What I'm Playing

May. 26, 2010 at 8:43am with 41 notes View comments

Super Mario Galaxy 2’s got Yoshi in it. That’s cool, right?

Well, yes and no. Yes in that you get to ride him around and do flutter jumps and eat fruit that gives you powers. No in that holy shit I just watched him die and now he’s back what the hell is happening.

Let me explain. When Yoshi first made his debut in Super Mario World, he was a luxury. You could get him but if he ran away, no big deal. He’s basically a power-up. In Mario Galaxy 2, he’s required. If he’s in a level, rest assured that you’re going to need him to complete it.

This leads to some weird design requirements. If you kill off Yoshi, they have to find a way to get him back to you. What’s creepy is how they do that. You see, in Super Mario World, when you found your first Yoshi, he said “Oh no! I was trapped in an egg! Help me!” and then you saved him. In Mario Galaxy 2, he’s just in the egg when you find him. He wasn’t put there. He never says “Uh oh, a bad guy put me in here.” That’s just his house or something.

So when you find your first Yoshi in a level in Mario Galaxy 2, you can get past an obstacle and he can drop off a cliff or whatever in the process, and then ta da! He’s at the next nest before the next Yoshi-required obstacle. If your Yoshi didn’t die, that nest is empty, and every nest after that will be empty.

This is philosophically horrifying. If your Yoshi DIES then he’s BORN AGAIN? Just like that? You could just stand next to a nest, obtaining Yoshis and dumping them off cliffs only to return to the nest to find more Yoshis in eggs, ready to be casually thrown into oblivion all over again. There will never be no more Yoshis, because you need Yoshi to continue.

Is it the same Yoshi every time? Does each Yoshi share the memories of the previous one? Are you taking a fresh Yoshi, one lacking a history and thus a sense of self, and potentially letting him die just minutes after being born? Or does each Yoshi remember the adventures of every Yoshi prior to him, thus carrying with him hundreds of memories of his own death?

Mario dies, too, but when he dies, everything stops and you start over. It’s like time is being reversed and we’re all starting over. But when Yoshi dies? No big deal! Just keep going! You’ll find another one, Mario! Oh hey look some coins go get some of those. You love those.

Yoshi is now less of a teammate and more of a tool to be thrown away. Mario may as well be finding plastic bicycles every 20 feet because he certainly doesn’t need to keep them if he’s just going to find another one anyway, as if his very existence depended on free disposable bicycles.

Mario Galaxy 2 has taken a familiar character and turned him into this weird, abstract concept. I may be having fun with the game so far but that doesn’t mean that every time I get a Yoshi I don’t feel awful at how easily he can be killed off and regenerated like some kind of happy veal car.