Video Game / Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island

The history of a legend. We call it that because Yoshi's a trooper for putting up with that crying.

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island is a game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System released in Japan on August 5, 1995, and in North America two months later on October 4. It is the first platformer in the Yoshi's Island sub-series of the Super Mario Bros. franchise, starring Mario's Non-Human Sidekick, Yoshi. It is also the last 2D Mario series game until New Super Mario Bros. came out for Nintendo DS in 2006, after the Video Game 3D Leap.

While labeled as a direct sequel to Super Mario World in its original release in the west,^note In Japan it's named Super Mario: Yoshi Island, where the title just shows it's part of the greater Mario series. the game is set before the original Super Mario Bros..

The story goes like this; Kamek,^note The name all Magikoopas are known by in Japan. who is at the time young Bowser's caretaker, looks into the future and sees the unsuccessful fate of his young master. To prevent this, he blindsides a delivery stork as it's carrying the Mario Bros. to their parents but only snags Luigi, dropping Mario over Yoshi's Island and right on the back of one of the dinosaurs. Seeing the map that was bundled with the baby Mario, the Yoshis decided to work together in a relay style fashion to rescue Luigi, all the while dodging Kamek's troops who are searching for Mario.

Gameplay-wise, it shares much in common with its parent series and it even has many of the common Mario enemies. The game introduced the Ground Pound attack (an attack that would be given to Mario himself in the 3D games, the New Super Mario Bros. sub-series, and Super Mario Bros. Wonder). It, however, has just as many differences with 2D Mario games. After swallowing an enemy Yoshi is capable of making and throwing eggs, which can be used to hit other enemies or obstacles. Yoshi also doesn't have the traditional Breakable Power-Up or Hit Points; instead, every time Yoshi is hit, Mario flies off Yoshi's back and a timer counts down. The player must retrieve the screaming baby before the countdown reaches zero, otherwise he'll get kidnapped by Kamek's goons and Yoshi loses a life. The number of seconds on the countdown can be increased by collecting stars. Finally, the game has a greater emphasis on collecting: each stage features coins, flowers, and stars that can be collected and at the end of each stage the player is graded according to how much were they able to collect and how many seconds they had left on the timer.

In 2002, the game was given an enhanced port for the Game Boy Advance, known as Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3. The port includes 6 new difficult Bonus Levels called the Secret Levels that are unlocked after beating the game, changes some of Extra Levels, and has a number of other minor adjustments (e.g. lightening the color palette) to compensate for some of the GBA's hardware differences. This version was later one of the ten Game Boy Advance games available to participants in the Nintendo 3DS Ambassador Program, given a limited release to early adopters of the Nintendo 3DS for free on its eShop in 2011. The original SNES game and Super Mario Advance 3 were both later made available on the Nintendo Switch as part of the library for Nintendo Switch Online in 2019 and 2023 respectively.

A sequel, Yoshi's Island DS was released on the Nintendo DS in 2006, while its Interquel, Yoshi's New Island was released on the Nintendo 3DS in 2014.

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This video-game provides examples of:

