The Yoshi Who Only Wanted to Be Happy

Yoshi’s Story is, on paper, a bad video game. It’s short, it’s soft, it barely resists you. The whole point is to eat fruit and feel good about it. Nintendo released it on the N64 in 1997 and critics lined up to call it thin—a step back from Yoshi’s Island, a children’s game without the decency to be challenging. They weren’t wrong. It doesn’t matter. There’s something about those crayon-bright storybook levels, the hand-drawn clouds, the pastel everything, the way Yoshi hums to himself as he wanders, that bypasses judgment entirely and goes straight somewhere warmer. Some games want you to conquer. This one just wants you to show up and eat a melon. That’s enough.