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I just finished Yoshi’s Island tonight. I completed all the levels, earned 100 points on each, opened all six Extra levels, beat those, and got 100 points on them too. I basically 100% completed the game. It’s probably the first time I’ve played it from beginning to end in over 20 years. Overall, it still holds up. The level design is fantastic, the controls are tight and precise without being too stiff, and it has an aesthetic that is incomparable to any other SNES game. Plus, it has some great music from Mr. Koji Kondo. I am thankful, however, to have had the ability to use save states and rewind gameplay. This is a tough game, and these features saved me lots time and frustration. Though there are checkpoints throughout each level, they are spaced pretty far apart, and it is possible to lose several minutes worth of gameplay with one simple mistake. Being able to stop the game, rewind a few seconds and try a tough jump again made the experience more fun and satisfying. This is particularly true when trying to get 100 points on all the levels. Sometimes something you need to collect — like a red coin — will appear for a few seconds and disappear for good if you don’t collect it fast enough. The only thing you can do then is die and start over (hopefully from a checkpoint), but the rewind feature means you can just step back a few seconds and try again. At first part of me felt bad about this — like I was cheating. But I ultimately decided to hell with it. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone, and I’m playing this game to have fun more than anything. And I did have fun. I waited in vain for years for Yoshi’s Island to come to the Virtual Console — first on Wii, then Wii U — and I finally got to play it again. I couldn’t be happier.

I wanted to finally post about this game which has been out for some time. I bought and played through it a number of months ago and really enjoyed the hell out of it. It’s a mid-range AA production with AAA production values. I like to call it this years Hellblade in that regard. It’s a primarily stealth based game with a really well told story that veers into the supernatural. It has an fantastic sense of time and place and again visually it’s pretty stunning. Digital Foundry did a nice video of its technology here: What really reminded me about the game is that there is currently a free trail version available on PC, Xbox One and PS4 right now that lets you play the first stage. Again, I highly recommend it!