Before I head off to Air Force training, I've been trying to tie up my loose gaming ends that I've started this summer. I've played some really great games since school let out, including the 3DS remaster of Majora's Mask, Metroid Fusion (for the umpteenth time), Fire Emblem Awakening, the OG WarioWare, and my second ever playthrough of Pokemon Black, this time on my limited edition Pokemon Black DSi. I also was able to play through some classic 2D platformers. One was the GBA port of Yoshi's Island, which is often heralded as the best 2D platformer ever. While I was quite impressed by the game, it may have been overshadowed by another 2D Nintendo platformer, one that for whatever reason doesn't get half of the recognition of YI. I'm talking about Wario Land 3, originally on the Game Boy Color.
Surprised that I think an official Mario rip-off can hold its own against the almighty Yoshi's Island? I honestly was too. I thought I'd do a side-by-side review of these two games, and maybe even convince myself which game is better.
Scenario
Yoshi's Island is one of the more conventional 2D platformers, which makes perfect since since it is technically a main series Super Mario game (it is often referred to as Super Mario World 2). The game starts out with a stork carrying baby versions of Mario and Luigi (presumably their first appearances as babies?), when it gets attacked and drops Mario onto a strange island, which (you guessed it!) is inhabited by the visible spectrum of Yoshis. Luigi somehow gets kidnapped I think (it's been a while since I watched the opening cinematic and it's not like I was paying that much attention...nobody cares about Mario storylines. Wait, why am I even explaining it? Sorry. Wasting everyone's time). So you take on the role of the multicolored Yoshi, who all run a relay race through 6 worlds, trying to reunite the baby brothers and get them back en route to their parents.
Wario Land 3 has an even weirder storyline (it's a weird game, as you'll find out). Wario is walking through the woods when his greedy tucas finds a music box conspicuously lying about. He picks it up and plays it, then gets sucked into it. No explanation or anything. Then he talks to this giant face that tells him to explore the world and bring him back five music boxes to restore himself to normal. Wario isn;t really excited about this until the face tells Wario he can naturally keep any treasure that he finds while on his quest. Wario is immediately on board, and thus the game begins.
Abilities
One of the reasons YI is so well-received is the variety of abilities at Yoshi's disposal, all of which would be familiar to the casual Super Smash Bros. player. His signature move is to use his tongue to wrangle and eat enemies. He can then spit them out as a projectile a la Kirby, or he can swallow them and turn them into an egg, of which he can carry up to 5. Or 6. I never kept count. Anyway, these eggs can then be thrown using a primitive crosshair system that allows for aiming. The eggs provide excellent utility, as they can be used as weapons or to reach collectibles. In addition to the eggs, Yoshi can eat certain melons or enemies that allow him to spit seeds, ice, or fire. Yoshi has a powerful ground-pound attack that can hurt enemies, open crates, and damage certain terrain and open up access to new areas. Possibly most importantly, if one presses the jump button in mid-air, Yoshi will kick is legs repetitively and allow him to hover, and even gain a little bit of extra height. This can be done multiple times, and is a real lifesaver in this particular game which is a moderately difficult platformer.
One of my favorite games of my childhood is Wario Land 2, in which Wario has a variety of abilities. "Why are you all of the sudden talking about Wario Land 2, I thought this review was about 3?" you are currently thinking. Or maybe it's more like "Was that a typo?" Just stay with me here. His basic attack is a rush, where Wario charges forward and smashes certain blocks and kills enemies. Wario can also ground pound which kills enemies and smashes certain blocks below him. Unlike his un-doppelganger (I'm talking about Mario, if that wasn't clear), Wario does not kill enemies by jumping on them (despite his weight compared to Mario suggesting that this is unlikely). Jumping on enemies merely stuns them. From this point, Wario can pick up the enemies and throw them at his leisure, often against walls that cause them to die (this is a particularly satisfying way to kill enemies if you're frustrated at the game or have sociopathic tendencies). Wario can swim really well, sometimes even against fast currents. Well, I was going into WL3 thinking that I would have all of those abilities at my disposal, but as usual I was very wrong. In a Metroidy fashion, Wario only had his jump ability in the beginning, and all of the above mentioned abilities were hidden away in treasure chests throughout the game. While I found this infuriating at first, it made the game way better in the long run. More on that later.
