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Post by Nester the Lark on Apr 16, 2011 19:45:33 GMT -5
What do you guys think of Yoshi's Story on the N64?
Ever since I bought the game way back when it first came out in 1998, I considered it one of the weakest and most disappointing games in my collection. There were so many things about it that rubbed me the wrong way.
But just recently, I started playing it again a little bit. My original disappointment in it evaporated a long time ago, and I've started to understand the game on its own level. To my own surprise, I'm actually enjoying it as a fun little score-based platformer.
In a way, the difference between this game and Yoshi's Island is kind of like the "weird sequels" from the NES era: Zelda 1 & 2, Castlevania 1 & 2, Super Mario 1 & 2/USA. It discards nearly everything that made Yoshi's Island great in favor of reinventing itself, and in the process became almost a completely different (and somewhat messy) game. But on its own merits, maybe it's not such a bad little game after all.
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Post by TV Eye on Apr 16, 2011 20:43:47 GMT -5
I was one of the few people who played Yoshi's Story before ever playing too deep into Yoshi's Island, so I thoroughly enjoyed it. My sister and I spent hours trying to unlock every level, and try to gain access to the constantly rumored Purple Yoshi
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Post by Shadrio on Apr 16, 2011 22:20:20 GMT -5
It was my second video game ever. Considering I was just a scrub, I enjoyed it a lot. Haven't played it in years, though.
Black and White Yoshi were badass, though. Boom goes the egg!
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Post by 8bitretroshit on Apr 17, 2011 2:10:55 GMT -5
Yeah, it was pretty dissapointingly short compared to Yoshi's Island. And the bosses were insultingly easy. Back then I thought completing a level by eating fruit was pretty dumb too, took me awhile to realise that yes, the game's basically a mix between a platformer and a highscore arcade game. Game gets special points because it's one of few games a friend's mom would play almost every day. Still I think Yoshi's Island is wayyy better. Also it seems the game looked better back in beta
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Post by kirbychu on Apr 17, 2011 7:08:25 GMT -5
I loved Yoshi's Story, but I think that's because I never saw it as a sequel to Yoshi's Island. I just saw it as a fun 2D platformer at a time when there were very few 2D platformers around. I spent ages playing each stage to try and finish each one with nothing but melons. I like challenges like that.
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Post by nocturnal YL on Apr 17, 2011 9:48:31 GMT -5
I did not have Yoshi's Story on N64. I have that on emulator. And now I have that on Virtual Console. Now I want my 1000 Wii Points back.
It took me a while to realise this is a high-score based game where you cannot save your interim progress (not even as an interrupt save) and must beat the game in one go, and then repeat the process four or more times.
But the worst ofender here is the difficult to use control scheme. I cannot ground pound by inputting down directly - I need to somehow shake my 3D stick a bit to let the emulator know that yes, I am inputting down. And the way Yoshi moves in response to the controller is nothing like any other Nintendo platformers I've played. It feels more like the worse of those half-baked free browser games. Considering that I deem user interface very important, Yoshi's Story fails hard.
Not to mention the imperfect emulation. What's present in PJ64 (like the block changes width/hright instead of rotates) is there as well, so why did I bother to pay for this game at all? Nintendo could have sold its ROMs for PCs instead - that way at least you get all those game manipulaiton tools.
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Post by 8bitretroshit on Apr 17, 2011 11:17:50 GMT -5
...Why are you complaining about buying it for the VC when you don't like how some rom plays/looks like on a emulator? Or do you have a different way of playing VC games?
By the way you don't have to finish the game in one sitting, you SHOULD be able to continue Story mode where you left off. Maybe that's another fault on the emulator's part.
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Post by Nester the Lark on Apr 17, 2011 14:27:01 GMT -5
For me, it's not just that it was different from Yoshi's Island. There were a lot of little things that made the game irritating to play. For one, the control seemed a little bit off. Also, I thought the game went a little overboard with being "cutesy" and childish. Yoshi's Island used hand drawn graphics and bouncy music tactfully, but in Yoshi's Story, it seems heavy handed, like it's beating you over the head with it. To go with that, I really hated Kazumi Totaka's Yoshi voice. Baby Mario's crying in YI never bothered me the way it did for other people, but Yoshi's squeaky munchkin voice really got on my nerves. I've gotten over it since then, but for a long time I hated that Nintendo kept it as Yoshi's voice after that. (I do kinda miss the vacuum cleaner noises he used to make, tho. ) And then there was my blind fanboyism. Around the time I bought Yoshi's Story, I had rented other N64 games like Mischief Makers and Fighter's Destiny, both of which I really liked. I still remember standing in Toys R Us and briefly considering buying one of those games instead, but I convinced myself that a first-party Nintendo game would inherently be better (despite that I had already read several negative reviews). Once I got home and started playing, I wished I had bought Mischief Makers instead. But like I said, I've gotten over all of that now. The one thing I did appreciate about YS back then was that it was a score-based game, and I appreciate that even more now. When you play it for score, the challenge hikes up quite a bit.
