It’s funny that I’ve always felt Yoshi was humorously never anything more than a glorified power-up or item. Don’t get me wrong, I love the little (and the original big) guy, but he was always just an item like a Mushroom or Fireflower you’d get out of a block. Since then, he’s evolved into a hero in his own right, able to take on adventures solo, and beating Bowser himself many times. In my heart though, I always feel Yoshi’s best when he’s simply rideable, which is why I’m excited he’s going to be in NSMBW and SMG2, and I’m curious, as to why people are angry he’s not playable in his own right. In my mind, the fun of riding Yoshi is greater than playing as him. And that rideable Yoshi, is the one who pretty much starred alongside Mario in the Super Mario World Animated series.
With Yoshi’s animated debut comes a couple of other animated debuts. Namely the animated appearance of the Yoshi egg (exciting, and no, I’m not going to say eggciting…) Anyway, two notable differences (even with something a simple as an egg?) Firstly the Egg Luigi gets turned into, seems to be an inverted version of the typical Yoshi egg. It has White spots on Green as opposed to Green spots on White. Secondly, the egg Yoshi hatches from in ‘Mama Luigi’ is pretty much perfect, yet for some reason they made the spots red, whereas that would be an egg for a red Yoshi, so another mistake?
Next up, we have Baby Yoshi’s animated debut. Don’t get me started on how since Yoshi’s Story, which starred Yoshi as a baby, he seems to have kept this appearance ever since, dropping his original lanky look. Anyway, Baby Yoshi only appears in ‘Mama Luigi’ in flashback form. He’s similar to SMW baby Yoshi in his look, except his eyelids aren’t half closed, and he has no shoes. Personality wise, he’s much more similar to the baby Yoshi’s in Yoshi’s Story, as he can walk around, feed himself and basically move around pretty quickly. In SMW though he would either grow up instantly from the egg, or stand still, relying on the player to pick him up and feed him 5 enemies to grow full sized.
Now for the main part of this article. We have Yoshi himself in adult form. As you can see, Yoshi’s main role in the original game was being ridden by Mario. As such he was usually portrayed as lanky, with small arms. I think that’s really about the only difference between the original art and the animated Yoshi, his arms were slightly more useful in the cartoon, although he still uses his tongue more often to do things. You can judge from the picture on the right as to how much lankier Yoshi was compared to today. Personally, I prefer the original, but I still like modern Yoshi too.
Yoshi’s character was pretty faithful to the game, he is a glutton, and also a slight coward, more so than Luigi (although sometimes they did both agree with each other about how dangerous something Mario suggested was) he actually keeps his fear of ghost houses from the game, and has a fear of water, which as I said in a review, may be reference to how he can’t swim well in the game. He also allows Mario to ride him in a couple of episodes, as well as the princess. In fact Luigi, despite the fact he was the one who first met Yoshi, is the only character to not ride Yoshi. Heck, even Oogtar gets to. The only real problem with Yoshi, is that he’s Yoshi, and that’s it, no mention of any other Yoshi’s is made, despite the fact that the game had about 4. It would be forgivable, if it didn’t result in us having the Cave people instead (urgh)
Finally the voice differences, which are almost always from games made after the cartoon shows. Yoshi has a pretty different voice to his cartoon one, the cartoon ones voice is a tiny bit screechy, however, the game Yoshi only says his name, much like a pokemon. When they speak in text however (such as the original and the Paper Mario games) they speak more intelligently than Yoshi does in the cartoons, using proper words and syllables.