Level Design
One of the most remarkable differences between these games is the level design.
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Yoshi's Island has typical beginning --> end levels like other Mario games of the time. There are a great variety of levels, including caves, castles, happy outside levels, beaches, and annoying ice levels. The enemies are sometimes themed based on the level, although there are some staple enemies that appear throughout the game. There are 1-3 "Middle Rings" that Yoshi could jump through that acted as checkpoints. Ummmm.....that's about it. About as standard as you can get.
Wario, on the other hand, has much more interesting level design. There are 25 levels gradually unlocked throughout the game, each with 4 treasure chests hidden in them. The chests are colored gray, red, green, and blue, and each has its respective key that is likewise hidden in the level. Wario basically spawns in the middle of the level and is free to search for whichever key he can find, and then find the corresponding treasure chest. The player quickly figures out that most of the level is inaccessible early in the game, and they can usually only find the gray key/treasure at first. However, the treasure that is found can modify previous levels or unlock Wario's abilities and thus allow access to previously unobtainable keys/treasure in previous levels. One can describe the gameplay of Wario Land 3 as the illegitimate lovechild of Super Mario 64 and Super Metroid (bold claims, I know). The Super Mario 64 traits are the multiple missions per level, and the open-ended nature of the levels themselves. The Super Metroid aspects are fairly obvious, as the player is teased with inaccessable areas that have to be later revisted once the character has obtained new abilities.
How to Fail/Source of Challenge
This may not come as a big surprise considering how traditional Yoshi's Island is, but the challenge comes from execution of platforming maneuvers and defeating enemies. If Yoshi gets hit, Baby Mario will fall off and infamously start crying, and a timer will begin to count down. The starting point of the timer depends on collectibles that the player has obtained. Yoshi has to grab Mario to stop the timer, which will reset back to 10 if it goes under 10. I can think of one time that I ever died like that, though. There are spikes and bottomless pits that will kill Yoshi immediately, and I frequently fell prey to these traps. The Middle Rings that I mentioned are spaced few and far between, so I found myself frustratingly repeating half of an entire level just because I barely touched some spike, or some well-placed enemy knocks me off a platform as soon as it appears on screen. This game is moderately hard (probably a 6 or 7 out of 10), and I like hard games for the most part, but it could also easily lead to frustration. There's also not much sense of accomplishment when you complete a challenge. Bypassing or defeating an enemy or clearing a chasm brings more a sense of relief, not satisfaction.
Wario, on the other hand, offers the player challenge not by execution, but by puzzle solving. As mentioned before, this feels like a cross between SM64 and Super Metroid. For me personally, this makes playing WL3 a more laid-back experience than YI. I also get a more profound sense of accomplishment when I figure out where to go and how to find the key/treasure chest that is hidden in plain sight. One detail I've been saving about WL3: Wario is 100% invincible except for the final boss. Getting hit simply stuns him and knocks him back, but has no other consequence whatsoever. This means that the challenge of WL3 is completely different from YI, as dying is the only way of failing in the latter game. Don't think that this makes Wario Land easy, by any stretch. Getting hit will usually result in a fall or some other form of lost progress in the level, requiring Wario to navigate back through the part of the level that he just progressed through, often multiple times. I was playing this game on the 3DS Virtual Console, so I had the luxury of a Save State feature which I used pretty liberally, especially towards the end of the game. Many of the enemies don't hurt Wario, but instead transform him into some bizarre alternate form. But I'll talk about that in the
Powerups section.
