Super Mario World 2's title screen showcases its unique graphics style, courtesy of the Super FX 2 chip.

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, most commonly referred to as Yoshi's Island, is a Super Famicom/Super Nintendo game released in Japan on September 4, 1995. It was released in the US in October 1995. Later (in 2002) it was released as Super Mario Advance 3 for the Game Boy Advance. In March 2005, a game in the style of Yoshi's Island was released for the Nintendo DS under the name Yoshi's Touch & Go.

The game uses the Super FX 2 microchip to create scaling and polygon effects that are relatively advanced for a Super Famicom/SNES game.

The release of such a game as this was much-anticipated, as it was the first "true" Mario game to be released in four years, the last being the original Super Mario World in 1991. Between 1991 and 1995 the only games released involving Mario had been puzzle games such as Yoshi's Cookie or other franchise spin-offs such as Mario Kart. To date, it remains the last original side scrolling Mario game produced. All subsequent side-scrollers involving the Mario franchise (i.e. for the Game Boy Advance) have been titles from the Wario spin-off series or re-releases of classic NES titles.

In 1998 Nintendo released an N64 sequel to the game called Yoshi's Story. The sequel, which was a noticiably shorter and less complex game than the SNES predecessor, was panned by critics and had limited success commercially.

Story

The game begins with Baby Mario and Baby Luigi being delivered by the stork to their parents in the Mushroom Kingdom. Kamek the Magikoopa senses that the brothers will cause great trouble to the Koopas, so he attempts to kidnap them. Kamek captures the stork and young Luigi, but Mario (and the stork's map) falls and lands on a Yoshi's back. The Yoshies decide to protect Baby Mario and take him to the location marked on the map. Along the way, they must fight through Kamek's creatures and the inhabitants of the island.

Graphics

The game's graphical style is said to have resulted from a conflict with Nintendo's internal evaluation committee; impressed by the recently released Donkey Kong Country which sported pre-rendered graphics, they ordered Miyamoto to move the visuals in this direction. Upset at this, Miyamoto instead altered the graphics to look as if they had been drawn with crayons and felt-pens and resubmitted it to the evaluation committee, who admitted their mistake and passed the game, sporting a juvenile look.

Gameplay

Level 1-2: Watch Out Below!!

There are 6 worlds in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. Worlds 1, 2, and 4 don't have particular themes, but world 3 has a jungle theme, world 5 has a snow theme and World 6 has a bone, fire etc. theme. In both Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island for SNES and the Super Mario Advance 3 version of the game, there is a stage before the players starts world 1 that the player must get through (and will never be reached again unless the game is reset). In the Game Boy Advance version, if the player presses select, at the top of the screen it will say "World 0-0". In the SFC/SNES version, there are 9 stages in every world (8 regular stages and one unlockable extra stage) but in the Game Boy Advance version, a new "special" stage was added to each of the 6 worlds, making it 10 stages per world.