Trivia / Yoshi's Island

• Dub Text: In the German version, Touch Fuzzy Get Dizzy was translated as "Lustiges Sporen Drama," literally "Funny Spore Drama." Seems innocuous, until you realise the first letter of each word spells out a certain psychedelic substance...
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Notice how in this game and successive Yoshi-themed games that if you complete them with top marks, you get a red flower drawn on your results? This is actually a tradition/cliché in Japan dating back to primary schools where if the teacher is especially pleased with your work, you get a flower circle drawn on the paper. Essentially, the Japanese version of getting a gold star in America.
• Recycled Set: The Advance version recycles sounds originally used in Yoshi's Story.
• Market-Based Title: Most likely to play on the success of Super Mario World, the original game was named Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island internationally, despite the fact that it is a prequel and doesn't share many gameplay elements with it or the other 2D Marios. In Japanese, it was simply called Super Mario: Yoshi Island, just showing it's part of the greater Mario series. For the GBA remake, the Super Mario World 2 part is dropped completely in all languages, in favor of Super Mario Advance 3.
• Moved to the Next Console: Touch & Go started life as a GameCube title before being moved to the DS to utilize the handheld's features.
• Sequel Gap: Twice. DS was released 11 years after the original. Yoshi's New Island was released eight years after DS.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Before Baby Mario, the main character was a baby with a blue robe and wizard hat who would use his wand to transform Yoshi into the different vehicles. The Yoshi's Island prototype has remnants of him in the Bonus Challenges, during transformations, and at the intro sequence where a wand, instead of the map, falls onto Yoshi's head.
  • The original plan for losing Baby Mario, instead of him being trapped crying in a bubble in the final game, had him instead silently crawl around as time for Yoshi to get him back ticked down. This was changed as the team thought there was nothing encouraging players to get Mario back as fast as possible, and the fact that it's possible for Baby Mario to be flung into pits and get caught by the automatic level wall, instantly killing Yoshi ^note Baby Mario can't die on lava, however, as a bubble will form around him and stay in place.
  • There are a few unused transformations for Yoshi in the game, including a mushroom, a plane, and a walking tree.
  • There's an oft-told story that Shigeru Miyamoto's bosses at Nintendo were so impressed with the original Donkey Kong Country^note released as Super Donkey Kong in Japanese. that they wanted this game to go in a similar direction, which Shigeru Miyamoto disagreed with, creating the well received crayon-style graphics as an act of rebellion. A unreleased demo called Super Donkey had an art style reminiscent of Yoshi's Island and featured the classic Donkey Kong as a boss.
  • A prototype of Yoshi's Island featured multiple gameplay and visual differences: throwing eggs was strength based, Yoshi couldn't lay eggs and instead got them from boxes or killing enemies, Mario crawled on the ground quietly rather than floating in a bubble crying, the score system had different objectives, the map was more detailed and animated, level segments were in different worlds, and the bottom HUD from the pause screen was part of the main gameplay.
  • Hookbill the Koopa was originally a Koopa/Birdo hybrid, rather than a giant Koopa. This would make Hookbill being able to cough up eggs explainable given Birdo's egg-shooting in Super Mario Bros. 2. Another boss with a very different design was the final boss, which may have been rejected for being too scary.
  • Yoshi was to have worn skates at some point in the snow levels in addition to the skis.
• Working Title:
  • Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island was once titled Super Mario Bros. 5: Yoshi Island in an early prototype, the sequel to Super Mario World (given the Super Mario Bros. 4 prefix in Japanese) as originally intended, before the developers changed their minds and made it its own thing.
  • Yoshi's Story was titled Yoshi's Island 64 in promotional videos.
  • Yoshi's Island DS was titled Yoshi's Island 2 in early marketing.

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