Huomg

The first half of World Two was excellent, with some very expansive, varied stages. Then Lakitu showed up.

• Yoshi's Island Lakitu's Wall Mount

• Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island Yoshi series. The Cave Of The Mystery Maze 2-7: Lakitu's Wall 2-8. The Cave Of The Lakitus 4-3: Don't Look Back!
• Sep 24, 2002  The SNES version already has achievements to complete each world 100%, having 100% achievements for all levels would be very unnecessary and very annoying for the players who has mastered the game before.

The biggest trick in this level is causing a sprite overload by creating a bunch of stars with a big egg. This can despawn the bullet bill launchers, allowing you to skip ground pounding the first set of posts. To perform this trick, fire a large egg as shown in the picture. Make sure you have 4+ eggs (of any size) on Yoshi, as more eggs makes the despawn easier. Jumping onto this platform (as.

The first thing about this level that stands out to me is the striking amount of pink. The second is that the floor is often that spongy dirt material, so you have to show some restraint with ground pounding and egg tossing. We collect coins on balancing logs early on (unlike the more stable seesaws we came across in World One, these can fall off, leaving a painful, pointy stump behind. They’re basically the predecessor of the New series’ Wobble Rocks). We’re minding our own business, trying to grab some reds, when Lakitu comes cruising onto the scene!

Lakitu’s one of the few creatures that’s actually less detailed/expressive than his previous look (that being SMW). He looks fine; it’s just a smaller, more streamlined design (his cloud does have an adorable trail of “puffs” now). For some reason, he only throws Spiny Eggs that burst on contact. What, the game has more than 110 different enemies, many of them drawn and animated with great detail, and they draw the line at Spinies?

In any event, Yoshi gets a chance to show off his (relatively) unburdened skills and can make a mockery out of one of the most feared of Bowser’s minions. He can slurp up the cloud (for no eggs) rather effortlessly, leaving Lakitu to plummet helplessly offscreen (the upward tongue is especially effective). You can also egg Lakitu, but if you want to actually make use of the cloud, you have to jump on him, which is a much more challenging task. It should also be noted that Lakitu’s much more formidable on the GBA. He often enters out of nowhere at high speeds in both versions, but he’s usually too high up to be an immediate threat in the original. On the GBA, he usually enters at ground level or just above, which drastically improves his chances of catching you off-guard and simply running you over directly.

In the meantime, we get our first real chance to play with Koopa shells (with no Koopas themselves, strangely), and that can cause some mayhem on the destructible turf. After some solid ground, the next stretch of dirt floor has a series of ! block outlines under it. This is really weird. There are a couple of hidden clouds in the solid ground segment, but they’re kind of out of the way. One of them contains the switch, but I’m not really sure what you’re meant to do with it. All of the red coins in this segment are on a destructible patch of dirt near the top of the screen, and having solid ground temporarily beneath you really has no impact on getting up there. There’s a crate that you can freely ground pound rather than extract and shove onto solid ground, but it’s a few screens beyond the switch and unless you already know it’s there, you likely won’t have much time once you reach it (especially if you’re drawn to the coins you come across first).

The crate yields a key, and the door is guarded by an unusual variant of the “segmented cactus” enemy, Pokey. This one is immobile, and the taller lower segment bounces the Needlenose-like upper segment at varying heights. They both have ridiculously happy grins, which grow even wider as they bounce to new heights. The lower segment is indestructible, and you can slip through when the upper one is high in the air. But if you take out the upper segment, the lower one droops down (making passage even easier), and gets an incredibly depressed look. Well now who’s the jerk? If you wait a few seconds, another Needlenose will spawn, Pokey will perk up, and they’ll resume the game again. As if the similar art style wasn’t proof enough, I think Super Princess Peach definitely took some inspiration from this game. I love how the enemies react to your actions not only in a gameplay sense (becoming much easier to pass), but emotionally as well, giving the illusion that they are creatures and not mindless obstacles. This is one of the most clear cases, but it won’t be the last.

