Yoshi’s Island puts the colourful dinosaur buddies that debuted to immediate popularity front and centre. The launch title for their 16-bit console, Super Mario World was a massive hit that confirmed the Japanese giants as the masters of their trade and yet we had to wait until 1995 before Super Mario World 2 came along, and when it did it wasn’t even a Mario game. titles and it was working for Sega who brought out four fantastic, critically acclaimed and riotously successful Sonic games in as many years. In the SNES era one might have forgiven Nintendo for milking their mascot’s popularity a bit more than they did, after all it worked for the NES which enjoyed three Super Mario Bros. I’ll deliver my own verdict on the new game in due course but for now let’s look backwards at a very different time.
2 just released for 3DS a lot of people are aiming criticism at Nintendo for persistently rolling out the same old same old, the supposed great innovators playing things safe with polished titles that challenge practically nothing and with Mario platformers fast becoming annual releases the concern is creeping in that the series might just be showing signs of stagnation.
A game about a sidekick can’t possibly be as good as the most popular sidescrolling platformers ever made, right?
