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The History of Yoshi
Gaming's most iconic dinosaur, or Space Dragon if you believe Super Mario Galaxy, found fame in Super Mario World on the SNES in 1991. However, Nintendo had planned Yoshi since the original Super Mario Bros. on the NES in 1985! What happened to him in that period?
Nintendo wanted to give Mario a dinosaur companion from the very begining, however, the NES couldn't handle what Nintendo wanted out of the character. However, his origins lie even further back to 1984's Devil World. This game featured green dinosaurs that hatched from eggs, how is Yoshi normally presented: a green dinosaur hatching from an egg! Early designs of Yoshi can even be seen in the concept art for Super Mario Bros. but that poses a question, at least in my mind: surely Nintendo understand the limitations of the NES why did they think Yoshi was plausible? It's time to hop franchise to one of the NES's other launch titles: Excitebike. Here we see people riding glorified mounts, if the characters in this game could do it why not Mario?
Nintendo then planned him to be in Super Mario Bros. 3, 4 years later and still on the NES. Why not Super Mario Bros. 2? We'll get back to that. It's a wonder why they wanted Yoshi for Super Mario Bros. 3, the hardware limitations still stopped this from happening! The NES didn't get anymore powerful and no amount of multi cell graphics could make it possible for him to exist in the game. That's why in Super Mario Bros. 3 we are given the Frog Suit and Racoon Tail. The Racoon Tail has become incredibly popular in later games like Super Mario 3D Land on the 3DS, without Yoshi the famous Tanooki suit wouldn't have come about!
In Super Mario World Yoshi was finally seen in games alongside Mario as his mount and companion. Yoshi became hugely popular, popular enough to create a sequel for Super Mario World called Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island and became hugely successful to create sequels based off this sequel, a bit like Street Fighter 2! From his first appearance and games following on we have accumulated a knowledge of the Yoshi race. They live on an island, they come in a variety of colours, they can eat practically anything and they have a scientific name! Their scientific classification in the Mushroom Kingdom ecosystem is T. Yoshisaur Munchakoopas, from that "latin" name I think it's safe to say that Super Mario Galaxy was wrong, unless the Yoshi in Super Mario Galaxy is an alien species of the Yoshi that is known as the Space Dragon. Maybe these are the race of Yoshi we see in the Super Smash Bros Series, but I digress. They Yoshi are also able to place themselves into eggs and turn enemies they've swallowed into eggs! They can also turn berries and enemies into power ups in eggs! The Yoshi are possibly one of the most dangerous races known to the gaming universe! Sorry Xenomorph, Alien: Isolation would have been scarier if it was Yoshi hunting us down.
Nintendo really wanted Yoshi to be special after years of delays and so they made him a natural super weapon! But one question remains, a question that takes us back to a dark place... Mario is Missing! We're going back to that RETROspective? The Festival of Horror doesn't start yet! To that I reply indeed it doesn't it starts October 1st but talking about Yoshi raises the question of how he is in this game! When we talked about Mario is Missing I said the game was released on the MS-DOS, SNES and NES. Our dear friend and super weapon of death appears in this game! Across all ports! How did Yoshi get in this game, used as he is in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island if the NES couldn't support the use of Yoshi! Nintendo couldn't do it! The company that made Mario is Missing was not Nintendo! It begs an explaination! He was never supposed to appear on the NES aside from the Mario and Yoshi games released after the release of the NES but these were puzzle games. The NES didn't get anymore powerful after the release of the SNES!How did he get in the NES port of Mario is Missing?! It will always be one of gaming's unsolved mysteries, or some technical explaination like when we talked about art on the Commodore 64 or maybe there were evil spirits at work, but we'll get back to evil Mario spirits when we open the Festival of Horror...
