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Home >
Review Archive >
Video Games
> Results: Yoshi Topsy Turvy
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by Cary Woodham
November 07, 2005
Yoshi goes full tilt in this creative GBA platformer.
Reviewed for GBA.
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Bowser is causing havoc on Yoshi's Island, so The Spirit Who Loves Books traps Bowser and all of Yoshi's Island inside a pop-up book! Yoshi isn't happy about that, so he intends to kick Bowser out of his home turf! The Spirit Who Loves Surprises gives Yoshi a very special power for this task: the ability to tilt the world!
Yoshi Topsy Turvy is a standard 2D platformer with a unique ‘twist.' Similar to Wario Ware: Twisted, the cute green and white Topsy Turvy cartridge has a sensor built into it that can tell when you tip the Game Boy Advance left and right. So when you do this, it affects things onscreen. Wrecking balls swing back and forth, enemies roll down slopes, carpets roll and unroll, and steep cliff walls become inclines that Yoshi can walk up!
You must get to the end of the level, but you must also complete a mission given to you at the start. These missions include things like eating a certain number of apples, collecting a certain number of coins or defeating a required group of enemies. If you get past the level and fail the mission you will move on but you won't get the happiness medal. In order to progress to the next world, you'll need a certain number of happiness medals that you can only get from successfully completed missions. Sometimes you even have to do two missions in one level, like collect coins AND apples! It sounds complicated, but it's not.
Yoshi sometimes, for no apparent reason, will turn into vehicles for certain parts of the levels, like a ship, hot air balloon, even a bouncing ball. Level design is short and sporadic. Sections of stages are only a few screens long and none of it seems really connected to one another. But it's not really a problem unless you like your stages to have a running theme. Yoshi's moves are trimmed down from his past games. He can slurp up enemies with his long tongue and float in the air for a bit after a jump, but he can't poop out and throw eggs, or even butt bounce in his Topsy Turvy adventure. It makes for a more simplistic gaming experience, even if the tilting sensor gameplay is a novel idea. The sensor only can tell if you tilt it left or right, it's not as sensitive as the tilt mechanism in Wario Ware: Twisted. But it's still pretty easy to get used to.
Graphics resemble the paper cut-out environments of Yoshi's Story, although the prerendered sprites and backgrounds don't look quite as good on the GBA. The GBA's rotating sprite effects are put to really good use in Topsy Turvy, though. Music is typical happy chirpy fluff, although it is strangely catchy. Even though Yoshi's abilities have been dumbed down, play control is still responsive. It may not be as good a game as Yoshi's Island or Wario Ware: Twisted, but Topsy Turvy is still a fun and creative game in its own right. If such a cute and silly game appeals to you, you probably don't care how silly you may look tilting your GBA around in public!
It's from Nintendo, the house that Mario built, so this game is safe for your kids, unless they just object to helping a cute little green dino find happiness medals. Some reading skill is helpful so you know what to do in a mission, but it's not required. There is lots of replay value to get all gold happiness medals. Most kids surely will like the cheerful themes of Topsy Turvy and the low challenge level won't frustrate younger players either. It's just a fun little game.
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> Results: Yoshi Topsy Turvy
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