N-Philes :: Forums - IGN: Yoshi's Touch and Go playtest... with PictoChat support!

01-31-2005, 11:34 PM

Maxwell

Like Spinning Plates

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IGN: Yoshi's Touch and Go playtest... with PictoChat support!

From Craig Harris at IGN:

Quote:

Yoshi's Touch & Go is a spin-off game design that brings back a lot of elements and situations from one of, if not the finest 2D platformer ever created: Yoshi's Island. Players begin the game guiding a falling Baby Mario through hazardous airborne level creations, drawing soft, fluffy cloud paths that will, hopefully, force Baby Mario down a specific channel. The idea is to keep him out of harm's way, but also to have him collect coins on his trip down. After Baby Mario makes it safely to the ground, it's off to side-scrolling levels where Yoshi must carry him to the stork who will flutter off with Baby Mario. Players, again, draw cloud paths to guide the dinosaur, as well as create circles around enemies and tap on the screen to throw eggs at enemies for points.

As simple as the concept is, Yoshi's Touch & Go is one hell of a challenge. While it may be an easy feat getting Baby Mario down to the ground below, it's incredibly tough keeping track of his status on the upper screen while creating paths down below. Because what you create might not exactly work -- Baby Mario may get stuck in a little groove that will cause the cloud to vanish, which means he'll fall out of the strategically laid-out channel that you've created three steps ahead of him. The actual difficulty level between Baby Mario levels and Yoshi levels is like night and day...at least in the early stages. Guiding Yoshi through his side-scrolling hazards is a cakewalk in comparison, though it's just as difficult trying to score the highest amounts of points in the round. It also cleverly puts to use the system's capabilities; the touch screen and dual-screen functions become obvious as you play through the game, but it also uses the microphone similar to what Feel the Magic XY/XX and WarioWare Touched pulled off. If you don't like the path you've created for Baby Mario, you can simply "blow" into the microphone and wipe the clouds off-screen.

Yoshi Touch & Go also offers a surprisingly fun and addictive two player mode that only requires one copy of the game. In this challenge, it's an exclusive Yoshi level that takes place on one screen -- the upper screen displays exactly what's going on the other person's touch screen. In this multiplayer mayhem, it's a race to the end of the level; Yoshi runs faster on clouds than he does on the ground, which encourages players to keep the dragon airborne. Blasting eggs at spiky enemies will remove them from harm's way, but blasting three or more with one egg will send larger and stronger enemies to the other player's screen...sometimes right in their path. The game ends when either someone gets hit by a spiked enemy, falls off the screen, or actually finishes the race. There's only one "level" in multiplayer, but the enemy locations are randomly placed each time you play the game.

This game also gets one step closer to the appropriate way to handle the Nintendo DS "community," though we're still far off from the optimal solution. In Yoshi Touch & Go you can turn on an option that enables the game to seek out any PictoChat sessions in the area. If it senses one, a Pictochat face icon will pop up in the upper left corner of the lower screen. Tapping on it will bring up an option to quit the game and shut down the system so you can chat in PictoChat. It's a good step forward, but we still would like to be able to PictoChat within the game in order to tell "buddies" that we can start a multiplayer session with them.

The biggest concern when Nintendo revealed Balloon Trip and then Yoshi Touch & Go months later: How will the game hold up as its own game presentation? Can Nintendo sustain the concept with a fleshed out game design on the same level as other Mario and Yoshi platformers? After all, the idea is just as simple and basic as an unlockable mini-game in Super Mario 64 DS or WarioWare Touched!. Honestly, it isn't as fleshed out a Nintendo design. It's more harkens back to the game designs of the NES where the game continues ad infinitum (we think), and the only incentive to playing the game is to best your high score.

But after playing through the first few rounds of Yoshi Touch & Go, it's a presentation that works extraordinarily well on the Nintendo DS system. True, there's no real story or cutscenes to speak of, with the strength of the gameplay exclusively supporting the design. Though players can't enter their initials on a high score, they can pick from an assortment of character icons to mark their territory -- the game also keeps track of the date when the specific score was obtained based on the internal clock of the Nintendo DS system. It's one of the strongest original titles in the Nintendo DS line, by far, not just because it's a concept that could only work on the dual-screen, touch screen set up...but also because it actually does work. And it's fun as all get-out.

This sounds very promising indeed. I wasn't planning on getting it, but perhaps...

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02-01-2005, 12:34 AM	#2
Souzetsu Ready to Fly Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: California Posts: 7,280	It sounds very promising. I don't know if I should get this, or Wario Ware Touched!...

02-01-2005, 01:08 AM	#3
Kuriboo Super Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: A Galaxy far far away.... Posts: 12,190	I want this, I've got tired of Wario for right now, plus I love Yoshi, cuttest little dino ever. __________________ Mario's Bitch

02-01-2005, 01:19 AM	#4
1day S++ Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: St. Louis, MO Posts: 2,987	Fun...is what it sounds like!

