Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island is a prequel to the Mario series and canonically likely the very first title in the series. It’s a story of adventure as Yoshi and his friends carry baby Mario through Yoshi Island to reunite him with his brother who has been successfully kidnapped. The plot doesn’t matter nearly as much as the gameplay does. It’s basically the same gameplay from Super Mario World but drastically enhanced, retaining the simple controls and launching the series into a world that’s both dramatically colorful but also somber and creepy and every emotion between.
With Yoshi’s Island now on the Switch, there is no better time to revisit a series classic and play one of the most satisfying SNES games out there. You’ve got 48 levels across six worlds to play and with the ability to rewind time on mistakes, a journey only as difficult as you want it.
- You can use save scrubbing or time rewinding to win every mini-game and every challenge. For instance, on the pick an item challenge, pick the first item and it’ll reveal all the items. Rewind time and pick the want you want. On the scratch card, every time you scratch a magikoopa, rewind time. While cheating in every since of the word, this is also a very old game that you’re free to experience however you want.
- You can play free mini-games by pressing select and holding then inputting x,x,y,b,a.
- If you 100% all levels in a specific area, you’ll unlock two more levels to play.
- World 3-4, when you’re “eaten” don’t move. You won’t get hit by the acid.
- It is more time effective to 100% a level on the first pass, however, the game can be more or less fun depending on how you feel about collect-a-thons. The secret levels are cool – one stage and one mini-game per world. I’d suggest 100%ing World 1 if you want to get a nice infinite supply of star cards.
- Don’t forget about items. They’re super helpful. Star cards can make it where you can take a bit of damage. Egg cards are great in puzzles that give you limited eggs to solve (or require a lot of back tracking to get more). The watermelons are sort of meh.
- Keep eggs on you at all times. Anytime you can fill up to full on eggs, do it. There are large stretches on some maps where you don’t get eggs and some of them are at the very start, making it impossible or very hard to 100% your first time through without some eggs.
- Since this is on the Switch and you can farm lives by simply save scrubbing or rewinding time, it’s not that big of a deal but do stock up on lives as you enter the later portions of the game. It’s quite easy to die and a lot of the save rings from World 2 and on can be hidden behind walls or somewhere you need to hit with an egg.
- You can change the control scheme to where when you release the egg button, you launch the egg, versus having to hit it a second time. I like that more, you can always stop by pressing down to keep the egg and not launch it.
Other than that, the game is very simple. Enjoy the prequel to Mario’s long and wild adventure!
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