A-C

• 1-Up: Instead of green mushrooms (or even hearts like in the Land games), the game has 1-up clouds that are held by the feet of Fly Guys.
• 100% Completion:
  • Each level allows Yoshi to collect 30 stars (The same kind that boost the timer that counts down when Mario and Yoshi are separated), 20 red coins, and 5 flowers (each of which provides a specific number of points adding up to 100). In a single world, collecting a full 100 points from seven different levels unlocks a replayable Bonus Challenge that allows you to farm items or lives, and collecting 100 points in all eight levels of a world will unlock an Extra Level for the world, which also allows you to collect 100 points.
  • In the Super Mario Advance 3 version, defeating Baby Bowser also unlocks a Secret Level for each world with another 100 points to collect (for a total of an even thousand points in each).
• Absurd Altitude: In World 5, Yoshi climbs from a cold Death Mountain to a Level in the Clouds and eventually Space Zone.
• Advancing Boss of Doom:
  • Sluggy the Unshaven cannot damage Yoshi in any way, only slowly advancing and pushing Yoshi back. However, the end of the platform leads to a Bottomless Pit...
  • The fight against Roger the Potted Ghost involves you in a push-of-war battle on a platform with a Bottomless Pit at each end.
  • Baby Bowser spends his battle slowly advancing on you from the background, stopping only to launch fireballs and the occasional boulder, and if he reaches your position, he breaks the platforms you're standing on and you fall to your death — a danger that becomes much more immediate after you've hit him a few times and he decides to forget the projectiles and just charge at you full-speed. While it's technically possible to infinitely flutter-jump for several minutes until some counters overflow and bring him back into a location where you can hit him, defeating him in this state will crash the game due to the victory cutscene expecting ground for him to land on.
• Airborne Mook: The game introduces Fly Guys, which fly almost steadily in many levels (though some hold valuable red coins and are sadistic enough to fly away from the screen shortly afterwards, preventing you from getting those coins unless you replay the level from the start). Toadies are also introduced, and they're the ones who will take away Baby Mario if he hovers around the level for too long.
• Amphibian Assault: The game features enemy frogs in world 3, with one serving as the first boss of the world.
• Antepiece: The game uses antepieces frequently. An example: Naval Piranha's castle features several rooms teaching the player how to ricochet eggs off walls to collect items. This is the only way to damage the boss at the end of the stage.^note Unless you take the difficult approach: by standing at the very edge of the platform, you can throw an egg at NP and beat her without triggering the cutscene, something the devs learned while play testing.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The "Flip Cards" Bonus Challenge has a 10-Up prize for flipping seven of the eight cards without revealing Kamek. The SNES version sometimes hides two Kameks on the board, robbing the player of the chance to win the extra lives. The GBA port sets the challenge up so that only one Kamek is hidden.
• Anuscape Plan: Prince Froggy, one of the mini bosses, swallows Yoshi and Baby Mario when the latter two are shrunk down by Kamek. After hitting his uvula enough times, Yoshi and Baby Mario fall through an intestine at the bottom of the stomach and are then shown with Froggy's backside facing them, making it evident he expelled them. Noticeably, Yoshi looks particularly shocked after this.
• Arc Hero: In addition to letting Yoshi be The Hero and basing most of the game around his abilities, it also introduces Baby Mario who directly ties into the plot, some power-ups, and the unique take on the health meter.
• Art Course: A few of the latter levels have the night sky take an appearance similar to The Starry Night.
• Artifact Mook: Though enemies from the dream-themed Super Mario Bros. 2 (with said enemies being explicitly tied to the nature of the dream world of Subcon) had started appearing in subsequent Mario games, the case of Shy Guys and Snifits in this game is notable because it takes place chronologically before all games released up to that point (and since), including Super Mario Bros. 2 itself.
• Artistic License – Biology: When you're inside Prince Froggy, you're supposed to Attack Its Weak Point, which turns out to be its uvula. Only humans have uvulas, and the uvula isn't in the stomach, and it triggers the gag reflex, not a bowel movement.
• Art-Shifted Sequel: The game uses a crayon-inspired art style for the levels, characters, mooks and effects, diverting from the standard sprite-based colors and designs of Super Mario World.
• Attack Its Weak Point:
  • Lampshaded in the battle with Sluggy the Unshaven: "Just remember, this slug has no weak points!" Unless you count the big red heart in the center of its body, that is. Guess where you have to aim at to hurt him?
  • Lampshaded with Naval Piranha as well. The name is a dead giveaway.
• Aside Glance: Yoshi looks at the player wide-eyed when Kamek shrinks him down so Prince Froggy can eat him.
• Asteroids Monster: The Marching Milde miniboss in World 4. This pink-colored creature will divide each time Yoshi performs a Ground Pound onto it or the resulting smaller replicas. The smallest ones can be eaten by Yoshi, meaning that the boss battle can be won with this move (this cannot be done with any of the other bosses).
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: All of the bosses are enhanced by Kamek's magic in order to make his monsters grow. Inverted with Prince Froggy, though; instead of him being 50 feet tall, you're 2 inches tall.
• Attack on the Heart: Sluggy the Unshaven's weak point is his heart, which is initially protected by his gelatinous body, but becomes vulnerable after hitting him with several eggs. A few direct hits to his heart will defeat him.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: The final battle theme with Mega Baby Bowser. The theme's style is based on blistering electric guitars.
• Auto-Scrolling Level: The auto-scrolling levels include 1-5, E-1, 6-5, 6-Secret and parts of 2-1 and 6-8. The scrolling screen will go in all sorts of different directions, sometimes crossing the same part of the level more than once in a different direction, and there's no justification of any sort.
• Autosave: The game saves after every level.
• Background Boss: The final battle against Giant Baby Bowser. Friendly balloons show up to deliver giant eggs to you, and unlike normal gameplay, you throw them into the background to hit Bowser.
• Badly Battered Babysitter:
  • The Yoshis carrying Baby Mario, except he's not the one delivering the battering...
  • There's also Kamek. When the first thing your charge does is stomp you flat, there's a reason why you'd panic when Baby Bowser wakes up.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss: Upon reaching the boss room in the level "King Bowser's Castle", you'll at first only find Kamek ordering you to "HAND OVER THE BABY!!!", then Baby Bowser wakes up and stomps Kamek flat.
• Bandit Mook: The aptly named Bandits don't just make you drop Baby Mario, they run off with him, and you have to chase it to get him back. The game has a few other enemies that do this, namely Ukikis (the monkeys), and frogs. Also, Mousers steal your eggs.
• Batter Up!: Sluggers are capable of using their bats to knock back just about anything that is thrown their way, from eggs, to watermelon seeds, to Chomp Rocks.
• Big Bad: Baby Bowser's caretaker Kamek, who kickstarts everything.
• Big Boo's Haunt: Bigger Boo's Fort, which introduces several ghost enemies including the typical Boos, and itself has a King Mook Boo as its boss.
• Big Fancy Castle: Each world concludes with a foreboding castle guarded by a powerful boss (the midway fortresses are only Mini Dungeons). It also marks the first chronological appearance of Bowser's Castle.
• Binomium ridiculus: The Nintendo Power guide for Super Mario Advance 3 divides the enemies into six classifications, each of which is given "scientific nomenclature": Edibilis Boringus,^note The obviously boring, edible enemies like Shy Guys, Nipper Plants, Lantern Ghosts, Mildes, and Koopas. Harrassimentia Phlyoverus,^note The flyers, like Goonies, Koopa Paratroopas, Fangs, and Fly Guys. Projectilia Ritebakatchia,^note Projectile-throwing enemies, like Wild Ptooie Piranhas, Blow Hards, Grinders with Super Green Watermelons, and Lakitus, Ucantia Defeatus,^note Enemies that are immune to simple stomp and swallow strategies, including Piranha Plants, Tap-Taps, Boos, Zeus Guys, and Bandits. Dudim Phreykunoutonthis,^note A classification unique to the Fuzzy, whose, er, unique properties are outlined elsewhere. and Mostosti Vomitonus.^note Pyro Guys and Lava Bubbles, who provide Yoshi with the ability to breath fire if he can get them in his mouth.
• Blackout Basement: The game features several rooms where a bubble of light surrounds Yoshi in a dark room, so you can't see any enemies or hazards until they're very close to you. A more frustrating variation is an early fort stage, where lighting is provided by Piro Dangles^note Sparks with a new name. that turn on and off at intervals.
• Blob Monster: Slime-blobs appear as "Lemon Drops"^note Slime Drops. and "Sluggies" in the game. Super powered versions of them, named Salvo the Slime for the former and Sluggy the Unshaven for the latter, appear as bosses. Salvo is defeated by throwing eggs at him which causes him to shrink and split into Lemon Drops while Sluggy the Unshaven is nigh-invincible except for its heart, located at its core; you have to pelt the slime repeatedly with eggs to deform it temporarily so you can hit the heart.
• Book Ends: World 6 Secret, "Endless World of Yoshis" in Advance 3, the last segment of which is... the tutorial level, "Welcome To Yoshi's Island".
• Born Unlucky: The yellow Yoshi must brave through every fourth level which includes the fortress and mini-boss. The blue Yoshi has to storm every castle which includes the world's boss (except the last, which is Bowser's Castle for the green Yoshi).
• Boss-Altering Consequence: If you throw an egg at the Piranha Plant before Kamek transforms it into the Navel Piranha by standing on the very edge of the platform, it will kill it in one hit, and you'll automatically beat the level. This isn't a glitch either, as Kamek will shout, "OH MY!" when he sees you already killed the Piranha Plant and will fly away.
• Boss-Arena Idiocy:
  • Tap-Tap the Red Nose is invincible to all Yoshi's attacks. Good thing he's just chilling on a stack of breakable blocks above lava!
  • The same goes for Roger the Potted Ghost, who likewise cannot be harmed by any of Yoshi's attacks, but is fought in a room with bottomless pits that Yoshi can push him into.
