Yoshi's Island - #2 - Touch Fuzzy

[@tritiumH3]

Something I remember from playing this as a kid: you can tell which coins are secretly red coins if you look closely! Red coins have slightly more reddish highlights. And they rotate slightly differently. Such a neat little touch.

[@MHSchafer]

Something I learned: you know those flowers that spout eggs at an even tempo? You can speed up how fast they produce eggs by ground pounding near them.

[@ZorlockDarksoul]

The red highlights can occasionally signify a false positive, unfortunately. In certain levels, at least, most coins have red highlights, but not all of them are truly red coins.

[@alexpage4355]

@@ZorlockDarksoul You can still usually tell them apart, but in some places, yeah, the effect is so subtle that, unless you're seeing the red coins side-by-side with regular coins, it's _super_ easy to convince yourself that _every_ coin you see must secretly be a red coin in disguise.

[@redstrike0]

I always remember being really confused about this since growing up I could never tell the difference. Then I learned that's because in the GBA port they are indistinguishable!

[@KevinTheTimeGeek86]

Yeah, it's a nice detail. Unfortunately, they decided not to do that in the GBA version of the game. Which is incredibly annoying... :(

[@Wizdos0]

Touch Fuzzy Get Dizzy did more to keep me off drugs than the D.A.R.E. program ever did

[@coastersplus]

Supper Mario Broth had a technical breakdown of how most of the big bosses work, which I've linked and written up in the discord; will just copy the gist here to not risk YT eating my comment. Probably less effective explanation without the images, though. Basically: the bosses are built from silhouettes that get scaled/rotated/distorted, and then for coloring and shading them, it uses these "width map" cone images [triangular, but roughly shaded like a cone], where each row of the transformed silhouette is replaced with the row of the cone that has the same width. Then there's faces and other details or moving parts that are just sprites on top. Seems like a wild way of doing it now, and it's got it's limitations - the shading can look unnatural (being effectively pillow shading), I assume this is why the first boss doesn't rotate any since the pants stripes would break instead of rotating with it - but extremely cool tricks with the tech they had to work with!

[@Bedwyr7]

I'm recovering from a cold. Can I have some Super Mario Broth?

[@NotaWalrus1]

I like the way they're playing around with rotation in gameplay. It's a very Nintendo approach to game design where the moment they have the tech to rotate things they just start thinking of ways to enable new gameplay with this tech. It's not just graphical to them, it's an array of gameplay possibility.

[@KevinTheTimeGeek86]

Fun fact: In the German version of the game, the level "Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy" was given a name which has an acronym of LSD. I'm genuinely amazed they got away with that back then. :D

[@Ahrpigi]

"Touch fuzzy, get dizzy" is a phrase that lives in my brain forever

[@alexpage4355]

You and everyone else who has ever played this game!

[@vegetalss4]

I didn't even know it was from something before today, but it still lived in my brain.

[@jpohagan]

Remember kids, don't get high from touching floating fuzzy things

[@zutaca2825]

19:26 I don’t know for certain how they did those rollers, but it would be relatively simple to just deform a rectangular sprite for each of the faces of the roller. The same would apply to those falling walls.

[@LarkyLuna]

You mentioned the snes and I had to look up videos on how this looked on a CRT The well defined pixels are still gorgeous, but the CRT blur did wonders for the art style

[@Caterfree10]

Tbh CRT blur and game devs then taking that into account is why I really like how the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection handled the upgraded graphics. Don’t get me wrong, I love the GBA/FFRK style sprites, but the updated ones for the collection likely match best to what the original devs were aiming for in combination with CRT blur.

[@timothymclean]

1:59: Honestly, it looks even better at low resolution. Try watching at 240p to smooth out all those jagged pixel corners. (144p is too far.) 19:05: I mean, _all_ 3D graphics are very clever 2D effects. 5:18-28: Multiple Shy Guys on one stilt. 16:45: ...did that Yoshi just eat a Kirby? 35:20: Gravity. Yoshi's greatest nemesis. The reason Mario has to dump him into a pit.

[@safaiaryu12]

Ohh, thanks for the tip about 240p! It really does smooth it out!

[@Actual_Mr_G]

"Man these fuzzies ain't nothing" 2 seconds later "Dude, my eyes are made of rainbows, dude what"

[@Doomsword0]

These videos are my first experience with this game and my goodness the music is so dang good

[@henke37]

The ground wobbling is a relatively unusual hardware feature that the snes has: per column offsets for backgrounds. The background is just sin modulated per scanline scroll tweaking via HDMA.