The locked room leads us to our third transformation, the train. Aside from visual touches like turning wheels and puffing steam, the train can ride along the track patterns on the wall (which previously just looked like more of the hand-drawn crayon aesthetic showing itself) to reach collectibles. Meanwhile, drawings of Shy Guys on the wall come to life to pursue you. This is easily my favorite transformation. It turns the game’s art style into a gameplay feature, there’s a sense of urgency (limited time and lots of branching paths on the tracks), but it’s fair (there are plenty of time-renewing bubbles scattered around and getting hit will only momentarily stun you), and it doesn’t have the control issues of the chopper or mole tank.

The last segment of this stage hides two completely optional secrets (just leading to a mass of regular coins). They’re pretty clever and let Yoshi and Baby Mario each get a chance to shine (and the SFX2 chip, with more polygonal planks). The rest, unfortunately, is a mess. There are several Fly Guys carrying red coins, and some of them only give you a couple seconds to retrieve them before mocking you and flying away forever. This wouldn’t be so bad, but everything in this segment is designed to trip you up, from walls that need to be sprung over, to Crazee Dayzees spewing bubbles (harmless, but send you flying), to Lakitus, to the large, immobile, Cactus Jack dropping into your path (needs an egg shot to move). Plus there are several red coins hidden in posts. The GBA version seems a bit crueler about Fly Guys showing up and leaving when they’re not even onscreen yet (I’d guess a double whammy of lower resolution and superior memory: you don’t have to be as close for elements to trigger). I advise sprinting through this last segment to hunt down all the Fly Guys, then backtracking and taking your time with the rest.

It’s a shame, because there are a couple cool ideas here. The bubbles can be exploited to reach great heights, and Yoshi can eat/spit them to mess with enemies. There’s also a great visual gag where you run behind a bush, only to come out with a Shy Guy on your back and a Bandit running away with Mario. It’s funny and lets the game’s personality shine, but unfortunately it’s right before the goal. This last stretch has tons of opportunities to get stars, but they’re mostly clouds, and you don’t know they’re stars until you’ve hit them, so first-timers are likely to wind up a couple short right at the end. This pretty much sums up the whole stage: It’s as creative as any given stage, but it constantly hampers your progress and gets on your nerves.

But hey, I hear the Cave of the Mystery Maze is dying to take us away, so let’s roll up and check it out. Rather than the pipes that lead into previous cave stages, on this one we start at the surface (with dragonflies flitting around) and simply plummet down through several screens of spongy dirt stuff. There are several stops to make along the way though, so be careful not to overdue the pounding (if you see an opening, it’s probably best to simply tap Down rather than hold it). We get more flower-disguised Guys and another chance to play with cloud arrows. There’s some questionable design when we reveal the door that gives us a one-way ticket onward, while there are still red coins (and a bonus room key) a couple screens below.

On the other side of the door, we reach a deeper portion of the cave that has a reddish-brown hue instead of the cool blue, with a layer of mist lending some mystery to this maze. Looking up when the rocky ground flattens out is the key to progress, revealing a “kill baddies for a prize” room and a spring ball. If that’s not obvious, that’s okay, because there are more goodies to get by going the roundabout route. We can actually get a glimpse of the exit from the wrong side of the wall, as well as a new enemy. Kaboombas are walking cannons, pointed at an upward angle. They’re immune to ordinary jumps and eating. Eggs can kill them, but it can be tricky to kill something at ground level, especially when they’re advancing and firing cannonballs (which bounce across the ground before exploding) at you. Because of the angle of their shots and constant mobility, ground pounding is an even riskier proposition. These can be intimidating enemies, so giving you a preview here is very considerate.

Doubling back at a higher altitude and dropping down to our original location will make the secret of the spring ball a bit more obvious. We also get a chance to use cloud arrows to claim a flower, and have a watermelon seed spitting contest. Once we get past the Kaboombas and find the exit, there’s a somewhat pointless stretch, then we emerge at the surface.