• Boss Corridor: Almost every boss level has a hallway leading to the boss fight with this music playing. Before the Final Boss battle against Baby Bowser is a long auto-scrolling corridor with Kamek casting spells at Yoshi.
• Boss Remix: The minibosses' theme is a remix of their introductory themes, given that all but one are ordinary enemies turned huge by Kamek's magic (the one that doesn't has Kamek shrink Yoshi and Baby Mario instead, who both then get eaten by said boss).
• Bouncy Bubbles: Bubble Dayzees and Barney Bubbles spit out streams of bubbles that can knock Yoshi backwards.
• Brain Bleach: The Boss Battle with Prince Froggy involves yellow Yoshi getting shrunk down and swallowed by Froggy. After the fight inside the frog's stomach, Yoshi is expelled out Froggy's behind. He reverts back to normal, with a disturbed look on his face.
• Breakout Mook Character: Accounting for the naming issues surrounding him and other Koopa wizards, Kamek was introduced in this game as Baby Bowser's nanny/right-hand, making him a single character with dialogue rather than just a random mook. He was possibly inspired by Bowser's unnamed magikoopa assistant in the Super Mario Adventures comic. While games prior to the New Super Mario Bros. subseries might have left it debatable which Magikoopas were the Kamek (not helped by how "Kamek" is actually what the wizard mooks are called in Japanese), the NSMB games with later ones like Mario & Luigi: Dream Team have cemented that there is indeed one single Magikoopa who serves as Bowser's sidekick.
• Brutal Bonus Level: The Secret and Extra levels have the game's most difficult challenges, plus many are long and without checkpoints. Each Extra level is unlocked after scoring 800 points in one world (requiring a perfect 100 points in all regular levels of a world in the SNES version and if you decide to unlock them before playing the Secret levels in the GBA version), while the Secret ones (exclusive to the Advance remake) are available after beating the game for the first time.
  • Extra Levels
    • "Poochy Ain't Stupid", World 1's extra level, is the current page picture for the trope, featuring lava for practically the entire level and auto scrolling to go along with the introduction of Poochy, a dog that, if you unlocked the extra stage before proceeding to World 2, is a new mechanic.
    • World 2's extra level "Hit that Switch!!" is an utter nightmare. If you're aiming for 100% completion, it feels like the level designers confused "making a complex level" with "making a level that makes you remember and do way too much, all on several sharp time limits back to back." If you manage to reach the end ...it pulls you into a nearly Unwinnable situation — simple as that.
    • World 3's extra level "More Monkey Madness" is full of goddamn seed-throwing monkeys that are placed on branches and vines above a pit, so they can easily kill the player. You have 5 seconds to get past those monkeys and grab the Fly Guy hovering above a bottomless pit before it flies off with a red coin. It isn't so bad in the SNES version, since they put 21 red coins in this level by mistake (20 is normal, and you need exactly 20 of them for 100% completion); however the GBA remake fixes this, leaving you no room for error. Then as one last kick in the teeth, the final flower is behind the exit ring, so unless you know it's there, you'll likely be futilely backtracking, or get the exit ring by mistake and have to start over.
    • "The Impossible? Maze", the 4th extra level, lives up to its name all too well. There aren't many enemies, but good luck trying to find every red coin and flower for the perfect score! Even if you do figure out the maze, the level requires you to push crates down the right paths in the right order, which can easily slip the wrong way by mistake, and missing one forces you to start all over again from the beginning.
    • The 5th extra level "Kamek's Revenge". To obtain all those red coins, you first have to perform two whole screens of skiing and hit all the obnoxiously difficult to reach items with perfectly precise jumps,^HintJump at the exact moment Yoshi passes each arrow shaped signpost. then you have to hunt down a bunch of them on a huge, nonlinear Helicopter course (which happens to be timed — run out of time and you fall to your doom). Miss just one coin, and your only option is to die and try the whole thing over again. Also, the first section of the stage, where you have to make your way across a whole bunch of tiny floating logs without getting knocked off by Kamek or the egg-throwing Green Gloves, ain't no picnic either.
    • World 6's Extra level "Castles — Masterpiece Set/Ultimate Castle Challenge" is an absolute gauntlet of thorns and moving platforms that give the player nowhere safe to stand still and catch their thoughts. You'd better have ultra fast reflexes if you don't know the method of cheating it.^HintThe thorns can be destroyed with Eggs and Watermelon seeds, so just stock up on a few Green Watermelons from the bonus games.
  • Secret Levels
    • World 1's secret level "Exercise in the Skies" is just a small sample of the hell you're in for with the games bonus stages. Finishing the level is tricky enough, but a 100% run is an exercise in frustration. The first segment is tedious enough due to the player having to make a perfectly timed jump to reach the secret area near its midpoint (although the level at least allows you as many tries as you need to reach it), but the second part, where Yoshi has to cross a large gap while balancing himself on a tiny, fast rolling ball while only having a slim chance at grabbing the nearby red coins, is a nightmare. To top it off, the final segment has you scramble across a collection of falling rocks, where it's entirely possible to wind up in an unwinnable situation if you don't cross them fast enough.
    • "Mystery of the Castle?", the World 2 secret level, is a difficult maze where one of the entrances to its hidden rooms is located off-screen. The final red coin is also carried by a Fly Guy, meaning that if you're not fast enough, you're doing the whole level over.
    • "Go! Go! Morphing!", the World 3 Secret Level doesn't seem so bad at first, but towards the end will challenge you with several unintuitive puzzles on the Drill and Helicopter morphs' strict time limits. One Drill puzzle doesn't seem solvable under the time given unless you realize that the Helicopter's blades can clear soft soil above them, which is never explained to the player and doesn't come up anywhere else in the game, so most players will assume they screwed up and reset by mistake. Oh, and one flower requires you to fly off-screen down the bottomless pit and below the ground in order to reach it.
    • World 4's secret level "Fight Toadies w/ Toadies" is no pushover either. The primary mechanic focuses on making precise jumps bouncing off moving enemies, only to reverse the concept at the end with an auto-scrolling stretch of moving platforms and Bullet Bills, where the real challenge is not bouncing too high and ending up off-screen where one can't properly gauge Yoshi's position.
    • World 5's secret level "Items Are Fun!" is the easiest level in the game ...if you run straight to the exit. If you're trying for the 100% score then it's a marathon level that requires a lot of thinking outside the box with items. Of note: one must figure out that Yoshi can safely jump on, and thus bounce off of, spiked enemies as long as they're frozen with a Blue Watermelon first, something hinted at nowhere in the game.
    • The first part of World 6's secret level, "Endless World of Yoshis/Crazy Maze Days," isn't so bad, although it does have fast auto scrolling. However, the maze part is a lot worse. Not only is there a long shaft filled with instant death spikes you have to dodge with split second timing (entirely blind), but to get 100% completion, you need to beat this section three times. There's just one midway ring after it, meaning that if you mess up before the cave (and given the confusing layout of the place, you probably will), you'll have to do a significant amount of the level over. After that, there's a cave with some rather mean tricks, a race against the clock as baby Mario, and finally a secret second exit leading to a replica of the tutorial with Kamek attacking Yoshi throughout. It's a Marathon Level to say the least.
• Bullet Seed: After eating a watermelon, Yoshi can spit watermelon seeds at enemies to kill them. Ukikis can also do this to Yoshi.
• Checkpoint Starvation: The first four world's extra stages do not feature middle rings at all. Granted, the levels are significantly shorter than many of the regular ones, and one is a maze without a really significant middle point, but still!
• Chekhov's Skill: Bouncing an egg off the wall. What, you thought the Naval Piranha level just happened to train that to hell?
• Color-Coded Characters: Each different-colored Yoshi does the same numbered stage in each world (green starts with the first level, pink does the second, etc). The exception is the final world, which always ends with the green Yoshi.
• Conspicuously Light Patch: Each level in the original game had 20 red coins, disguised as and placed among regular gold coins. However, if you look very closely, you'll notice that the disguised red coins have a subtle red tint to them, which makes them easy to distinguish from the gold coins once you know what to look for, especially on emulator. This was fixed in Advance 3 so they all look the same.
• Convection, Schmonvection: The first leg of "The Very Loooooooooong Cave" has flowing lava on the floor and icicles on the ceiling. Said icicles are stable until you get close to them.
• Cosmetic Award: A Perfect Score in an Extra Level adds a Star on the title screen.
• Cranium Ride: There are birds that you have to ride across large gaps. The game also features Poochy and Muddy Buddy, who can be ridden across spikes or lava. They are good guys instead of enemies. There's also the ever-helpful Support Ghost^note Blarggwich. from Sluggy the Unshaven's fort, who makes an appearance in the Yoshi's Island stage of Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
• Critical Annoyance: When you get hit, Baby Mario floats around in a bubble crying until you get him back. You will also hear a beeping noise. Notably, the annoying nature of the sound was outright intended by the developers, since less intrusive sounds weren't as effective at incentivizing players to rescue Baby Mario (incidentally, this directly parallels the reason why baby cries are so horrendous in real life).
• Crosshair Aware: The final boss, and a handful of regular enemies as well.
• Cute, but Cacophonic: Mario is cute as a baby, but you won't like to hear him cry.
• Cutting the Knot: 6-Extra is an absolute gauntlet of thorns and moving platforms that don't even give the player a safe spot to stand and think. Getting through requires perfect platforming skills ...or you can just stock up on watermelons and blast your way through with their seeds.

