Still Carrying the Baby

Yoshi’s Island on the Super Nintendo burned itself into childhood memory through sheer sensory overload—the crayon-sketch visuals, the egg physics, and that absolutely maddening Baby Mario screech every time you took a hit. A sound designed by someone who had either never met a child or hated parents specifically. You forgave it instantly because everything else in the game was so inventive it barely mattered.

Yoshi’s New Island on the 3DS arrives nearly two decades later with the same basic premise intact: Yoshi carries Baby Mario across a side-scrolling world, swallowing enemies, producing eggs, and lobbing them at whatever needs lobbing. The transformations return—helicopter, sled, jackhammer—joined by a new mechanic involving giant eggs that demolish terrain wholesale. It’s familiar in the way sequels to beloved games tend to be: comforting if you’ve earned the nostalgia, slightly inert if you haven’t.

What made the original remarkable was its visual identity—the watercolor-and-felt aesthetic that looked genuinely handmade, like someone had built the whole world out of children’s art supplies. The 3DS version tries to capture that, with mixed results. The charm lands in flashes. The eggs still arc satisfyingly across the screen. Baby Mario still screams.

Whether it earns its place next to the original is something only extended time with it can answer. But there’s something quietly respectable about a series that knows exactly what it is and never tries to be anything else.