I remember 5 months ago, my wife surprised me with a gift. She bought me Yoshi Island DS 🙂 but after 2 weeks, she’s the one who played the game more than me. This surprised me more since I know that before she didn’t like and couldn’t enjoyed any platformer games.

My wife always panic when the game character has to jump over a pit or a moving platform, and somehow her character always fall into that bottomless pit 😐  Sometimes I couldn’t help myself laughing at her 😈

There are things why she’s able to play Yoshi Island:

• When Yoshi jumps, he can hover and stay longer in the air. This feature really helps the beginners. She said that it gives her some kind of confidence to jump over a pit or to a moving platform.
• There is no time limit in Yoshi Island. This is nice since she can explore the stage more. I also heard that women don’t like time limit in their games.
• There is no health bar!! Basically, in Yoshi Island, you can get hit as much as you ‘want’ as long as you can catch the flying baby Mario before the time goes out.

Yoshi is doing air walk

Maybe these are the features that game designers should consider for a platform game 😉

In the end, there are still things in Yoshi Island which I think too hard for the beginners, such as bottomless pit, lava river, spikey platform, or a big spikey ball chasing you. However, features like hover or no time limit, make the game less intimidating for beginners.  

Now, she is really good in Yoshi Island. She got perfect scores (100 points) in several stages/levels. Those who played Yoshi Island know how hard it is to get a perfect score (get all coins, secret flowers, and avoid all those enemies). I think she’ll be able to play the New Super Mario Bros or even Super Mario Galaxy 🙂