D-L

• Deadly Droplets: During the Prince Froggy boss fight, yellow droplets of stomach acid drip from the boss's throat and damage Yoshi on contact.
• Defeat by Modesty: Burt the Bashful is defeated by repeatedly hitting him so his pants fall. After they fall completely, he deflates and explodes out of embarrassment.
• Degraded Boss: Salvo the Slime, a boss from the first game's first world, reappears in a few endgame fortress levels guarding keys as an altered mini-boss of sorts. Ironically, it's actually much harder this time, as future appearances don't have it drop Slime Drops to refill your eggs, forcing you to be wise with using them. Of course, since he's not the main boss of these levels, nothing's stopping you from popping a Watermelon or Full Egg item to compensate.
• Delivery Stork: The set-up for the game involves an attempted kidnapping of Baby Mario and Baby Luigi while they're being delivered by the stork. The stork is knocked out mid-flight by Kamek, kidnapping Baby Luigi, while the Yoshis find Baby Mario and vow to start a relay team to reunite the brothers.
• Developer's Foresight: If you skip the Naval Piranha boss battle by defeating her before it even begins, Kamek swoops in and screams, "OH, MY!!!" before flying off, ending the level.
• Disc-One Nuke: Getting 100% Completion on any given level is quite the feat, considering that, other than five flowers and twenty red coins — both well hidden — the player must also have his or her stars reaching the Cap of thirty by the end of the level; that said, managing to do so in every level in the first world awards the player with the Flip Cards bonus minigame by making it accessible at will. This means that - especially when dissing the whole "avoid Kamek and you get 10 lives" thing - you can use the minigame purely as a source for items, including a whole pack of egg-ammo, the possibility to tell red and yellow coins apart, an "add 20 stars" item... you get the picture.
• Distressed Dude: Baby Luigi, who gets captured by Kamek. It is the duty of the Yoshis to reunite him with Baby Mario, who is safe with them.
• Dogs Are Dumb: Poochy. He's practically indestructible in the game, and as one bonus level so aptly puts it, Poochy ain't stupid (though he is difficult to work with, due to his primitive way of predicting where Yoshi will land or jump).
• Door of Doom: The red boss door from Super Mario World returns in the Fortress and Castle levels of this game (the one in the final level is even bigger, namely twice the size for the Final Boss).
• Down the Drain: "Naval Piranha's Castle" and "The Impossible? Maze".
  • "Naval Piranha's Castle", the last regular level of World 3, takes place in a sewer or storm drain. In slopes, the falling water makes it impossible to go up, as the current's strength cannot be overriden. As a gameplay novelty, Yoshi learns to make eggs skip along the water's surface when he throws them from a certain angle.
  • "The Impossible Maze" from World 4, which provides the page image, involves no swimming, but has currents that can push you to other parts of the pipeline. Getting through it requires pushing crates into position to get to pipes that are normally out of reach, and falling down the wrong path or losing your crate means starting over. It also has shades of Blackout Basement, as one half of the level is totally in the dark.
• Drugs Causing Slow-Motion: The music slows down and the background distorts and changes colors if Yoshi hits the puffballs in the level "Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy".
• Early-Installment Weirdness: This is the only game where Baby Bowser speaks in Baby Talk. In all his subsequent appearances, he is able to speak clearly, probably as a sign of him maturing.
• Easy Level Trick: The otherwise brutal segment involving the breakable spikes in Extra 6 can be made much easier by simply using a watermelon bonus item to destroy them.
• Eating the Enemy:
  • Yoshi grabs his enemies with his long sticky tongue and swallows them, turning them into eggs which he can throw at other enemies and targets.
  • The boss of Stage 3-4 is Prince Froggy. Kamek doesn't enlarge him like he does with every other boss in the game, but he does shrink Yoshi, causing Prince Froggy to eat him. Yoshi must escape from Prince Froggy's stomach by tossing eggs at Prince Froggy's uvula.
• Edible Ammunition: There are green watermelons that have seeds in them. They can be used to dispatch or knock back baddies and stunning them temporarily.
• Elite Mook: The Zeus Guys. The Nigh-Invulnerable Bandit sub-species that throw energy balls at you and will punch and kick you if you get too close. They're usually in duos.
• Evolving Title Screen: The title screen places flags on finished worlds, switches to the final world once reached and adds instruments to the music.
• Evolving Music: For each world you unlock, the map theme gets additional instruments.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: People occasionally get confused and assume that Baby Bowser and Bowser Jr. are the same. But Baby Bowser is Bowser as a Baby.
• Excited Title! Two-Part Episode Name!: The Japanese version names the final non-bonus level this way. There's also a level in the GBA remake called 'Go! Go! Morphing!'
• Fake Difficulty: The GBA remake introduces bits of this due to the noticable screen crunch making it easy to run or jump into enemies just offscreen.
• "Fantastic Voyage" Plot: There's a boss fight which features this trope: you're shrunk down to bite-size by Kamek and have to fight your way out of Prince Froggy's stomach.
• Fat Bastard: The fat Shy Guys that are immune to being stomped due to their bulk. Yoshi can eat them to create huge eggs that act very similar to a POW block.
• Fictional Constellations: The boss fight against Raphael the Raven takes place on the moon. While up there, you can see the stars, and a group of them have lines connecting them to form a goonie. Upon defeating Raphael, he flies off and becomes a constellation of his own.
• Finale Production Upgrade: Although not a finale to the Mario series at-large, this can be considered Nintendo’s big swan song for the console, as 32-bit video game systems such as the Playstation 1 had already been released, and Nintendo’s next big product, the Nintendo 64, was in-production and highly anticipated. The game boasted large, expansive worlds, an array of unique enemies, colorful graphics, a memorable soundtrack, and its main selling point, backgrounds and sprites that could be distorted, scaled, rotated, shaped, and even turned 3D, with the Super FX-2 Chip. Even the ending soundtrack evokes an orchestral feel. For its time, the game was also the last 2D Super Mario game (and thus the last one from the old-school era that started in 1985), as Nintendo would then focus on 3D Mario games and the next 2D platformer wouldn't arrive until 11 years later.
• Flipping Helpless: This is how you defeat Hookbill the Koopa; Flip him over, then Ground Pound his underside to cause damage.
• Floating in a Bubble: The game has Baby Mario (and any baby character in Yoshi's Island DS) enter a bubble and float up when he's knocked off Yoshi's back. Take too long to retrieve him and he gets kidnapped by Toadies. Some transformation powerups are also kept in bubbles.
• Floating Limbs: Yoshi in this game has floating legs. Though it's only shown whenever he's running, subverting this.
• Flying Flightless Bird: Some of the enemy penguins flap around in midair unless Yoshi stuffs them in his mouth and spits them out, after which they'll simply waddle around like the other penguins.
• Foul Flower: Zigzagged. On one hand, there are some helpful smiley flowers, such as the five flowers in each level that Yoshi can collect for bonus points. On the other hand, there are some enemies based on flowers, such as Fooly Flowers, which pretend to be collectible flowers, then drop to the ground and start rolling at Yoshi when he gets close.
• Franchise Codifier: Yoshi's Island was, in fact, not the first game to star Yoshi, having headlined the puzzle games Yoshi's Egg and Yoshi's Cookie as well as the light gun game Yoshi's Safari. However, Yoshi's Island was the first platformer to star the dinosaurs, making them major gaming icons in their own right rather than supporting Mario characters, and the game established many elements that would define later Yoshi games and future portrayals of Yoshi, such as them protecting Baby Mario, their signature Flutter Jump and egg-throwing, and the Shy Guys as their Mascot Mooks.
• Fun with Acronyms: In the German localisation, the level "Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy" is called "Lustiges Sporen Drama".^TranslationFunny Spore Drama.
• Game-Over Man: If the Toadies take Baby Mario away, you get a short scene showing the group against a black backdrop before flying off-screen and the usual response to losing a life takes over.
