's not really doing anything to wow me the way Yoshi's do when they pop 3 bubbles in a row.

But by god, sometimes when you're having a shitty week, you just want to cleanse your doom palette with some Yoshi's just trying to get by. The game is sweet, and it's short as Hell. There's no gloom here. There never was. Let the Yoshi's do that funny pose they make when you complete a level. Let them live their lives to the fullest, god damn it.

O jogo q definiu quase q 100% como seria os próximos jogos solo do Yoshi, seja em jogabilidade (q é bem boa por sinal), ou em estética bonitinha.

Mas o q não me agrada é a mecânica principal ser a de coleta das frutas e de ter q ficar rezerando o jogo diversas vezes para passar por todas as fases. Tanto q isso nn me animou pra fazer tudo, pois acho q se fosse um jogo de passar por níveis seria bem interessante e traria um ritmo bem bacana para o game.

Por outro lado, as músicas usarem o mesmo arranjo com variações entre si e gráficos q fazem referência a uma estética artesanal com papelões, objetos de plástico e papel, faz ele ser único, com gráficos q envelheceram bem, assim como o Paper Mario do 64.

Emulated (bite me, nintendo).

This is my wife's favourite game, or one of them at least, and it's very wholesome to watch. She gets really excited and happy, loves the music of the levels.

I have to admit, the game has good music, and a very cutesie art style that mostly holds up.

But fuck this game. I don't care that its skill issue, this game incites a particular fury within me that makes my balls feel funny when i play it and keep missing platforms. She makes it look so easy and fun and then when I play it I lose 3 yoshis to a boo.

I am impressed however by how fluid the water controls are. They unironically are more fun than the regular gameplay.

I'm at a severe crossroads with this game. The gameplay is BAD - Yoshi's complex moveset doesn't adapt well to simple easy baby time difficulty like the series would take after Island, buuut there is so much visual merit to the art and music, experimental but unashamedly cutesy and sweet. I'd say my thoughts on it are similar to my thoughts on PaRappa the Rapper and EarthBound, where it is creatively genius but a slog to play, but I'm a bit more forgiving on those games given rhythm and RPG games aren't directly gameplay genres like platformers are, if that makes sense.

An interesting game for the time offering a classic side-scrolling experience (in an era where 3D platforming was new and booming) but with different rules on how to advance levels such as eating a determined amount of fruit instead of reaching an end point/goal area.

Despite the side-scrolling view, Nintendo went with 3D graphics and that made for an interesting art direction and the game ended up looking great and was unique for its time. Soundtrack was cringey for me with too much baby Yoshi voices but there are some interesting pieces here and there.

Unfortunately, this game was on the (very) short side, definitely one of its biggest cons making this a good game to rent or borrow back in the day.

I got this from a street vendor in New York City who was selling Nintendo 64 games around 2005. True story.

This game was weird and uncanny. It felt like I was playing a horror game, but with Yoshi in it. All of the enemies were really cute yet terrifying at the same time. That elephant that holds the stop sign still makes me feel unsettled 'till this day.

The whole game has different versions of Yoshi's theme playing in the background, sorta' distorted? I love the game's art style, but again, very unsettling?

The goal of the game is to eat all the fruit and beat the stages. No bosses, just straight platforming (which grows stale after a while).

Also, when you die.. Yoshi cries as he dragged away into a castle. Look up Yoshi's Story Game Over scene. You'll understand why this game was a horror movie to me.