I'll start with Wario since I basically used this section as a segue. Wario has many alternate forms, including, but not limited to: On-fire Wario, Zombie Wario, Vampire Wario, Spring Wario, Inflated(?) Wario, Dizzy Wario, Invisible Wario, Really Fat Wario, and more. I made up all of those names. Anyway, all of these abilities allow Wario to go through floors, smash certain blocks, fly, and generally progress through levels. What's interesting about these powerups is that Wario doesn't obtain these by eating mushrooms that he finds in a question mark box, but he gets them by getting attacked by enemies. So the player doesn't necessarily want to walk into a room unleashing wanton destruction on all of the bad guys without first assessing if he needs them to progress. The particularly well-designed levels will have the same enemy assist you into getting to a certain point in a room only to immediately hinder you from getting to the next point. This allows for truly unique gameplay and puzzle solving that is almost completely absent in many non-indie platformers.
Yoshi's Island has its fair share of powerups as well; most of which turn Yoshi into vehicles (for reasons). These include helicopters, a drill mole thingy, a train, and maybe a sumbarine. I forget. Anyway, these are obtained via boring ol' powerup block, and they're not really fun in my humble opinion. They usually have special rooms that they are meant to be used in, so they aren't seamlessly incorporated into the level design like the Wario powerups.
Bosses
Yoshi's bosses appear every four levels and are hit or miss. Unfortunately, almost all of them are defeated by some form of throwing eggs at some sort of weak spot. Even the most memorable boss, excluding Baby Bowser, required throwing eggs at the uvula of a frog that had become giant and swallowed Yoshi and Mario. The final boss itself is pretty well-known and generally unsettling, as a giant Baby Bowser slowly walks its way toward Yoshi and Mario, spitting fireballs and destroying terrain. The epic-ness is there, but the fight itself isn't that challenging once the player figures out where to aim his eggs.
The Wario bosses appear in unpredictable locations throughout the game and are generally more inspired in design than the Yoshi bosses. While most of the Yoshi bosses are just larger versions of regular enemies, all of the Wario bosses are completely original in both design and how they are defeated. A few boss fights take place underwater, another takes place on a climbing wall, and one involves the player beat a rabbit in a game of soccer against a turtle goalie, which was not easy. The final boss of WL3 came as somewhat of a plot twist, and was balls-to-the-wall hard. As I hinted before, this is the only part of the game where Wario can die, and it only takes one hit to do so. This boss fight was not so much unsettling as it was flat-out creepy. But it was very memorable and took me forever to finally finish.
Aesthetic Appeal
I would be remiss if I didn't mention one department where Yoshi's Island was far superior to Wario Land 3, and that is the Music and Art department. Both games used about 5-6 tunes as BGM for the various levels, but Yoshi's Island's music was much better and more memorable. The final boss music in particular is famously good. Likewise, the visual appeal of YI was pretty great. Story has it that Miyamoto didn't like the pre-rendered 3D style seen in Donkey Kong Country and Mortal Kombat, so they opted for the heavily stylized hand-drawn look, which is executed perfectly. The visuals in Wario Land 3 are so-so, with some of Wario's sprites looking (maybe intentionally) screwy at times. I should also mention again that I was playing the GBA port of YI, so I'm sure the Game Boy Advance didn't do any justice to the original Super Nintendo Graphics of the game.
Final Remarks
While Yoshi's Island offered a polished and refined version of a proven formula, Wario Land 3 treaded into the realm of the offbeat, quirky, and creative. The level of creativity that went into Wario Land 3 15 years ago is completely absent from Nintendo nowadays, and can truly hold its own with the offbeat indie platformers that we as gamers have been blessed with in recent years. While the two games are technically in the same genre, they obviously couldn't be more different and are thus difficult to directly compare. I believe the title of superior game comes down to gamer preference, and personally, I thought Wario Land 3 was the better experience since made me use my brain in different ways instead of simply memorize the easiest way through a Yoshi level. I think the case could just as easily be made that Yoshi's Island is the better game. My suggestion is that you try them both and see what you think. But hey, that's just an entry, a BLOG ENTRY!!!! Thanks for reading!