• Getting Eaten Is Harmless:
  • Yoshi and Baby Mario survive a trip through Prince Froggy's stomach (and beyond) unscathed, however this is played with as touching the drops of stomach acid will hurt Yoshi.
  • Averted with the Lunge Fish. Getting eaten by him costs Yoshi a life.
• Giant Enemy Crab: Clawdaddies are large red crabs that enlarge their claws to have a better chance at hitting Yoshi.
• G-Rated Drug: The infamous "Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy" level. The level is littered with fluffy, dandelion-like objects which float down from the sky. Touching one does not damage Yoshi, but it stunts his movement, heavily distorts the music, and hits the player with heavy Interface Screw. The implications are pretty clear.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Baby Bowser has no actual involvement in the plot and is a complete non-entity until the final battle, but everything Kamek does in this game traces back to Bowser having no successful future thanks to the Mario Bros.
• Green Hill Zone: The first world. Yoshi and Baby Mario venture through plain grasslands where the biggest threats are the larger enemies (such as giant Chomps). Caves and underground areas are present as well, but they aren't very complex.
• Grenade Hot Potato: A minigame has you playing catch with an enemy using a slowly expanding balloon. You have to make sure not to be holding it when it pops.
• Ground Pound: Trope Namer, and the first time it was freely usable by the player in a Mario game (Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 had it as a power up in his first playable appearance).
• Ground Wave:
  • The ground wobbling and rippling is one of the side-effects while Yoshi is dizzy from touching a Fuzzy.
  • During the first phase of the Final Boss, both Yoshi and Baby Bowser's Ground Pounds cause damaging shockwaves that literally ripple across the floor.
• Guide Dang It!: If you want a 100% score, both the bonus levels "Go! Go! Morphing!" and "Items are fun!" in Advance 3 require you to know about mechanics that aren't hinted at anywhere in the game. To wit, that the helicopter morph can break soft soil above it with its blades, and that Yoshi can safely jump on, and therefore bounce off of, spiked enemies as long as they're frozen with a blue watermelon first.
• Hailfire Peaks:
  • The level "The Very Loooooooooong Cave" in World 6 has lava at the bottom and ice at the top. The effect is stunning. There's also Stalactite Spite going on.
  • World 5 is themed around Slippy-Slidey Ice World during the first three levels, and around Level in the Clouds in the three levels between the Fortress and Castle ones. The unlockable extra level of the world, Kamek's Revenge, takes this to its logical conclusion, as it features the latter setting in the first half and the former (specifically the part based on the third level's Obstacle Ski Course) in the second.
• Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: The fortress and castle levels are often long and challenging, but the boss fights in them are usually cakewalks to beat — unless you're going for a 100% run, anyway, where you can't recover stars lost from being hit unless you bring red eggs or know how to make them mid-battle.
• Harmless Enemy:
  • Bumpties are harmless penguins which are capable of causing Yoshi to bounce into enemies and obstacles. Additionally, if Yoshi's damaged, Bumpties can steal Baby Mario similar to Bandits
  • Fuzzies are flying cotton balls that cause the stage to appear colorful and distorted if Yoshi comes into contact with them.
  • Grim Leechers are small ghost enemies that switch places with Baby Mario and reverse the controls if they come into contact with Yoshi.
  • The game also features extremely rare unnamed green Shy Guys (known as Itsunomanika Heihō in Japanese guides), which hide behind foreground objects such as crystals in underground stages. If Yoshi comes into contact with them, they'll switch places with Baby Mario, who will be quickly stolen by a suddenly appearing Bandit.
• Healing Checkpoint: If Yoshi and Baby Mario pass through a Middle Ring, they will get 10 stars and all enemies on the screen will turn into stars as well.
• The Heavy: Kamek is the most recurring antagonistic presence in the game, showing up at every fort and castle to empower Bowser's minions.
• Helpful Mook:
  • Green Gloves, an enemy type that can catch your eggs and throw them back at you, can potentially be the Accidentally Assisting type. The game exploits this for some of its puzzles. For example, in World 2-2 (where they're first introduced), you can trick one into hitting an out-of-reach ? cloud for you, which contains a 1-Up.
  • Muddy Buddy, if hopped on, coats Yoshi's feet in mud, making him immune to Spikes of Doom.
• High-Altitude Battle: Exaggerated with the battle against Raphael the Raven, which takes place on the moon.
• Human Snowball: If you hit a rock on a skiing level, you will trip and turn into a snowball.
• I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin!: "Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy".
• Implacable Man: Tap-Tap the Golden, encountered in the cave behind Door 3 in Baby Bowser's Castle. He will steadily chase you across the cave and cannot be damaged or defeated by any means; even if he falls into one of the Bottomless Pits he will somehow manage to jump back out. Your only option is to knock him backwards with eggs and flee.
• Insistent Terminology: In the original SNES version of the game, Mario and Luigi are repeatedly referred to as twins. In the GBA version, however, they were instead called brothers.
• Instakill Mook:
  • Hot Lips. If Yoshi touches the lava they spit at him, it's lights out.
  • The Lunge Fish in stage 3-7, much like Boss Bass/Big Cheep Cheep in Super Mario Bros. 3, hides underwater lying in wait for Yoshi to come close, before leaping out and attempting to swallow him whole.
• Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Apparent in castle levels.
• Intoxication Mechanic:
  • Touching a Fuzzy (present in "Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy" and one of the final levels) will disorient Yoshi and cause a major Interface Screw that reflects his dizzy status.
  • The Grim Leecher is a very rare enemy encountered only in a bonus level in Yoshi's Island. If it grabs Yoshi, it will mess with his mobility for a short while.
• Invincible Minor Minion:
  • Whether they hop or march, Tap-Taps are virtually indestructible. The only way to get rid of them is to knock them into a bottomless pit or into lava or use a fire Watermelon or Ice Watermelon. Sure enough, when you face Tap-Tap as a halfway boss, you have to knock it into the lava under the arena. If there are several, you can knock one into the others to kill them.
  • Spitting or rolling a Pill Bug at them (like in 1-7) is one of the few ways to deal with them. You'll face another one as a sub-boss in a scrolling level. Unlike the boss fight, there's no lava - only apparently bottomless pits. If you knock him in, he'll eventually jump out again.
• Jungle Japes: The eponymous island is depicted as a tropical biome most of the time and occasionally this overlaps with jungle. But the most poignant portrayal of the setting occurs in World 3, a mossy jungle inhabited by Ukikis and where many unstable trunk platforms can be used. Large water-made creatures known as Nep-Enuts live in this area as well.
• King Mook: Most of the bosses are enlarged, alpha versions of regular mooks, as it's Kamek who empowers them. Examples include Bigger Boo to the Boos, Naval Piranha to the Piranha Plants, and Hookbill the Koopa to the red Koopa Troopas, only to name a few.
• Kung Fu-Proof Mook: In a twist of irony, Goombas are immune to the Goomba Stomp in this game. They'll get flattened, but survive in their flattened state and can still damage Yoshi.
• Lava Pit: Many castles and a cave level in World 6 have lava pits, which kill Yoshi instantly if he falls in.
• Lethal Lava Land: The game has the first extra stage of World 1 ("Poochy Ain't Stupid") and a cave level in World 6. Lava spells instant death onto Yoshi upon contact, overriding the usual effect of being merely separated from Baby Mario after taking damage.
• Level Goal: This game and its sequels have the end ring with little flower icons going round, and if the flowers are where the cursor stop, you play a bonus mini game.
• Level in the Clouds: The second half of World 5 takes place in clouds solid enough to have Piranha Plants rooted into them. Enemies found here include Lakitus, Gusties and Goonies. The first half of the world's extra level takes place in the cloudy skies as well, with the added caveat that Kamek is harassing you.