[@fisherdotogg]

Yeah that tracks actually. So far as I recall, the SuperFX didn't really enable much messing with tiles as that effect would require- the most it did with tiles was make new ones and decrypt compressed ones on the cart?

[@mrsg1137]

It's always a good day for Yoshi's Island

[@d3v1lsummoner]

4:55 aside from 2d character art in 3d games that had a clear identity, later ps1 games like Megaman Legends and Threads of fate were putting out an early distinct 2d anime style and using advanced blocking and camera positioning like that used in Metal Gear solid. You also have 2.5d games like Parappa and Rakugakids embracing an illustrated look in 3d worlds.

[@pyrosianheir]

Weird middle of the night thought (when I almost always watch these, because work schedule) - It must be horrifying to be one of the enemies Yoshi eats. Grabbed by a tongue and quickly processed and trapped in an egg, knowing you can't do anything beyond wait for Yoshi to throw the egg. Hoping that wherever it hits, it'll free you instead of killing you. Or worse, knowing that you're already guaranteed dead, and just waiting for the moment when.

[@falmestreamless]

About the carrousel, it really is 2D and not 3D, this is and effect that goes well with cilinders, so you can see this method being used in Mario and Sonic games, the light and shadow on the object is a color control that makes it looks like it has depth. About the format, this is just transformation of the sprite (scale and strech). Imagine a simpler DOOM. Other places that nintendo uses this is (not equally) in Mario Kart (with the maps) and FZero (Also maps). It's impressive how many games (like Space Harrier and Sonic CD at Special stage) make this smoke and mirrors to look like 3D. I dont remember where, but there's a video that explains this veeeeeery well, almost like a tutorial (or is it a tutorial?), so the nearest I got at the moment is from Modern Vintage Gamer - How Graphics worked on the Super NES.

[@henke37]

SNES can't scale sprites. And the superfx chip isn't doing it either here. That's a background, just like the platform ghost and Salvo himself.

[@falmestreamless]

Also, I remembered, it's very different from my memories, the videos are : - Mickey Mania's 3D Rotating Tower - How Was It Possible? - Mickey Mania's "Impossible" 3D Chase - How Was It Done? Both from GameHut (Also, check the informations, I am not a oldschool homebrew dev)

[@the6ofdiamonds]

0:45 Black Yoshi is best Yoshi. 11:59 Ah yes, the second thing I knew about this game before Dan Jones played it. 14:56 Time for drugs! 15:16 Stoned Yoshi sure is a look.

[@CidAghast]

I feel like old school games do have some art design, but that is usually limited by the medium and taking the path of least resistance. Ill argue the NES was the first step in terms of sometimes having intentionality when it comes to visual expression. Not all the time but like if we look at Atari games, I struggle to understand what any of the visuals on the screen are ment to be but for NES games most games having that cute chibi style is a product of having just enough in graphics to be able to make the occasional meaningful choice when it comes to visual expression

[@ManjerArt]

I just noticed that the red coins are slightly different compared to the regular ones! They got more of a warm tone to them. Some orange shading, instead of cold yellow

[@safaiaryu12]

I fell asleep right after starting this video last night, and all I remembered was Yoshi getting high, which I wrote off as a weird dream. Imagine my surprise when I go to actually watch this video today and that wasn't a dream! 😂

[@VerbalLearning]

Shy Guys on Stilts is the pre-cursor to Card Games on Motorcycles.

[@absolootlynot]

Dan! You can flutter jump off enemies to gain extra height! Comes in pretty handy for some good schmovement, especially off of bouncing enemies :)

[@RagunaBlade13]

Touch Fuzzy Get Dizzy is with me forever, and man...Man the Zonked Out Look in Yoshi's Eyes... Also man, This game did scale up pretty quickly.

[@feldar]

How have I played this game multiple times and only now realized that the coins that turn into red coins have a slightly different tint to them.

[@BJGvideos]

People are saying that the GBA version didn't have that

[@arturoaguilar6002]

They really nailed the look of poor Yoshi tripping...

[@justember794]

0:15 I did not grow up with this game, so this music will always remind me of Scott Dewitt's beachball story from some EC panel a LOOONG time ago

[@TonyBIndie]

fuzzy's are great fun. I normally keep Yoshi in is " disoriented" state for the whole level

[@chaosspork]

Yoshi works hard. He deserves a little high every now and then.

[@stevethepocket]

Oh hey, this must be why Super Mario 64 used the invincibility-star theme (with a string underscore) for the special power caps. Because this game used the stars for weird one-off powers for that (and introduced said string underscore).