02-01-2005, 10:09 AM	#5
Fabsy Chargin' Chuck Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Loughborough, England Posts: 691	Wow, I'm pleasantly surprised by these impressions I'm definitely looking forward to this. Especially the pictochat compatibility thing. __________________ I turned off my sig, because I'm hot like that. Last edited by [€.O.C.]Fabsy : 02-01-2005 at 10:17 AM.

02-01-2005, 10:15 AM	#6
danytoca sun Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 4,792	Yay, that's a pretty good feature. It would be nice if the status message changed to "Playing Yoshi Touch & Go." This should be how messaging is handled when the online games come out. (Sometime soon ) __________________ dani tuga?

02-01-2005, 12:30 PM	#7
rodney666 Heave-Ho Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 52	i have yoshi's touch and go, and to be honest it's not that great, if you are looking for depth like yoshi's island forget about it, it's ok, but not great, if you are really far in the game and if you get hit once you die and your whole game is over, totally frusterating!! it doesn't feel like a finished game

02-01-2005, 12:46 PM	#8
Fabsy Chargin' Chuck Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Loughborough, England Posts: 691	Who are you to have Yoshi's Touch and Go? At any rate, it probably doesn't feel like a finished game because it isn't. It's still in development. __________________ I turned off my sig, because I'm hot like that.

02-01-2005, 12:55 PM	#9
rodney666 Heave-Ho Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 52	uh, it's been out in japan for a week now

02-01-2005, 01:04 PM	#10
Maxwell Like Spinning Plates Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Dead Air Space Posts: 2,205	... which is how IGN got it. They might tweak it a little for the US/EU release, but only a very little. Like Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat, this is an arcade game disguised as a platformer. If you approach it from that angle, you'll appreciate it more, I think. It's not that it's "unfinished" -- it's that, well, it's an arcade game. __________________ Exeunt omnes ha ha

02-01-2005, 01:18 PM	#11
rodney666 Heave-Ho Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 52	jgkspsx have you played it? you can call it whatever you want arcade game, platformer whatever, the bottom line is there is not very much content to this game, and it really does feel unfinished, when you play it you'll see what i mean

02-01-2005, 03:11 PM	#12
Dawson Mr. Tambourine Man Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 10,440	I think it sounds fun. I will be getting it. __________________

02-01-2005, 03:13 PM	#13
rodney666 Heave-Ho Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 52	yeah it's fun for like 5 minutes

02-01-2005, 03:33 PM	#14
Bazooka Part-time n-philer Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Binbrook, ON Posts: 2,960	I bet its fun for like, 17 minutes. __________________

02-01-2005, 03:58 PM	#15
King of Hyrule Wanderer Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 4,383	I'm glad he didn't complain about shooting the eggs this time in the impressions, hopefully that means it's not as hard as it was made out to be in the last article. __________________

02-01-2005, 04:09 PM	#16
rodney666 Heave-Ho Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 52	to shoot eggs all you do is touch the screen

02-01-2005, 04:15 PM	#17
mario Goomba Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 6	this is one of my top wanted games

02-01-2005, 04:17 PM

#18

King of Hyrule

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Join Date: Jun 2002

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Quote:

Originally Posted by rodney666

to shoot eggs all you do is touch the screen

I know, but IGN was complaining about "one too many" touch screen functions.

Quote:

It's all controlled with the touch screen, which is a noble effort in simplicity -- our only problem with the game, which we would love to see Nintendo fix before release, was that there was one function too many for touch play in the Yoshi stages. Egg tossing was a delicate timing trick -- you tap and hold for just a little bit to launch your eggs -- and although players can pick up the timing, there's that left trigger (or the right one, for lefties out there) just sitting there, unused. The way it is now, if you tap too short, nothing happens but a puff of air, and if you drag while touching to prep an egg toss, you're drawing a cloud. This is a necessary mechanic to the gameplay, and a lot of casual gamers might have a hard time figuring it out (if at all -- we weren't even sure we could fire our eggs at any given time the first few plays until we did it accidentally.) If Nintendo could slack off its self-imposed limit for touch-only play in this game just a bit, it would help some folks out, and might do a favor to the more hardcore as well so they have instant access to their eggs.

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02-01-2005, 05:01 PM	#19
~~IEatFriedPikmin~~ Banned Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: TX Posts: 13	i will probably be getting this and wario ware. Cant wait. I havent played my DS that often.

02-01-2005, 05:15 PM

#20

Totokeke

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Join Date: May 2002

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Quote:

Originally Posted by rodney666

jgkspsx have you played it? you can call it whatever you want arcade game, platformer whatever, the bottom line is there is not very much content to this game, and it really does feel unfinished, when you play it you'll see what i mean

Nolan Bushnell's golden rule of gaming: make an innovative but simple game that never ends, just gets harder and harder.

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