Why Yoshi's Island makes us glad we're not babies
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (1995)
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (1995)
I want you to sit back and see if you can think of your earliest memory. I’m not asking this in the hopes of you giving me photos or videos of you being breastfed – although if you do have them, please send them to the usual address.
It’s just interesting, isn’t it? You may very well have memories of yourself from back when you were a crying, gibbering, clumsy, self-defecating mess - and I don’t mean from when you became of drinking age.
No matter how great and upstanding and admired you are as a person today, you mustn’t forget who you were. That bawling, squawking child who caused irritation to every member of the public in a 400-yard radius, and prompted mass tutting and unspoken, polite disapproval? That was you that was, and we all hated you.
OK, maybe hate is a strong word. But babies are awfully irritating, aren’t they? And ugly too. Everyone thinks they have the cutest baby, but have you seen actual newborns?! They are ugly, bruised gremlins with scrunched up faces, and most of them have bodies like the Michelin Man. Some even come out of the womb already hirsute, or in the worst cases, excessively hairy. For the most part though, they’re all tarred with the same ugly brush.
All of these observations would be rather crass to bring up in polite company, however. So when you’re invited to look at your pal’s new baby for the first time, you’d better behave properly by peering in, looking down at little Geodude and going, “awww.”
Let me give you my two earliest childhood memories then, although I’ll warn you up front that they are both banal to an incredible degree. The first one relates to the old cot I used to sleep in. I can still hazily picture that particular cot now: a sort of 1980s wooden deathtrap, more suited to restraining animals or storing guns and ammunition than giving young children a cosy night’s sleep.
I wasn’t really much of a sleeper as a lad. I’m not even really much of a sleeper these days, come to think of it. But one night in the early 90s, I’d had enough. I had places to be, the darkened upstairs landing, or the dimly lit bathroom perhaps. Somewhere where I could go and eat cigarettes and small coins in peace. Those were my treats, you see.
Even on my two little feet, with my knobbly knees stretched to maximum capacity, I would have only stood about two feet high. When it came to Operation Breakout of the Cot, I wasn’t exactly a great suit for the physicality that the mission demanded. But I was chock full of determination and grit, and with no witnesses around to impede my progress, I was able to have a clear run at it.
Improvisation was key – I set up a wee makeshift platform from my beloved baby blankets that I always clutched tightly at bedtime, two blankys that are still around the house somewhere. I threw a few more pillows onto my makeshift structure, finally giving me the boost I needed to up-and-over past the unsanded wooden bars and hotfoot it out the door.
I dropped to the floor with a thud that I can still remember, and crawled out to the landing. Light, and Freedom! I can’t remember what happened next, but you would imagine that I fell asleep and got re-captured almost immediately, before being brought back to my wooden prison, which would go on to have additional iron bars and motion sensor alarms installed. Mission failed then, but still, what a rush.
The second memory I have is even more mundane, but quite a bit more troubling. I’m back in that wretched cot again, and I’m up on my feet. It’s early morning though, and I have nowhere to be, no people to keep happy, no work to go to, no rent to pay, no traffic or public transport to contend with, and certainly nobody to tell me when I can and can’t play with my teddies. It was life at its finest.
But I do seemingly have a craving, which my mother responds to by bringing me… a glass of Coca-Cola. Could that be considered child abuse these days? It won’t have done wonders for my budding baby teeth, that’s for sure. I gave up that awful stuff years (too many years) later and swapped it out for Coke Zero and Diet Coke, which are of course far better options.
Still, when you have those sobering moments of introspection, when you cast your mind back to determine where your life went exactly, it’s those thoughts that rise to the surface, vivid and bright. Could this be where I went wrong?
Makes me wonder if Mario has any vague memories of the tropics of Yoshi’s Island, a place he involuntarily visited as a baby. At times, you hope the poor guy doesn’t remember any of it, because some odd, potentially traumatising stuff goes on here.
To start with, he gets separated from his twin brother Luigi while being delivered to their parents by the stork. Wait, Mario and Luigi have parents?! And there’s no sexual intercourse, insemination, impregnation? The babies just appear? Is any of this canon? Lord knows, but it’s probably the most we’ve ever found out about the Bros in terms of lore and backstory.
Anyway, Baby Bowser and Kamek the Magikoopa actually try to abduct the babies, but succeed only in nabbing Luigi. Not really sure why we’d need to go and rescue him, but anyway, Mario gets knocked out of the sky and drops about 5,000 feet right onto Yoshi’s back.
Well, I’ve heard of plenty of people being lumbered with unwanted children, but that kind of luck is on a whole other level of horrendousness. Imagine a resource leech like that literally falling out of the sky on top of you? And not once on my journey through Yoshi’s Island did I see a post office or government building, which meant no child welfare payments for Yoshi either.
Then the actual platforming levels in Yoshi’s Island begin, and you’ve got Piranha Plants trying to eat you, mischievous Shy Guys taking liberties, bosses that grow storeys tall in front of your very eyes, and all the while there are Toadies waiting to abduct Mario.
There’s even sequences where Mario gets a Star powerup, gains the use of his dumpy little legs and starts running around at top-speed in his diaper-nappy, but not before Yoshi turns into a helicopter and flies around, weaving in and out of ghosties, but all of this only leads to a famous sequence in which Yoshi touches Fuzzy, and has his first LSD trip, and… whew, I’m out of breath. And by the way, this is all in the first handful of levels; things only get nuttier and more joyous to play from there.
This all takes place against lush crayon-drawn graphics, a sight better than Donkey Kong Country, and more than a cut above the early 3D games that were grabbing the headlines at the time.
You go take a look at Tomb Raider PS1 in motion, and then watch some of the boss battles in Yoshi’s Island, and you tell me which game massages your eyes. So massaged will your eyes be, they’ll begin weeping tears of joy down your bewildered face as you witness the boss battles. And on that subject, the final boss in this game is one of the most memorable of all time - it’s simply out of this world.
But your senses will be brought back to Earth, inevitably, by the infamous shrill crying of Baby Mario when Yoshi finally tires of him and prepares to surrender him to the enemies. In truth, I can ignore the little brat’s crying all day – it’s the even more shrill countdown noise that gets me.
Do you have a dark enough heart to let Mario be taken by the baddies? I say, why not? It’s a shortcut, since you’re only trying to get to Baby Bowser’s Castle anyway, which looks nice and warm and secure. The rest of Yoshi’s Island is a deathtrap, not fit for a baby. If anyone’s the irresponsible parent here, it’s not Baby Bowser; it’s the fiendish clan of Yoshis keeping the little wouldbe plumber hostage.
God, I love this game. I could give you many paragraphs more, but I suspect you’d nod off, like a baby hearing a bedtime story. One of the Super Nintendo’s latest and greatest, this game puts you through much the same emotions as introducing a baby to the world: some very hard work at times, lots of heavy crying and noisy confusion, times where you wonder was it even worth it to begin with, all the sleepless nights and the parental conflicts, but it’s too late to go back now.
By the end of it all though, when the ending credits roll and the smiling Mario Bros. are reunited and held up to the sky with love, you may just find yourself getting more than a little bit emotional at the beauty and joy of this wonderful creation.
3 May 2024