Why Yoshi's Story is a waste of a rental weekend
Yoshi’s Story (1998)
Yoshi’s Story (1998)
I’ve got to come clean with you today - I’m a no good criminal. Actually, I’m no stranger to breaking the law: I’ve pirated just about every form of media you can think of. I’ve even got Virtual Boy ROMs on my computer, for heaven’s sake.
I’ve downloaded - and watched - Mean Girls and The Notebook. I'm not sure if you want to know much more about my depraved downloading habits, but one thing I'll tell you - I don’t regret any of my actions. After all, when I download films and music, I'm only taking chump change out of the pockets of fine, upstanding fellas like Harvey Weinstein.
Today though, I have to confess to a far more severe crime from my past: renting games, and not returning them on time. God, I hate that word. Just say it out loud: rent. Of course I’ve rented a house before, which means paying big money for someone else’s mortgage - and if that ain’t criminal, I don’t know what is.
Then there’s rental cars; never the one you want, never clean and tidy, and never a lick of petrol left in them by the time you get the keys. I also used to have to rent books from the college library, since the downloading sites weren’t too clever back then. I’m sure they’ve gotten better now, if there’s Virtual Boy ROMs on offer.
And then, there’s that whole, long-outdated practice of renting games. It had to be done; Nintendo 64 games weren’t cheap back in the day, you know. They’re dead cheap now, which may change in the future. But when some weirdo (usually me) advises you not to get into retro video game collecting because it’s far too expensive, then you can counter this by buying N64 instead.
The amount of games to obtain for the system isn’t actually that high, only a couple of hundred, as opposed to the seventy thousand on PS1. The Japanese library will have a slightly higher number of course, but how many Mahjong simulators can you cope with?
I even made it my mission to obtain a PAL copy of every Nintendo 64 game, which is a bit like wanting to get a Betamax of every film released in the 80s. I shelved that ambition, temporarily, for reasons unknown. Perhaps someone slapped me while I was blind-drunk and rambling about RF Adaptors, and told me not to waste my money on such rubbish.
Apart from these glamourous flights of financial fancy though, I’ve always made sure to spend my cash wisely. This was especially true when I’d go to the rental shop in Ireland most Fridays after school.
Nothing I’m saying here will make sense to any zoomers reading, but such rental shops were rites of passage on Fridays, for games and for movies. And you had to be smart with your investment, because whatever choice you made was make or break for your weekend.
The rental shop around here was called Xtra-Vision. You won’t be familiar with them, but you may be familiar with Blockbuster, who sort of died a long and agonising death against Netflix and their ilk. Before Xtra-Vision fully bit the dust, I understand that their rental business presence had degraded rapidly, going from boasting over 200 retail stores… to knocking out a few DVDs beside the batteries and jellies at shop tills.
The problem with those rental shops is that you only ever had a bare selection, especially where the N64 was concerned. We already had the staples at home like Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, and GoldenEye, so the rental market was slim pickings. So, we tended to bring home one of two games: either South Park 64, which I never thought was as awful as they made out. Or else it was that game that was pretty much made for rentals, Yoshi’s Story.
It took me years to finally buy my own copy of Yoshi’s Story actually, and I’m talking about probably 2017 or 2018 here. The reason for this is because, even for a weekend rental, this game never give you anywhere near enough juice. You’ll eat plenty of fruit in this game alright, but the whole thing was barely worth the squeeze.
I'm thinking that perhaps this game is where we started to smell a bit of a rat with the Nintendo 64. I could hardly name you five 2D games, or 2.5D games, available on this console. The early 3D era gave developers and publishers a strict allergy to spritework. And what a shame, because by pretty much every measure, this game is vastly inferior to Yoshi's Island on the SNES.
How can that be? The graphics in Yoshi’s Story aren't outright bad, even if the sprites can sometimes look a bit hokey against the polygonated backgrounds. Either way, the crayon-drawn, cartoonish SNES game looks a hell of a lot more appealing to this day.
Chief among the complaints against Yoshi’s Story is how short it is. The game's got six worlds, with four levels each - but you'll only play one level from each world on any given playthrough. The supposed replay value comes in trying to maximise your score by perfecting each stage.
Now see here, Nintendo - that kind of thing can work in an action-packed, charming and silly shooter like Star Fox 64. But when this game’s predecessor possessed 48 stages, plus a half-dozen hidden ones, then a grand total of 24 doesn't really wash - especially when you'll only have to play six before reaching the end credits.
Getting to those credits will mean you have to beat Baby Bowser, who serves as the final boss. This battle sums the whole game up really - unambitious, anticlimactic, and far too easy. You can even become invincible during the battle, for heaven's sake, you'd almost have to try to lose.
I know I've just spent a long time writing this game off, so you might think I hate Yoshi’s Story. Not true, I assure you. The game is definitely decent fun, for a short while at least. Actually the fun will probably be exhausted before your six level playthrough is over. Still, some of the music is fun and so are Yoshi's interactions, even if this game committed the original sin of giving Yoshi a voice, and we've been hearing the same vocals ever since.
Golly, every time I think of something positive to say about this game, I seem to swing right back around to being negative. Possibly the truth is that I don't know what I want from a Yoshi game anymore. I didn't want Yoshi's Story, but then, I didn't want all of these Yoshi's Island derivatives either.
I really do mean that. Have you seen the state of Yoshi's New Island on 3DS? That one makes Yoshi's Story look like a Dali painting in motion. Incidentally, I wouldn’t rent that one either, even if I could. To show my contempt for it though, I might download it in my torrent trawler net, alongside thousands of other games. Just add it to my other crimes, like being constantly drunk in public, and stealing next door’s internet.
4 October 2024