What a beautiful sunset! This segment introduces numbered platforms, which indicate how many times you can step on them before they evaporate. The last flower is all that’s left to collect, and it requires some ammo to reach, so hopefully you have at least one egg, a Full item, or a green melon (this is a potential setback, but between those items and the general lack of shooting for the latter half of this stage, I think it’s very difficult to get screwed over here).

It seems to run out of steam a bit toward the end, but maybe they didn’t want to wear down players who don’t solve the maze right away. This is a fun twist that’s quite different from what we’ve seen so far.

Oh, Lakitu’s Wall. I’ve said before I view this game as a “best of both worlds” transition between the reflex-testing obstacle courses of yore and the 3D collectathons to follow. This is a stage that definitely showcases the latter, but unfortunately is short on the “best of both worlds” aspect. The variety, scope, and interesting ideas on display is incredible for a single stage. But it gets boring and meandering for long stretches. I want to say “unfocused”, but I have a hard time committing to that, because stages like The Baseball Boys change up motifs drastically or don’t instill a particular sense of urgency into you, and I still consider them strong. Let’s just dive in and see what’s what.

To begin with, the pervasive pink continues, but this is a lot more beautiful than the previous couple stages, with a lovely twilight sky just starting to show stars. Right off the bat we meet Fat Guy, an obese Shy Guy who can shrug off simple jumps. We can use that to reach the platforms above, but eating him is probably more tempting. He supplies gargantuan eggs that succumb to gravity immediately once thrown. This causes the ground to quake and turns onscreen enemies into stars. It’s yet another cute visual gag that also has gameplay implications.

If we happen to lap up our tubby friend rather than use him as a springboard, there are egg blocks a short ways to the left we can use to ascend (oh yeah, this is our second “proceed left” stage). I like the options here, especially because there’s a fair bit of goods up top. We come across our first eponymous wall, with Lakitus peering out of holes and throwing Spiny Eggs at us. They’re the least of our problems, since they take their sweet time lining up a throw, they can be eaten for eggs, and they can be bounced off. It’s just their sheer numbers that may cause problems. We cross a Bandit hut, but have to proceed into a little alcove in order to retrieve the key.

Down below, we have some Mildes to use our giant eggs on, as well as a ! switch hidden in sponge-dirt. This is an odd one, since it’s not immediately obvious where it is, and it only yields a handful of coins. And oh yeah, there are some stumps to pound for red coins. This is the stage that really (incoming pun, pull up, pull up!) runs this element into the ground.

We meet the game’s first Bullet Bills next. They’re another classic enemy that we don’t need to feel nearly as threatened about. Yoshi can easily eat them, he can bounce off them for crazy heights (doing so here gets you a 1Up), and the blasters visibly expand when they’re about to fire. It’s kind of tricky having to pound down stumps blocking our path forward while in the line of fire, but unless you get greedy, it’s really no threat.

Next is an optional little area that seems designed just to show off the Fat Guy/giant eggs mechanic. It is kind of clever that the one case where enemies are guarding something valuable comes at the very end of the room, when you’ve possibly wiped out all the Fat Guys wiping out earlier enemy groups . Normal eggs can still get him out of the way with a bit of effort (or you can tank a hit), so it’s not really cheap.

Then we have to take a pipe down to get past a wall. It leads to a rather out-of-place segment reprising the falling rocks from 2-1. There are some valuables perched on a high ledge at the end of the segment, which is a little sketchy (since you’ll likely just be trying to cross the chasm alive). You can snag them with a well-placed egg, and between this and 2-1, you should learn that altitude is important in this situation.

Hey kids! Do you like pounding stakes? Because there are a bunch more, and nothing else of note for the next couple screens! And then there are two that are each about a screen tall. Not only do they cordon off some red coins and a flower, but one contains a red coin as well! On the plus side, you can use a spring ball to go soaring into the clouds, and use either clouds or some long jumping from the land to reach a suspicious ledge to the far left. Multiple choices and demanding some jumping prowess without threatening your life, both welcome elements. The ledge conceals a ! switch and a secret area, where we can ground pound through one of four shafts full of sponge dirt. One of them contains a flower. You have no way of knowing until you commit (it’s the second from the left). Fortunately, you can fire an egg up into that one from below and collect it, but if you happen to be out of eggs, the switch/passage does not respawn once you leave. It’s not very likely (and this is why it’s a good idea to always have a Full on hand, or at least a green melon item), but it’s also not very thoughtful of the designers.