M-W

• Make My Monster Grow: All of the bosses and minibosses are just normal enemies that are enlarged by Kamek's magic. Inverted one time when Kamek shrinks Yoshi and he gets eaten by the boss.
• Marathon Level:
  • Level 6-5 is the aptly-named The Very Loooooong Cave. Not only is the level long in itself, but the auto-scroll is very slow and there's some Checkpoint Starvation as well.
  • A bonus level in the remake of the game for the GBA is called "Endless World of Yoshis". How endless? Even the Tool Assisted Speedrun takes over 7 minutes to finish the level (which is amazingly long for a non-autoscrolling 2D platformer). It is also Nintendo Hard, and has elements of Platform Hell as well.
• Market-Based Title: Outside Japan, the game was advertised as a sequel to Super Mario World due to its popularity, though it's actually a distant prequel and doesn't share many gameplay elements with it or the other 2D Marios, being its own thing. In Japan, it's called Super Mario: Yoshi Island, where the title just shows it's part of the greater Mario series.
• Meaningless Lives: The game takes this even further than some of the previous 2D Mario games already did, since it features bonus games which can potentially reward you with dozens of lives each play.
• Mini-Boss: The game distinguishes itself from the mainline Mario platformers in that every world has its own miniboss in the midway fortress, instead of the game having just one appearing every time it can (as it happened beforehand with Birdo, Boom Boom and Reznor); another distinction is that the minibosses also share a unique battle music that is different from the main bosses'.
• Mini-Dungeon: Halfway through each world, Yoshi ventures into a Fortress like grown Mario (and his friends whenever present) would do in a 2D platform adventure. The difference is that each Fortress houses a different Mini-Boss.
• Mischief-Making Monkey: The third world is mainly inhabited by monkeys called Grinders^note Ukikis. that spit watermelon seeds at Yoshi, steal Baby Mario, and sometimes drop bombs and/or Needlenoses.
• A Molten Date with Death: Lava pits are numerous in cave levels, fortresses, castles, and the final world, resulting in instant death and the loss of a life if fallen into. One of the game's bosses is defeated this way as well, Tap-Tap The Red Nose (destroy the blocks underneath him to make him fall into the lava below).
• Mook Maker: Starting from this game, the Yoshi's Island series has featured Shy Guys coming out of pipes, as Goombas are rare and Shy Guys are the most common mook. You can enter in some of those pipes too. These pipes are mostly there to replenish your egg reserves, especially while fighting bosses that need to be hit with eggs.
• Mook-Themed Level:The game's playable material mostly consists of this type of level, including the boss stages (since they are simple mooks enlarged by the Big Bad Kamek). Those are often represented by a thumbnail picturing the starring mook on the world map. The first world alone, for example, has:
  • Watch Out Below!: Chain Chomps jump in from the background and make endless pits all over the place
  • Shy Guys on Stilts: Exactly What It Says on the Tin. It's a level filled with Stilt Guys, Shy Guy enemies walking on stilts.
  • Touch Fuzzy Get Dizzy: the level is filled with puffs that cause major Interface Screw.
• Mushroom Samba: Touching a Fuzzy causes Yoshi to stumble around as if drunk for a little while, screwing up his movements and causing the level geography to warp. As it happens, the "scientific name" of the Fuzzies is Dudim Phreykunoutonthis.
• Musical Nod: The end credits play a slowed-down remix of the Super Mario Bros. Course Clear fanfare.
• Musical Spoiler: The fourth world's Brutal Bonus Level subverts the trope. The "Room Before Boss" theme usually plays when Yoshi is approaching a boss (and it gets an extended play in the room before the Final Boss, where Yoshi has to dodge Kamek's attacks). But in this level, it's the only theme that plays in the background, hinting that there's a boss at the end when there actually isn't (when Yoshi reaches the end, all he finds is the standard Level Goal).
• Never Trust a Trailer: The American TV commercial. It made this game look like a Grossout Game with a homage to Mr. Creosote.
• Never Say "Die": Kamek's euphemisms before the boss battles.
  Kamek: (before facing Roger the Potted Ghost) So give him here before you accidentally get hurt!
  Kamek: (before facing Marching Milde) Yoshi! Oh dear... Well, Marching Milde will pound you to bits!!
  Kamek: (before facing Hookbill the Koopa) Little Koopa come through for me now! Go forth and rock Yoshi's world!
  Kamek: (before facing Raphael the Raven) I banish you to forever twinkle in the heavens, BE GONE!!
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The only way to defeat Tap-Tap the Red Nose is to break the platforms beneath his feet and drop him into the boiling lava below. However, doing so unknowingly causes his skin to molt, transforming him into Tap-Tap the Golden. In this state, he's completely invincible, and the only thing Yoshi can do is run away, being unable to win.
• Night of the Living Mooks: The Boo Guys are ghostly versions of Shy Guys that move back and forth, and are often found in Fortresses and Castles as well as dark caves. They can be eaten or stomped by Yoshi, however.
• No-Damage Run: In-universe, the player is required to do this in the boss fights in order to get the perfect score for the level. Keeping the timer up to 30 in the levels is hard enough, but even one slip up during the boss fights will rob you of at least 1 point off the baby timer, forcing you to replay the level again to get the full 100. You can't use inventory items in boss fights, which means no star point recovery items either. You can, however, get around this by bouncing an egg off the wall twice before it hits the boss, making them drop two point recovery stars. Given how big the bosses are, it's generally not very difficult. (but the stars usually drop right on top of the boss, making them extremely difficult to grab without taking even more damage) The GBA version also adds a death count that shows up in the secret ending for 100% Completion which then gets added to your file. Getting No. 1 requires you to not lose a single life throughout the course of the entire game (or at least none that get autosaved).
• No Item Use for You: All boss fights in the game disable your items to prevent you from cheesing the battles.
• Non-Linear Sequel: Although numbered, the game is a prequel to the main Super Mario Bros. games instead of a sequel to Super Mario World. In Japan, the game is known simply as Super Mario: Yoshi Island.
• Nostalgic Music Box: The game has an opening theme that sounds as though it is being played on a music box (it even slows down at one point, and has to be rewound).
• Obstacle Ski Course: Two of the snow levels have skiing sections where you need to dodge rocks and jump over bottomless pits.
• Officially Shortened Title: Nowadays, the game is referred to as simply Yoshi's Island, even by Nintendo themselves.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Yoshi's wide-eyed expression while he's shrunken by Kamek before Prince Froggy eats him. Oddly enough, he has the same look on his face after he goes through Froggy's other end after the battle, but that's probably because of how he came out.
  • If Yoshi performs a One-Hit Kill on Naval Piranha by firing an egg at her before even starting the battle, Kamek shouts "OH, MY!!!" and flies away.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • Thorns, spikes, and lava (including from the lava-spitting Hot Lips enemy) will instantly cost Yoshi a life rather than just knocking Mario off.
  • Among enemies, there's the Lunge Fish that acts similar to Boss Bass/Big Cheep Cheep, except with a different pattern. Just like the latter, it is capable of swallowing its preys (including, in this case, Yoshi alongside Baby Mario) in one bite.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted in the English version; the white puff ball known as "Wataboh" in Japanese is known as "Fuzzy" in English, but "Fuzzy" was already the English name of the black, spiny Super Mario World enemies known in Japan as "Chorobon".