[@dekushrublily]

awwww, you didn't even try to eat the fuzzies! (it was funny as a child, still funny now 😂)

[@doublemaycare7171]

There are so many cute concepts and enemies codified in this game. For instance, I think this is the first Mario game with ground pounds? In addition to making Shy Guys a standard enemy (and giving them so many varieties!), I think it also introduced the design of these Bandits and informed the design ethos of the other enemies featured herein, especially for the Mario RPGs. We'll see more forthwith, but it's really interesting to see the birth of so many choices that have become essentially Mario Canon.

[@anja8595]

I've never played this game, but have played all the mario RPGs. So cool to see where all those enemy and character styles came from!

[@Landis963]

27:13 With a new instrument added to the level select mix: Woodblock!

[@TonyBIndie]

Red Yoshi is always the best Yoshi

[@alexstoyo7850]

A fun thing you could try, though hope it isn't too difficult, when you go back and redo the stages do a compilation of where you found the missing items.

[@Bedwyr7]

Re PS2, remember all the marketing hype of the advent of the "emotion engine"?

[@stevethepocket]

We got to see some games get more creative with art styles during the '90s over in PC-land, due to the comparatively early adoption of 480p and the comparatively late adoption of 3D.

[@linuxstreamer8910]

yoshi is as high as a kite & i love it

[@EfrainMan]

FYI, you can cycle through your eggs in case what's coming up next is undesired. Don't remember the exact button combo for that.

[@alexpage4355]

Press/hold Y (depending on which control scheme you're using) to charge a throw, then press down to cancel it before actually throwing it. The egg you're holding goes to the back of the line.

[@Thraim.]

Never ever slow down the animation rambling.

[@likky1]

fuzzied yoshi to me has the best idle animation

[@Krendar]

Gotta love a game by Nintendo about going on psychadelics XD

[@SusSpooder]

I wonder if the inspiration for the sorta sketched, painterly look was because this is a sequel and they're trying to show the world when it was younger and "less mature". Maybe its just because our star is a baby. Probably that 😅

[@miraprime474]

How loud did Carrie squee upon seeing high Yoshi? 😂

[@ICountFrom0]

I hope we get Yoshi's Story eventually, there's just something about it....

[@BJGvideos]

This was the first game i ever 100% back in the day. Gosh unless you count completing the Pokédex in Pearl then i havent 100%ed any other game

[@EricOrang]

15:00 ah yes the eyes of someone who is "dizzy"

[@TonyBIndie]

OMG. I forgot all about Poochie

[@timothymclean]

His planet needs him.

[@Guydude777]

Yosh! I'm pumped.

[@Landis963]

15:31 Coming soon, to a highlight reel near you!

[@likky1]

In years we will see this clip, in the highlights

[@mynacollyn4212]

29:52 that's a dog? I guess I know why poulterpup doesn't have any ears now

[@mynacollyn4212]

27:16 region

[@chaosspork]

Get Dizzy

[@jameshart2622]

Yep. Of all the things in this game, which I played as an adult, that one stuck.

[@Vangerino]

As someone who is interested in level design, I wonder why they put the infobox about the falling platforms at the beginning of the first level. It doesn't seem really necessary, since they do the standard setup where the first donuts are placed over solid ground, so that the player doesn't die even if they keep lingering, before ramping up the challenge.

[@alexpage4355]

That assumes the player actually _will_ linger long enough on those platforms to discover how they operate.... which is unlikely when a rotating platforms with coins surrounding it is right there, keeping them moving. So, the playtesters wouldn't learn the important lesson in the safe setting but being an auto-scroller, sooner or later they _will_ stand around while waiting for the screen to catch up, and that might be in a place that loses them a lot of progress, which could be seriously off-putting, especially for a world-1 level. Are there better ways they could've handled it to ensure the player _can't_ miss how they operate? Sure... but that's also looking at it with over 3 decades of extra accumulated game design know-how built up, and they already had the infoboxes for other things, so the brute-force solution was right there.

[@Vangerino]

Yeah, you're making a good point. A modern platformer would likely have an introduction where you have to stand on the donut long enough to make it fall down to progress. I don't remember how the NSMB series does it, though. Would be interesting to see how recurring elements like that get intoduced over the years. There's probably a GMTK episode in that.

[@samantha4304-d4q]

Cool!

[@favretheundead]

it so pretty!

[@pegasis76]

i hated touch fuzzy, get dizzy. it was one of the hardest levels for me. (im not good at games.)