Ever since his introduction in Super Mario World, Yoshi has become one of the most popular and beloved characters not just in the Mario series, but in video game history. So, given the character's immediate popularity, Nintendo decided to take advantage of this pretty early by giving the dino his own game, which would lead on to plenty of other games down the line. So, with the help of Game Freak, who would go on to develop nothing else that would be noteworthy (definitely not any franchises about monsters in your pocket), they then developed and released Yoshi for the NES.
As the first instance of Yoshi having a starring role, I would say it's a pretty alright game. It is an interesting choice for his first game, and it can be fun, but only for bits at a time.
The graphics are definitely some of the NES graphics of all time, the music isn't all that memorable, the control is extremely simple and easy to pick up on, and the gameplay is also extremely simple, and can get pretty challenging in certain stages.
The game is your basic puzzle game of this era, where you have to match up enemies in order to clear them and get points, while also trapping a bunch of them in eggs in order to create more Yoshis (which is only the best objective in any game ever), while also making sure that the enemies don't fill up the entire grid. Like I said, it's pretty simple and it can be fun at times, but this leads to my main problem with this game: it gets boring pretty quickly.
Sure, the game is fun in small bursts, but unlike other puzzle games like Tetris and Dr. Mario, it doesn't really do enough to keep me playing for more than 10-20 minutes, as it gets really repetitive. There are multiple modes that you can take on, but there isn't too much difference between these modes, and it is moreso just a way to keep you playing with no change.
Overall, while it can be pretty fun at points, and is a nice little side game for Yoshi, it doesn't have enough staying power to make me consider ranking it any higher than this.
Game #100
As the first instance of Yoshi having a starring role, I would say it's a pretty alright game. It is an interesting choice for his first game, and it can be fun, but only for bits at a time.
The graphics are definitely some of the NES graphics of all time, the music isn't all that memorable, the control is extremely simple and easy to pick up on, and the gameplay is also extremely simple, and can get pretty challenging in certain stages.
The game is your basic puzzle game of this era, where you have to match up enemies in order to clear them and get points, while also trapping a bunch of them in eggs in order to create more Yoshis (which is only the best objective in any game ever), while also making sure that the enemies don't fill up the entire grid. Like I said, it's pretty simple and it can be fun at times, but this leads to my main problem with this game: it gets boring pretty quickly.
Sure, the game is fun in small bursts, but unlike other puzzle games like Tetris and Dr. Mario, it doesn't really do enough to keep me playing for more than 10-20 minutes, as it gets really repetitive. There are multiple modes that you can take on, but there isn't too much difference between these modes, and it is moreso just a way to keep you playing with no change.
Overall, while it can be pretty fun at points, and is a nice little side game for Yoshi, it doesn't have enough staying power to make me consider ranking it any higher than this.
Game #100