• One-Time Dungeon: The tutorial level Welcome to Yoshi's Island cannot be accessed again after completing it, or the player chooses skip it by pausing and then pressing SELECT to bring up the map.
• "Pachelbel's Canon" Progression: Most of the intro song, and part of the theme heard during the ending. The rendition is actually similar to the one composed for the ending of Super Mario Bros. 2.
• Penguins Are Ducks: Bumpties, a species of penguins debuting in this game, are often depicted with long, ducklike bills. This◊ artwork from Yoshi's Story, however, makes a Bumpty's beak look ducklike in a different way, by having it almost resemble lips.
• Pictorial Letter Substitution: The "O" in Yoshi's Island is replaced with a Yoshi egg.
• Plant Mooks:
  • The Needlenose is a single-headed Pokey that bounces over a stretching cactus base. Strangely, some are dropped from above by balloons.
  • A special variant of Piranha Plant called Wild Ptooie Piranha appears. Despite its name, it has no direct connection with the Ptooies. Instead of juggling with Spike Balls, it shoots Needlenoses at Yoshi and Baby Mario. It takes three egg shots to be defeated.
• Poorly Disguised Pilot: The game still has Mario present, but he's mostly just being escorted by Yoshi, and the game, while still considered a main line game, ended up launching the Yoshi's Island franchise.
• Precision F-Strike: If Naval Piranha is defeated before his boss fight, Kamek yells, "OH, MY!!!" Where this trope counts is in the Japanese version: Kamek yells, "チクショ〜！" ("chikusho~!"), which generally translates to, "Damn it!"
• Projectile Pocketing: Yoshi can collect coins and flowers by throwing eggs at them.
• Promoted to Playable: This game marks Yoshi's first time in becoming a playable character and having a game focusing on him.
• Psychic Powers: Kamek has precognitive abilities; he kidnapped the baby Mario Bros. because he foresaw that they would become a thorn in his master Bowser's side. He didn't count on the Yoshis' interference, though...
• Pushy Mooks:
  • This game introduces Bumpties, which are harmless penguins only capable of making Yoshi bounce into enemies and obstacles.
  • A boss variant, Salvo the Slime, cannot damage Yoshi directly. He will attempt to knock Yoshi into either smaller Slime Drops, which can harm him, or into lava. A few other large Slimes can be found in World 6, and behave identically to Salvo.
  • Another boss variant is Sluggy the Unshaven. He's as tall as the ceiling, and will slowly slide towards Yoshi. If Yoshi does not defeat him in time, Sluggy will force him off the platform and into a pit.
  • Yet another variant of this is Roger the Potted Ghost, who, as his name implies, is a ghost stuck in a large pot. Since he's a ghost and doesn't have a weakpoint, Yoshi can't hurt him with his eggs, so the only way to defeat him is to push the pot he's stuck in off the ledge. However, a pair of Shy Guys are also positioned on the other side of the pot that try to push the pot back, and Roger himself will push Yoshi back if he tries to get past him to defeat the Shy Guys. Essentially, the battle consists of a tug of war to push the pot and the Shy Guys off the platform while avoiding the flames that Roger occasionally spits out.
• Regenerating Health: The health in this game is a timer that starts counting down after you get hit until you recollect Baby Mario. If the time runs out, Baby Mario gets kidnapped and you lose a life. If the timer is below 10 seconds, it will recharge until it hits that number, though Yoshi can also collect an additional 20 non-recharging seconds for a grand total of 30.
• Retaliation Mode:
  • Roger the Potted Ghost spits blue flames and pushes Yoshi back whenever he tries to push his pot.
  • Prince Froggy spawns another Fat Guy in his stomach when he's hit (which only leads to more eggs getting shot at his uvula.)
  • Hookbill the Koopa bounces around the arena in his shell when he's flipped over and ground-pounded.
  • Raphael the Raven does a ground pound attack that sends two sparks circling around the planetoid the battle takes place on.
• Retcon:
  • Prior Mario games stated that Luigi was Mario's younger brother; this game established instead that they are twins.
  • Additionally, this is the first time that Mario and Luigi are portrayed as natives of the Mushroom Kingdom; earlier materials depicted them as being from Brooklyn.
  • Yoshi's introductory dialogue in Super Mario World indicates that he and Mario have never met before, but this game establishes that the Yoshis already knew Mario as a baby.
  • The manual for Super Mario Bros. implies that Mario has never encountered Bowser before, but the two apparently already clashed in this game and its sequels.
• Ribcage Stomach: A notable aversion. One boss fight has Yoshi and Baby Mario shrunk down to the size of insects and swallowed whole by a frog-like enemy. The entire event takes place in exactly what the trope description lists as the means of trope aversion.
• Ring-Out Boss:
  • Roger the Potted Ghost can only be defeated by pushing his pot into a pit, and he is aided by a pair of Shy Guys who are busy pushing his pot in the opposite direction.
  • Sluggy the Unshaven tries to push you into the Bottomless Pit.
  • Tap-Tap the Red-Nose is defeated only by destroying the blocks underneath him, and then knocking him into the lava below.
• Rump Roast: Yoshi falls away from the screen, agonizing in pain and with the butt roasted, if he touches lava.
• Secret Level: There's one secret level per world (accessed by 100% completion of the normal levels), generally based around a gimmick, much harder than other levels, or both. The Game Boy Advance remake has another secret level per world once the game has been beaten.
• Shout-Out:
  • An example not from the game itself, but its advertising: the TV commercials for this game were a send up of the Mr. Creosote sketch from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.
  • The boss Burt the Bashful has a noticeable similarity to Obelix, of Asterix fame. The French localization thus gave it the name Gros Bélixo, an anagram of Gros (Big) Obelix.
  • The boss Naval Piranha is known as Audrey in the German version, as a homage to the monstrous plant character from Little Shop of Horrors.
• Signpost Tutorial: Message blocks similar to those of Super Mario World appear whenever a new gameplay mechanic is introduced that you can read for hints on what to do and how to do it. Some even have illustrations.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Levels 5-1 through 5-3 are winter-themed, having dense snow terrain, cableways, ice blocks that can melted, and a section where Yoshi has to slide with a ski equipment. The second half of World 5's extra level takes place in winter as well, reusing the ski slide (the difference is that Kamek is frequently charging at you).
• Solemn Ending Theme: Despite having a happy ending, the game ends with a melancholic piano piece, albeit calm and beautiful as well.
• Space Zone: Though not a full level, the setting makes up for part of World 5's last regular level, as Raphael the Raven fights Yoshi on the moon.
• Spikes of Doom: Spikes are very deadly in this game and its direct sequels, because they instantly kill Yoshi instead of letting him walk over them like in other games (and Mario cannot continue without him, because he's still a baby). The good news is that the dog Poochy is fully immune to them (it's to be expected after seeing him walk over lava without any problem).
• The Spiny: The game marks the debut of Harry Hedgehog, which can be stomped on or swallowed when its spikes are contracted, but not when they're extended.
• Spiritual Antithesis: It was this to several video games and general industry trends of the mid-1990s:
  • To Donkey Kong Country. That game led the charge for turning CGI models into pre-rendered sprites for a cutting-edge look, while this one used special tricks to turn hand-drawn art into sprites.
