A-Z Challenge Letter Y

Y is for Yoshi!!!!!

Yoshi, known as Yoshi's Egg (ヨッシーのたまご Yosshī no Tamago?) in Japan and Mario & Yoshi in Europe and Australia, is a puzzle video game developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo. The game was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy consoles. Both versions were first released simultaneously in Japan on December 14, 1991, and then released in all other regions the following year.

In Yoshi, the player is tasked with clearing monsters from the on-screen playing field. The monsters fall in from the top of the screen to build vertical stacks; the player must prevent a stack from growing too high such that it exits the play field. In order to so, the player swaps and moves the stacks about such that falling monsters collide with identical monsters stationed atop the stacks, causing them to be removed from play. Yoshi offers both a scoring-focused single-player mode and a competitive two-player mode.

The NES version of Yoshi was made available for purchase on the Wii Virtual Console in 2007. The game was then re-released on September 1, 2011 as a downloadable title on the Nintendo 3DS, available only to members of the Nintendo Ambassador program. Yoshi is currently planned to be made available for purchase in the Nintendo eShop at a later date.

Yoshi is a falling block game in which the player is given a playing field that is divided into four columns. Monsters, which consist of various Mario enemies, appear at the top of the screen and fall into each the columns, turning into blocks as they land and creating stacks that incrementally grow in height. The main objective is to prevent the four stacks from growing too high by eliminating blocks from the field; a game over occurs when any of the stacks crosses the black line drawn across the top of the play field.

To eliminate a block from the top of a stack, it must come in contact with a falling monster that matches it. For example, if a Goomba falls directly onto a Goomba block, both will be removed. The player controls Mario, who resides below the playing field and has the ability to swap the positions of any two adjacent stacks at a time. Thus, the player is required to switch around the stacks to ensure that the monsters fall into the correct places. Points are awarded for each set of monsters that are eliminated.

In addition to the four different types of monsters, two halves of a Yoshi eggshell will also fall. The bottom eggshell half behaves like a monster: it disappears when it comes into contact with another bottom half. However, if a falling top half comes into contact with a bottom half, the two will join and hatch a Yoshi, earning the player bonus points. Furthermore, if a stack of monsters grows atop a bottom half and a top half is then added, all monsters between the halves will be encased and eliminated. Larger Yoshi characters will hatch depending on the number of monsters encased, which also increases the number of bonus points awarded. If a falling top half does not have any bottom half to join to in the stack it touches, it is automatically removed and no points are awarded.

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Okay this may "show my age" but I'm only 24 and I played this game to death!!! I would spend tons of time on this game. It is addictive and so much fun! Like all tetris type games as you increase in levels the speed increases and it becomes more difficult to keep the stacks low. However with this game you have the shells. If you have a bottom shell on the bottom row and you have four other things on top of it and then you get the top egg to fall on your stack the egg with eat through the four other blocks to make the Yoshi egg. It is really helpful if you get in a bind. 

What was your favorite Yoshi game?