Review - Yoshi's Touch & Go (DS)

Format: Nintendo DS
Publisher: Nintendo
Producer: In-House
Genre: Platform
Price: £30 new, £17 - 25 second hand (May 2005), £10 - £25 ebay (May 2005)
Origin: Japan
Reviewer: Sideath

Yoshi's Touch & Go does for the DS what Mario64 did for the N64 and so insatisfactorily for the DS itself - it builds on Nintendo's heritage with invention and imagination and tailors a new kind of play and around a new kind of control - it's the DS' true launch game.

The main point of the game is to protect Yoshi as he ferries Baby Mario on his eternal journey from left to right. The stylus is used to draw cloud platforms for his to run on, to poke him to make him jump and to tap out the trajectories of his eggs. Drawing a cloud circle around an enemy - or several enemies - turns them into coins, which can then be dragged towards Yoshi for consumption. As the game progresses, you notice subtle new possibilities. Empty bubble can be used to manipulate coins and enemies into place for a 10-point combo, clouds that hold you up can also be used to pen enemies in place. Bullets can be tapped out of the air, clumsy cloud clusters melt when blowen on (the DS' microphone). It becomes an extended improvisation, a despearate, delighted juggle to correctly prioritise unexpected variables (as Chris Cooling would say, the most efficient of 'e to the power of x').

Also preserved is the SNES game Yoshi's Island's innocent, delightful but wonderful visual charisma and audio addictiveness. It may be little more than a fairly faithful homage to the original, but that is definetly enough. However, it isn't nostalgia that fuels your progress throughout the game - but enjoyment and amazement. There's a simple, unstoppable magic about firing an egg on the bottom screen and watch it wondefully arc towards the top screen to hit your target spot on - as it ricochets up a narrow chimney in an arpeggio of pops.

The strategic appreciation in the game is different, too. Level design, the fundemental point of a good platform game becomes irrelevant when you let players draw their own. Instead, enemy design become the issue - and the enemies in Yoshi's Touch & Go becomes the level - simple predictable, yet incresingly ingenious enemies litter the level, and soon becomes the level itself.

Added to all of this are five wonderful modes - score attack - a simple, limited, score earning affair which serves as a tutorial for the rest of the game; time attack - a boss level when Baby Luigi needs to be rescued; Challenge - the exact opposite, when the boss needs to averted, by earning points to narrowly edge up the time remaining before Magikoopa arrives and swipes Baby Mario, and Marathon mode, the main game, where the level is endless, and the furether you get, the more interesting things you will see.

Added to all this is the two-player mode, downloadable from one cartridge. Here the two screens are used sepearatly, allowing you to see your opponent's progress immediatly.

There may be downsides to Yoshi's Touch & Go's clarity of vision - it certainly lacks the variety and sense of progress that great platform games can offer. But then this was never supposed to be a great platform game. It was supposed to be, and is, a great DS game. And one which deserves to be remembered.

CWScore: eight out of ten
Recommended Award