Super Mario Advance 3 is Nintendo’s 2002 Game Boy Advance re-release of Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island which was originally released in 1995. Since my console days virtually ended after I went to college until this past August, I had never played nor heard of this sequel to Super Mario World. Since I have been going through quite a Mario phase of late and Yoshi’s Island DS was set to be released (Yoshi’s Island DS came out on November 13 here in the states) , I decided to see what I missed. The cartoony graphics and baby Mario concept threw me at first in addition to not realizing the game was auto-saving it took me a little while to get into the game. Once I made it through the first world though, I was hooked. Since I will be playing the sequel and its relatively similar to the original, I didn’t get every trackable coin, flower and star and unlock the extra levels. With all of that being said, on to the review.

General Gameplay: Like every entry in the Super Mario series, the basic objective is to reach the goal in each stage while defeating whatever bosses and other monsters along the way. Yoshi’s Island has some key differences though. For one, there is no level timer. Besides the levels that auto-scroll (yes, this game has these annoying challenging levels, too) you can take as much time as you would like to reach the level’s goal. Another is that the Yoshis are a fairly tough bunch. Instead of losing a power up or dying when hit by a baddy, they knock off Yoshi’s young passenger and then you must retrieve the crying tot within a certain amount of time or he is flown away and you lose a life. You also die some of the standard ways such as falling off the screen, onto spike or into lava or being smushed by falling blocks. Still, with the exception of some levels, with as hearty as Yoshi is, the game feels more like a puzzle and less like the “standard” Super Mario game.

The World: The game has six world which each have eight levels with two of those levels being castles. Apparently if you get all five flowers, twenty red coins and thirty stars (for a point total of 100) from each of the eight levels it unlocks a ninth extra level per world. If you get perfect scores for each of the sixty normal levels, you also unlock six additional secret levels. Perhaps I will get to that some day, but my games to play list is growing faster then I can finish games right now. The levels themselves are drawn in a cartoony fashion, but I stopped noticing that especially towards the end of the game when the puzzle aspect was superseded by more difficult game play.

Monsters: I particularly liked some of the baddies that inhabited the world. I am not sure if Nintendo wanted to maintain the cartoony effect with them, but some of the monsters seemed quite happy and carefree while at the same time trying to hurt the Yoshis. For some reason I decided to take some screenshots of them, so here we go. First is my favorite and long time Mario monster, Pokey. In Yoshi’s Island, he tosses a “Spiked Fun Guy” in the air like this. Whenever his friend gets taken away, he mopes for a bit. Not sure why, but that really amused me. Blow Hard also shoots Spiked Fun Guys and Cactus Jack also appears pretty happy while perched in some annoying locations. Shy Guys returned from Super Mario Bros. 2 in both their original form and with spears. They also learned to dance much to my amusement. Egg-o-Dil is another smiling creature or flower in this case that likes to shoot his petals and cause harm. Because of the name, I have to include a couple of shots of Roger the Potted Ghost who is the boss for world 2. Here he has launched his fire attack and here is his nervous look as Yoshi pushes him close to the edge and his Shy Guy minions try to keep him on. There is even a fight where you are swallowed by a frog and have to give him indigestion to win the fight.

Saving: Even though I thought Super Mario Advance 4 was an improvement, saving your progress in Super Mario Advance 3 is done automagically behind the scenes. So behind the scenes that I didn’t realize my progress was being saved. I thought I was going to need a large block of time instead of my normal one to two levels at a time until I fired the game up the second time a week after I first tried the game. I am very pleased that I didn’t have to worry at all about saves. I still don’t understand why the New Super Mario Bros. wouldn’t allow for a save except after castles and towers until you beat the game.

Resources: Again, I relied on GameFAQs Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario Advance 3 to get me past a couple of tricky spots. I also got a SNES emulator and the rom so I could get the monster screenshots since I am not sure how to do that effectively on my DS Lite.

• Tom Hayes - Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island
• ZSNES

Conclusions: While I *think* I still prefer Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3, Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario Advance 3 was still a very solid, enjoyable game. It “corrected” some of the aspects of the original Super Mario World that annoyed me such as a Yoshi-friendly beanstalk, not making some of the puzzles compulsory for completely the level and not having a time clock that can expire makes for much more leisurely play. It was also nice not having to worry about power up items for a change, I just had to make sure I had a few eggs to throw at things. Even when I was replaying the game with the emulator using the crappy key layout, I still found myself getting sucked in again. I look forward to the Yoshi’s Island DS when it reaches the top of the list.