The title of the review is not to be confused with the character Yoshi from some of the SNES Mario games. Yoshi is also a game that was released for the NES and Gameboy in 1992. It is a block style puzzle game where the player has to keep characters such as Goombas, Boos, and Bloobers from piling up high enough to reach the top of the screen causing a Game Over. I got this game when I was a kid. My dad picked it up in Kmart after the epic snowstorm in the spring of 1993. For me, this game was pretty forgettable.

To start with, I don't like puzzle games at all. I find all of them to be a bore to play. I didn't even like Tetris that much, and it probably has to be the only one I got any enjoyment out of at all. I hated Dr. Mario, and Yoshi is another game that falls into that same category. It contains an A-type game similar to Tetris, but this time, it isn't as much fun. Overall, I only played Yoshi about 2 or 3 times throughout my childhood, and this is why.  

Graphics 3/10: The graphics of Yoshi are very bland and uninteresting. You get a few cutscenes where Mario is riding Yoshi, and he eats an item. The rest of the time you just sit there and stare at this plain, boring playing field where the enemies fall down from the top of this playing field. The sprites don't even look that great. There was more detail put into Mario in Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3, a lot more detail! Even Dr. Mario had more detailed sprites. In Yoshi, the sprites are not as good as they could have been, and there is no variety to the backgrounds. This is just a dull, boring game with hardly anything going on, and what is going on, doesn't even look that good either! 

Music 7/10: The soundtrack for Yoshi is quite a bit better. The Mushroom theme sounds pretty decent, and I like the Starman theme as well. The latter track is probably my favorite in the game next to the title song. The Fire Flower theme isn't really that bad either but can get pretty old after a while. This game does have a soundtrack that is fairly good. It's not great like in the NES version of Tetris, but I can tolerate it and even like it to a certain extent. I give it a pass. For the most part, it is a decent sounding game with music that is really okay but nothing remarkable.

Gameplay 1/10: Yoshi has a style of gameplay similar to Tetris and Dr. Mario. You've got enemies that fall from the top of the screen in pairs of 2 (sometimes 3), and you have to keep them from piling up higher than the top of the screen where they fall from. If two identical enemies fall on top of each other (say a Goomba falls on top of another Goomba), the two enemy blocks disappear, and that is what you want. That is the main objective in the B-type game, and in that way, it is similar to Dr. Mario.  

The A-type game is where you try to see how many eggs you can hatch. This is where it is a lot like Tetris because you play against yourself to see if you can beat your best egg count. Upon getting a Game Over everything resets, and you have to try again. I didn't find Tetris to be that engaging, and Yoshi is even less appealing. I just didn't care for going back and trying again after spending 30 mins. and getting an egg count of about 50 or so. You know you're not going to get any higher than that, so what's the point in trying again? This is almost pointless!

As I mentioned earlier, if two enemies of the same kind fall on top of each other they disappear. That is the whole goal behind the B-type game. This is a lot like Dr. Mario where you had to clear the playing field of viruses, but this time you have to rid it of: Goombas, Boos, Bloobers, etc. After beating level 5, the game is technically over, but you can continue if you want to see how high of an enemy stack you can clear. I have no interest in continuing and just end it here. I know there are two speeds: normal and high, but I just play on normal and call it a game.

The B-type game has no appeal to it as far as I am concerned. The A-type game has some appeal to it, but the reward for getting a high egg count is worthless. All you get are certain types of enemies that hatch out of the eggs on the playing screen. How exciting! It's really worth your time just to see this! No rocketship, no band playing a Russian song, forget all of that. Just give me about 4 or 5 eggs with enemies hatching out of them for all my trouble! That's what players want to see! Yoshi is a game that is hardly worth the effort unless you like these sorts of things, and that's not me.  

Content 6/10: Yoshi contains two game types: A-type and B-type. Both game types only contain 5 levels in each that are only about 4 mins. long. You have a total of about 30 or 40 mins. worth of gameplay in Yoshi. That's not that much, but it is something, I guess. I don't care about playing on high speed because after playing on normal speed, I just want to end it already. Some players may want to spend more time on this game, but that isn't me. I think puzzle games are boring and can never invest much time in any of them, not even Tetris and especially not Yoshi.

Difficulty 1/10: The A-type game is the only part in Yoshi that has any sort of challenge to it. The rest of the game is boring. The B-type game is just Dr. Mario all over again. It is too easy! The A-type game is very much like Tetris. This game just depends on how many eggs you can hatch and trying to beat that score. I can get a pretty high egg count unlike in Tetris, but I don't find myself spending much time on this. It gets boring after a while, unlike with Tetris. Neither game type is hard at all. The A-type game does have some challenge to it but very little. Yoshi is another puzzle game that is so easy it is boring to play.   

Overall 4.3/10: Yoshi is a game from my childhood, but it is game I never played much. I don't even think my dad liked it either, and he really enjoyed Tetris. I thought Tetris was hard, but it was a game that had challenge to it which gave it some appeal. Yoshi has no challenge, and there is no reason to even play it. There is no reward to it either, and that's why it's a forgettable part of my childhood. I never was challenged with this game. The same is true for the game today, but after playing Dr. Mario, Yoshi is boring but not as boring as that game was. I never liked puzzle games, and this is another one that falls into that same category.