Fortunately, the stage picks up for the home stretch. The Lakitus we got earlier were just the warmup. The true Lakitu’s Wall is several screens tall, and we can wreak havoc on them with Fat Guy eggs, bounce and flutter our way down, or fill up with eggs. It’s a fun little chance to blaze our own trail, and while it’s not exactly hectic, the projectiles from multiple angles keep us moving (in whatever way we choose).

Finally, with all score-related items collected, we end on something of a non sequitur. Our fourth transformation is a car…with stilts! Yes, as loath as Miyamoto was to follow in DKC’s visual footsteps, something definitely rubbed off. Unfortunately, the car isn’t quite as interesting as DKC’s Expresso the Ostrich, since the latter brings a ton of speed and extended jumps with his “no offense and run safely over small enemies” dynamics. Still, this is our only chance to take the car for a spin (unless we’re on the GBA, but that’s a long way down the road), and it’s an amusing ride. Using the stilt mechanic to snag higher platforms or pull the car up cliffs is an interesting concept. There’s only a single 1Up to be had for mastering this one-time transformation, unless you find a secret path that cuts your drive short and transforms you into the helicopter. Then you can snag a few more. So the car gets one moment to shine, and if you want to find everything, you should ditch it as soon as possible? Weird.

Pound Every Post You See Ever commits the unfortunate crime of being boring, at least for stretches. It’s also very confusing, tacking on a onetime transformation that doesn’t let you do anything Yoshi can’t do himself. But it does capture that “explore a cohesive world” feel that would define 3D platformers like Super Mario 64. It has a very relaxed feel that’s comparable to Bob-omb Battlefield. Aside from the rock chasm, there isn’t much precision platforming; you’re simply trying to explore, reach the highest heights, and overturn every stone. It’s one of the weakest stages so far, but there are interesting things in it.

The Potted Ghost’s Castle: It’s strange that the bosses of this world carry a “ghost” theme, while being completely removed from the rest of the world’s forest motif. Anyway, we get a nice view of the castle exterior before jumping inside, and of course the floor is lava for the first segment (with some cool torchlights in the background!). We see these pegs that sink under our weight (but not all the way in) that we never see again, so I don’t know why they bother introducing them. More to the point, we get a lesson on different types of platforms moving along paths at different speeds, with slow greens and faster yellows. A few Podoboos provide token resistance, and one shows off the ability to leap toward you. The platform you ride during this is nicely set up so it keeps you JUST out of reach for the first half of the ride, then you see it’s going to double back so you’ll have to deal with the foe. Of course, you can always eat it and gain temporary fire breath (again, there’s nothing to actually use it on).

The next room contains a couple more Arrow Lifts. For the newcomers who are only doing the sightseeing version of the tour, moving on is incredibly easy and risk-free. For the bold, the game steps things up here. We get to collect several coins (with reds mixed in) over a bed of insta-kill thorns. There’s also a pipe at the far end of the room. It leads to another train segment. This one’s much briefer than the first.

Afterward, we come to a dark span of pipes. You should always work left to right (or start to finish), and the leftward path reveals a very lengthy room with a false flower (it will drop down and roll at you if you try to get close, and simply laugh if you hit it with an egg), and several gaps with only a thin layer of sponge dirt protecting you. Meanwhile, a long line of Boo Guys are safely holed up in the ceiling, and they pass along sticks of dynamite, trying to drop them on Yoshi. In one of my favorite visual touches, you can ground pound to make them drop the stick prematurely. The one who dropped it will stare down after it in helpless shame, while his comrades close their eyes and shake their heads. The GBA actually added to this, with the next Guy in line looking back and forth in confusion. And again, this isn’t just showing off or being cute: forcing them to drop the dynamite when you want them to impacts gameplay.

