Platform: Game Boy

Developer: Nintendo R&D1

Publisher: Nintendo

Release Date (NA): 1993

Genre: Puzzle

Nerd Rating: 6 out of 10

Not another Yoshi puzzle game! I assume you’re saying aloud as you begin to read this review of Yoshi’s Cookie. First it was Tetris Attack, then Yoshi, now this!

I promise you, this is the last Yoshi-centric puzzle game on the Game Boy that I’ll bring up! I promise! This time, we meet up with Mario and Yoshi in their newest minimum wage factory job!

Yoshi’s Cookie isn’t your standard matching puzzler, in fact, it’s pretty unique. The amount of cookies needed to create a match varies during the rounds by the size of the stack you have. For example, lets say the stack of cookies on the screen is two cookies long and four cookies high. In order to create a match, you have to have the same cookie taking up either the entire amount of the width or height (two or four). However, cookies will start spawning from left and right, making your stack wider and taller, therefore making the player require more cookies. Luckily, the speed of the incoming cookies, even on medium, is pretty slow until you reach the game’s fifth round. That, and the player also has complete control over the order of said cookies, using a cursor that allows them to move any entire row or column of their stack up or down, similar to a Rubik’s cube.

Similar to other Game Boy games with console counterparts, Yoshi’s Cookie on the Game Boy lacks as many features and game modes as the NES and SNES releases. It makes up for that in the same way most handheld games do, by being portable. Although the game doesn’t allow you to save progress, players can choose a starting round when beginning a new game, instead of having to work their way up again to the more challenging levels of the game. And in a rare twist, the absence of color in this Game Boy port of Yoshi’s Cookie actually makes it more playable than its console counterparts. Differentiating each cookie type during the faster levels is much easier when all of the cookies aren’t the same blaring tan.

While Yoshi’s Cookie is definitely a fun Game Boy game, it doesn’t really pack on the replay-ability and difficulty that other puzzle games from the handheld have. In fact, my first few times playing it, I didn’t really find much of a challenge until I hit the mid-point of round five. Yet, by then, I had already grown pretty bored of it, and had moved onto Yoshi, which I found to be much more challenging.

If you find a copy of this, GET IT.

These interesting choices in gameplay mechanics is Yoshi’s Cookie‘s real strength, there really wasn’t any puzzle game on the Game Boy like it.  Yoshi’s Cookie really is a unique puzzler, and you have to hand it to Nintendo R&D1 for trying to create a matching game that wasn’t just a clone of Puzzle Bobble or Puyo Puyo. Sadly, the definitive edition of Yoshi’s Cookie, the version included in the Nintendo Puzzle Collection for the GameCube, never saw a western release, which I felt had much more of a challenge and includes a fun story mode that plays like a mix of Dr. Mario 64 and Tetris Attack.

In the off-chance that you can import a copy of Nintendo Puzzle Collection, I highly recommend it, if only to have the best versions of three great puzzle games; Dr. Mario, Yoshi’s Cookie, and Panel de pon.

Hey, interested in Yoshi’s Cookie on other platforms? Well, check out The Cubist’s review of it on the NES.