Platform: Game Boy

Release Date (NA): July 1992

Developer: Game Freak

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre: Puzzle

Nerd Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Yoshi: the reason we have Pokemon.

LET’S TALK ABOUT YOSHI.

You’re probably wondering why I’m so excited about an incredibly unpopular puzzle game on from the Game Boy that not only does no one else care about, but was pretty badly panned. Well when you do enough coke-

BECAUSE IT MADE POKEMON POSSIBLE.

Ok, that might be a bit of an over-exaggeration, but Yoshi is in fact, one of the few games made by Game Freak before Pocket Monsters Green and Red. And this fact is as exciting as it is trivial.

The fact that I was finally able to track down an English pre-Pokemon Game Freak game to play and compare its style to their later releases is something I’ve been hoping to accomplish for a few months now. And to be completely honest, I totally didn’t know they developed it coming into the game.

You’ll be seeing this pose a lot…

Anyway, Yoshi is a pretty simple falling block puzzle game in which your goal is to stop the screen from filling up with blocks of Mario series enemies. Mario hangs out at the bottom of the screen moving between the four platforms that said blocks can land on.

Yoshi even complements you when you do good!

At the same time, halves of Yoshi eggs will fall from the top as well, and putting a top and bottom together will create a Yoshi. While I never really figured out what collecting Yoshis actually accomplished, you can rack up a pretty good bonus should you pile a bunch of enemy blocks between the two egg halves.

The controls for this game are really simple. All you have to do is move Mario left and right to swap around the platforms, that’s it. Apparently, some of the original reviewers for this game thought this was way too difficult, and that the game was luck-based. Obviously, that’s a bunch of bullshit. This game plays like a Game & Watch; if you want to get far in it you have to trust your reflexes. There’s no luck-based bullshit here, just pay attention to the incredibly slow moving blocks that are falling from the top and swap the platforms with Mario to make matches. Trust me.

If you want a puzzle game on the Game Boy that’s merciless, you ought to try the deceptively cute Bubble Ghost.

So goddamn cute, but so goddamn difficult.

But I for one, had a lot of fun with Yoshi. The two modes, simply called A-Type and B-Type, keep things interesting enough to stay entertained by Yoshi whenever you have a few minutes to burn. Yet, oddly enough, Yoshi never received an updated version or sequel of any sort like many other Game Boy puzzle games. Tetris Attack did, in the form of the Puzzle League series. Yoshi’s Cookie did, in the Nintendo Puzzle Collection for the GameCube. Even Bubble Ghost did, with the Nintendo DS sequel Soul Bubbles, which is about 1000xs less cute. Even Miyamoto apparently disliked Yoshi because it (and Yoshi’s Cookie and Yoshi’s Safari) wasn’t “authentic” to the Yoshi character.

It may look repetitive, but what puzzle game doesn’t use repetition to keep things addicting?

Even though it may look like another boring Game Boy puzzle game, I think Yoshi‘s pretty creative. Think about it, the Game Boy was filled with handheld versions of all kinds of popular puzzle series like Tetris, Panel de Pon, Puzzle Bobble, Puyo Puyo, etc, but not too many good “different” puzzlers. So if you’re looking for something easier than Bubble Ghost, but still a “different” kind of puzzler, try out Yoshi!