  • To Star Fox and Star Fox 2. While the SNES Star Fox games used their SuperFX Chips to allow the SNES to render 3D polygons that it otherwise wouldn't be able to, Yoshi's Island instead uses the Super FX Chip to enhance and perform effects on its emphatically 2D art.
  • To Sonic the Hedgehog, and the Mascot with Attitude in general. Sonic (and his imitators) exuded a family-friendly kind of edginess and coolness and starred in games that heavily emphasized speed. Yoshi is unabashedly cute, and his game greatly de-emphasizes speed in favor of exploration.
• Squashed Flat: There are 3D doors that fall down, and if Yoshi gets caught underneath one of them, he will peel off the door in a paper-like state (which was considered very impressive animation for SNES standards). This is also how Kamek ends up when you face Baby Bowser.
• Stock Sound Effects: Baby Mario's crying in the SNES version is a stock sound clip of a baby crying. The GBA remake replaces Baby Mario's cries with a new one recorded by Charles Martinet, but Baby Luigi's cries on the world map still use the old sound effect.
• Suddenly Shouting: In King Bowser's Castle, the area before the Tap-Tap the Golden chase has a message box that when hit says "RUN AWAY, HURRY!!!" in a double-sized font.
• Swallowed Whole: Yoshi gets eaten by Prince Froggy and can be eaten by Lunge Fish. The former segues into a Boss Battle, while the latter is instant death.
• Tactical Suicide Boss: Prince Froggy swallows Shy Guys whole. Yoshi can turn them into eggs and throw them at his uvula.
• Take That!: Harry Hedgehog is a blue hedgehog who runs very fast and tries to ram into you. This is a jab at Sonic the Hedgehog. In later games after the end of Sega and Nintendo's bitter rivalry, you may notice that Harry is now purple.
• Take That, Audience!: The Extra 1 level is named "Poochy Ain't Stupid!" This is the game telling you that if you die at this level, it's not the dog that's stupid, it's YOU.
• Terms of Endangerment: Kamek often refers to Yoshi by cutesy pet-names in his banter prior to boss fights.
• Toggling Setpiece Puzzle: The castle level of World 1 features, in one of its rooms, platforms that are spiked on one side but not on the other. Some of these platforms are safe to stand on because their spikes are facing down, but other platforms have their spikes facing up. The platforms with green dots can be flipped by hitting green blocks, while those with red dots have to be flipped by hitting red blocks, and to successfully traverse this room (and get all optional items in the process) it'll be necessary to make clever use of these switches.
• Trailers Always Spoil: Nintendo Power's "A Journey Through Yoshi's Island" promo video featured a clip of the Final Boss battle at the very end. It also mentions Baby Luigi during its summarization of the game's story, while the game itself never refers to him by name (in fact, he wasn't actually shown on camera until the very end).
• Travel Transformation: The titular dinosaur and his gang of multicolored compatriots must transform into a helicopter, a car, a train, a submarine or a mole tank to traverse certain levels or bonus areas. They're more or less invincible while in these forms, but they're all on a timer. If that timer runs out, the vehicle section must be retried from the beginning.
• Underground Level: This game has numerous cave levels, which have underground waterfalls (or lava in the case of the final world's cave level).
• Unending End Card: The ending is a nice one, but if you want to keep playing after beating the final boss, you'll have to reset. No button will take you away from the picture of Baby Mario and Baby Luigi. And not only is this still present in Advance 3, but there's also another one that you receive once you achieve 100% Completion.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable:
  • It is possible to trap yourself in level 4-1: GO! GO! MARIO!! At one point there is a Super Star trapped behind some dirt, which you are supposed to break by shooting it with an egg from below. If you manage to bounce off of a Shy Guy, you can pass up through a semi-solid platform to where the Star is. However, if you somehow have no eggs or green watermelons on hand or in your inventory, then you'll have no way of breaking through the dirt and will be stuck. If you have not yet cleared the level, then you will not have the option to pause and quit the level and will need to reset the game.
  • In 2-1, there's a (very well-hidden) bonus room in the final section of the level, immediately after dropping from the top of the third room back down to ground level. At the start of the room, there's a section with slow vertical auto-scrolling and a bunch of falling blocks. If you enter and exit the bonus room, then go back up to the top of the room where the falling blocks were, the blocks will all spawn at once (which looks silly and overloads the sprite count). The unwinnable part comes in if you then let the blocks fall while standing on them; depending on how they load and where the player stands, it's possible for them to fall in such a way that Yoshi ends up at the bottom of a pit that's too tall to jump out of.
• Unique Enemy: Several.
  • The game's only Gargantua Blargg is found in 1-4. The same level also houses the game's only Piro Dangles, which are found in an optional bonus room inside the Gargantua Blargg room. No longer true of the latter in Advance 3, which added them to Secret 6.
  • Boo Blahs only appear in the second room of 2-4. Later in that level is the game's only Blindfold Boo, who lurks in a secret area near the end of the level. The GBA remake rectified the latter, as Blindfold Boos also appeared in Secret 6.
  • The Lunge Fish, an enemy that can eat Yoshi alive, only appears in the last section of 3-7. Also in 3-7 is Barney Bubble, which only appears just before the Lunge Fish section. No longer the case for the latter in the GBA remake, which added them to Secret 6.
  • There are three unique Lakitu enemies which each only appear in a single level. Aqua Lakitu only appears in 3-8, Fishin' Lakitu only appears in 4-8, and Thunder Lakitu only appears in 5-1.
  • The only Chain Chomp in the game dwells in 5-4, in a secret room. 5-4 is also the only level where Sluggies and Georgette Jellies can be found.
  • 5-8 houses the game's only yellow Bullet Bill launcher, which launches Bouncing Bullet Bills. However, another one was added to Secret 4 in Advance 3.
  • The Bull's-Eye Blasters, though unused in the original version, appear only once in the GBA remake, in Secret 6.
• Unwinnable by Design: Flip Cards is a luck-based minigame in which you blindly turn over cards with items (or Toadies, which are worthless), with the option to stop at any time, as finding Kamek among the cards will cause you to lose everything and end the game. There are eight cards to choose from, and if you can flip seven cards without finding Kamek, you'll receive a bonus of 10 extra lives. The unwinnable part is that sometimes there's two Kameks, which makes getting the bonus impossible (you need to flip seven safe cards to receive the bonus, even though there's only six on the board when there's two Kameks in play). The game doesn't tell you about this, and by playing the game normally (i.e. without save states), a player would never know. To be fair, the game doesn't tell you about the bonus in the first place, but anyone who knows about it out might keep trying, unaware that there may be times where they'll never be able to win it.
• Uvula Escape Route: The Prince Froggy boss fight has said boss swallow Yoshi and Baby Mario. As part of the battle, Yoshi must hit the uvula at the top of the screen several times in order to win the fight and escape.
• Warm-Up Boss: Burt the Bashful and Salvo the Slime for World 1. Both are incredibly easy boss fights, particularly the latter since he can't even directly harm you.
• Womb Level: The boss battle for World 3's miniboss, Prince Froggy, takes place in said frog's stomach since he eats a shrunken-down Yellow Yoshi right before the battle. The only way to damage him is to aim eggs from the (Big) Shy Guys he eats at his uvula. Yoshi gets out through the back passage... and gives the camera a look of absolute shock as the boss dies.

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