Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island

Imagine stepping onto the most powerful console of its day with a game that looks as though a child drew it with crayons into a sketchbook. That is exactly what Shigeru Miyamoto did with Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. At the moment when the competition bet everything on pre-rendered, technically polished graphics in the style of Donkey Kong Country, Miyamoto went against the current and, despite pressure from his own studio, pushed through a hand-drawn, pastel visual. The result is to this day one of the most distinctive and most beautiful games ever released on a 16-bit console.

But what sets Yoshi's Island apart is not only its look. It is a clever twist at the very heart of the gameplay. This time you do not play as Mario, but as Yoshi, who carries defenseless baby Mario on his back and must deliver him to safety. The key mechanic is ingeniously human: when an enemy hits you, the child does not die. He floats off your back in a bobbing bubble, and you have a few seconds of nervous countdown to catch him back before the Toadies enemies snatch him away. This little detail turns the entire rhythm of play into a tense dance between attack and protection.

Yoshi, meanwhile, was given a whole new arsenal of abilities. He swallows enemies and turns them into eggs, which he then uses as precise throwing ammunition. He can flutter in the air to prolong a jump for a moment, transforms into temporary vehicles, and solves spatial puzzles. Every level is designed as a self-contained idea — each time there comes a new mechanism, a new kind of environment, a new bit of level-design trickery. It is precisely this inexhaustible inventiveness that is why fans still call the game the pinnacle of Nintendo's 2D platforming school to this day.

The visual side is moreover helped by the special Super FX 2 chip in the cartridge, which enabled rotating and enlarging enemies and bosses on a scale the SNES itself otherwise could not handle. The bosses are one of the game's highlights — huge, artistically exuberant creatures that often combine a visual trick with an unconventional method of defeat.

Yoshi's Island became a cornerstone of Yoshi's entire standalone branch and kicked off a series of sequels and remakes (among others a version for the Game Boy Advance). It remains to this day a textbook example that the courage to follow your own artistic path can age far better than an attempt at a period technical show.

Why play: For the most artistically daring Mario game ever and for platforming design where every level surprises with a new idea — a joy that has not aged.