At first glance, the Nintendo mascots Yoshi and Kirby don't really have all that much in common - one is a green dinosaur-like thing and the other a round pink blob. Both enjoy eating, both can kind of fly a bit, and both have a penchant for red shoes. And before you suggest we're clutching at straws here, we have good reason for making the comparison, as Yoshi is set to star in his own textile-themed adventure. Currently under development by the people who bought us Kirby's Epic Yarn for the Wii - which was only the greatest platformer we've played this entire generation, calling us excited about this one would be an understatement.
Not too difficult, extremely cute and full of charm, Kirby's Epic Yarn was a game that seemed to get just about everything right. With the greedy puffball gobbling up a magical tomato, the pink puff found himself banished to Patch Land, and turned into a woollen outline of his former self. With the help of the Kingdom's Prince - the grumpy Prince Fluff, the two set out on a co-op adventure to track down seven magical threads to stitch the world back together and get rid of Yin-Yarn once and for all. With worlds entirely themed around textiles, each level was packed with interactive bits and bobs - there were patches to pull off to reveal new paths, stitches to pull tight to move platforms within reach and even a poor teddy bear with a torn paw to help out. And best of all were the new transformations Kirby and co. could adopt - a UFO that shot lightning bolts, a giant tank with a big boxing glove on the front, and best of all, a fire engine that shot water.
Many of the transformations had both players working together - with this one the second player can shake the Wii Remote to give the Kirby-boarder a bigger jump.
Rumours emerged several months ago that a Yoshi's Epic Yarn may be under development - although at the time, it was thought the game would be heading to the 3DS, rather than the Wii U. Officially announcing the now much less snappily titled "Yarn Yoshi" in an online video, it's safe to say Nintendo are playing their cards fairly close to their chest - all we really know so far is that it'll star a woolly version of Mario's noble steed, Yoshi. Much like Kirby's Epic Yarn, Yarn Yoshi also marks the Yoshi's first appearance on a home console for a rather long time - with 1998's Yoshi's Story on the Nintendo 64 being the last time Mario's trusty partner saw a solo outing. Long-term Yoshi fans will also be pleased to hear that chief Yoshi creator Takashi Tezuka is pulling the strings behind the new game, in collaboration with Good Feel of Kirby's Epic Yarn and Wario Land: The Shake Dimension fame.
From the looks of it, Yoshi has two different forms - one a simple thread outline, and another a proper three-dimensional stitched-up Yoshi. To change from the former to the latter, everyone's favourite green dinosaur simply has to gobble up an enemy, before briefly ducking into an egg-cocoon and emerging fully knitted up. We're imagining this'll effectively give Yoshi two 'lives' in a similar way to Mario - larger Mario can take a single hit before he shrinks down to a smaller size and loses his hat. This kind of suggests you may have a stock of lives instead of the limitless supply we got used to in Kirby's Epic Yarn (although you did lose a chunk of your collected beads for each death, so it wasn't completely without penalty).
Note the Nintendo Land-esque trees in the background.
We have loads of questions about the new game, but none perhaps so pressing as the matter of co-op - so far all the pictures have shown a single solitary Yoshi. Kirby's Epic Yarn let a second player join in as Prince Fluff, so perhaps we'll see a differently coloured Yoshi for the second player - or perhaps even the return of Prince Fluff (after all, how many different yarn worlds can there be out there?). Given that the previous Yoshi games have also featured a veritable rainbow of Yohshis, we may have another four or even five player epic on our hands. And if it does turn out to be single player - darn. But we're sure we'll still love it anyway.
With just three screenshots to drool over at the moment, and a scant few seconds of video courtesy of the recent Nintendo Direct, it's safe to say we know very little about Yarn Yoshi at the moment. We're imagining more information will trickle out in the coming months, perhaps with a massive blow-out at this summer's E3 show in LA - along with more info about several other of Nintendo's big hitters.