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Post by nocturnal YL on Apr 17, 2011 16:12:08 GMT -5
...Why are you complaining about buying it for the VC when you don't like how some rom plays/looks like on a emulator? Or do you have a different way of playing VC games? By the way you don't have to finish the game in one sitting, you SHOULD be able to continue Story mode where you left off. Maybe that's another fault on the emulator's part. Problem is, the VC version is not much better than the ROM on emulator (other than that it doesn't have that seizure flashing). And Nintendo decided to sell it. For 1000 Wii Points. For this price I could have two good meals. Well, the control is even worse, seeing how tilting down doesn't register correctly (with a GC controller, never bothered with that PlayStation copycat controller). And oh, how do I interrupt save? I tried leaving the game after beating the first stage, but I couldn't come back after that.
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Post by 8bitretroshit on Apr 17, 2011 16:43:28 GMT -5
Well, whenever you quit the game it should be saving your progress so when you continue on next time you'll start at the level select of the world you were at. Maybe it only works when quitting on the world maps themselves, I dunno.
That Yoshi voice was annoying as shit and while I'm used to it now, I still think those squeeky sounds were better.
And yeah, ground pounding with an analog stick's annoying, especially with the n64 analog stick that becomes busted within months. I remember being hella frustrated with that path blocking elephant level, trying to ground pound near those guys for 5 minutes.
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Post by Koopaul on Apr 17, 2011 17:46:52 GMT -5
After you beat a stage they do let you replay them over and over again in Trial Mode.
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Post by Fryguy64 on Apr 19, 2011 3:40:43 GMT -5
The N64 didn't do 2D platformers very well. Why? Because everyone tried to shift the controls to the analogue stick rather than using the + Control Pad. But even when the Pad was used, it was very sticky and not as easy to use as on other Nintendo systems.
The Analogue Stick made things very fiddly. Jump and push down. Am I pushing down? Apparently not. Apparently I'm sliiiiightly to the left. So a frantic Flutter Kick to get back on the platform is required. And that, too, is not a sure thing.
I'm not going to go all Yoshi's Story hating though. The game has its positives, and whether you like it or not, it's had an effect on Nintendo's superior 2D games since then: Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat, New SMB and Galaxy games and DKCR. When playing all of these games, I found myself having a Yoshi's Story flashback at some point.
When it came out, it was a massive disappointment. The game looked amazing in screenshots, and blurry in reality. It was short, the levels were easy, the bosses were easy and turning the entire game into a collectathon made it a chore. It didn't live up to its original name: Yoshi's Island 64. It was also the first time I'd heard the word "kiddy" associated with Nintendo.
But it did introduce large, morphing creatures, impressive set-pieces and a 3D graphical style that has endured in the later Mario games. Each level had something unique about it, and I still love the music.
OK, I didn't really like the ending theme until it was remixed in Brawl...
Eh. After many years and attempted replays, Yoshi's Story hasn't really gone up or down in my estimation. It's a reminder of what Nintendo was in the N64 era - rapidly losing market share with a focus on family-friendly games, yet still not afraid to try a few risky experiments.
And hell, it's better than Universal Gravitation by a running mile!
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Post by Nester the Lark on Apr 22, 2011 0:31:18 GMT -5
I forgot to mention this, but the reason I suddenly decided to give Yoshi's Story another go was because of this funny video review of it. It just made me think about it again and randomly put me in the mood to play it.
Something strange occurred to me, tho. Remember how the graphics in Yoshi's island looked hand drawn, but the intro had kind of a pre-rendered look to it? Well, I noticed that the intro to Yoshi's Story looks hand drawn, even tho the rest of the game looks pre-rendered. Weird.
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Post by eggtroopa on Oct 11, 2011 12:30:39 GMT -5
I have the original N64 cartridge, and I never had any complaints about it. The graphics were amazing; I liked how everything looked like it was made of cardboard or fabric. I remember trying for months in vain to get all the melons from all sixteen levels. I didn't know anything about a purple Yoshi, but I did believe I would get something cool if I could pull off the melon thing. Yoshi's Island was better though, and I never played Yoshi's Island DS.
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Post by Dull Boy Jack on Oct 12, 2011 19:18:50 GMT -5
It is what is really. A short, easy, fun little platformer. It's not a Super Mario Bros 3, or a Super Mario World or a Yoshi's Island - a game that'll be forever considered to be in the top echelons of gaming, but it's still a good game. It's fun, the graphics are good, sprites are good, backgrounds are great and original, the music is nice and it has the abundance of charm that Nintendo games are loved for. If it wasn't the 'sequel' to Yoshi's Island or Yoshi's Island never existed then I think Yoshi's Story would be a lot better remembered. Yoshi's Island was simply incredible, unquestionably one of the greatest platformers ever to exist, it's understandable that anyone who played Yoshi's Island would have been incredibly disappointed when they played Story. I played Story before I played Island (which I didn't play until it was released on the GBA, I had a Mega Drive instead of a SNES ) so the quality of Island didn't have any bearing on my opinion of Story, it didn't blow me away but I always really enjoyed it. Nice little game, as long as you don't compare it to Yoshi's Island too much it's very enjoyable.
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