You can actually use the dynamite to make picking up a (real) flower and some reds easier, but getting careless can result in them blowing up platforms and making your return trip more difficult.

You eventually come to a dead end with a pot on a ledge. We saw this setup in World One, but now we’re being plagued with dynamite from above. Still, it’s just a matter of patience. The pot yields a key, so we can take that and advance.

Next we see an extremely nasty-looking contraption: a huge weighty spike block with a barbed chain attached to the ceiling. We’re encouraged to hit the gear at the top, which retracts the chain and gives us clearance. The game also tells us we can lock the cursor by holding the (other) shoulder button. I don’t know if it ever mentions that we can also push/lock it straight up by holding Up. I guess we’ll see! In any case, this both hints that the game’s going to be asking for more precision from us and making sure we have knowledge to aid in that precision.

We’re back in the pipes themselves, and have the choice between a door and to the right. Again, save right for last, and open the door to find the return of Burt! Just a couple little ones, not a boss. I believe this is the last we’ll see of them, so wave good-bye (you know, before you murder them for a flower).

After a little more gear-target practice, we get another Arrow Lift-and-thorns session. The game lets us know that thorns can be destroyed with eggs. There is an egg block here, so we can do quite a number on these thorns in theory, but that’s really tedious and not especially worthwhile. It’s time to just trust those arrow-riding skills and ascend! This is yet another scenario that is more dangerous in its psyche-out potential than its actual layout. There’s no denial the game is stepping it up, but players who keep their wits about them should have no problems here.

We arrive at the centerpiece of the castle: a massive room mostly hidden behind transparent walls. There are platforms of several different heights, a bunch of flower pots, and several Bandits. The way out is locked, so we have to find the flower pot containing a key. It’s guesswork, but it’s a lot of fun using Yoshi’s athleticism to keep away from Bandits while finding them (or beating the crap out of all of them and searching at your leisure; feel free to tackle the room however suits you).

The last room is just a chance to smash a couple more pots in order to get some coins (I think they’re trying to tell us something), then it’s boss time!

I’ve heard this dude is called Roger, but neither version of the game or the manual calls him that, so I’ll stick to the formal Potted Ghost. We’re on a platform with bottomless pits on both sides. Kamek works his magic on a flower pot, and said ghost emerges. He’s one of the cooler creatures we’ve seen so far, with a transparent and constantly rippling body. He’s very expressive, ranging from fierce to cocky to frightened. Meanwhile, a couple Shy Guys attempt to push him toward you, cutting into your operating space and eventually driving you into the pit. They can move at a decent clip once they get going, but luckily Yoshi’s a lot stronger than two Shy Guys and with some aggression, you can end this fight really quickly (which again makes the GBA’s decision to use the full musical intro for the boss theme look foolish). But the Ghost has a couple tricks up his sleeve, and getting lazy is a great way to spoil a 100-percent effort. He spews three spectral blue flames that vaguely home in on your location before dissipating. They’re indestructible, so they need to be avoided. He’ll also lunge at Yoshi, a harmless gesture in itself, but one that can throw Yoshi into flames (or the pit behind him). You can crouch to reduce the pushback, but sometimes you can actually benefit from it (it can push you away from incoming flames). All in all, this is a simple battle as long as you pay attention to positioning. It’s creative though, and a nice break from “throw eggs at large round thing to win.” The Ghost has a highly amusing death sequence, where he plummets cartoon-style with a perfect expression on his face, with splintered floorboards flying up from the bottom of the screen upon impact.

The second world definitely presents a wider variety of ideas than the first, but the game seems to bite off more than it can chew occasionally. 2-5 and 2-7 are rather weak stages, for different reasons. Still, the game remains creative, and includes brilliant stages like 2-1, 2-2, 2-4, and 2-6, plus a cool world boss.

As always, thanks to Peardian for the maps.

Next time: Fun and games!

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (SNES)

Yoshi's Island Lakitu's Wall Mount