Smash Bros. Countdown - #1 - Mario Series

Here we are, the final day of the countdown. These last ten days have been a fun reminder of why I love the Smash Bros. series in the first place. Every franchise is filled with memorable characters, locations and music. The Mario series has all three of these things in abundance.

I couldn't even begin to talk about all of the different games, since there are, like,  a fucking million. He's been a hero, a villain, a tennis player, a golfer, a basketball player, a construction worker, a doctor, a party goer, he's been paper, he's taught typing, and he's even been to space.

He is his own rocket, powered by his severe success.

He's excelled in just about every genre, he's obviously a platforming legend, he's done sports, he drives, he's starred in several RPGs, he's been in fighting games, he's even had a shooter.

Yes, that's a bazooka.

There's not a lot that can be said about the 'stache king of video games. So I guess I'll just sort of rant.

Nintendo is basically the Disney of video games and Mario is it's Mickey. Like Mickey, Mario's face has been plastered on all sorts of merchandise. He's got toys, shirts, school supplies, even plates have the guy's face.

It's a me, breakfast.

Mario isn't the only one who basks in this popularity. Again, like Mickey, he has a huge cast of characters.

 It was unfortunate that they all had to get their heads cut off and put here.

The most important characters one would find in the Mushroom Kingdom, are Luigi, Mario's younger brother, Princess Peach, the monarch of the land, and Bowser, the leader of the Koopa Troop and the arch nemesis of Mario.

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The Mushroom Kingdom wax museum is weird.

A couple other characters to note are Wario, Mario's greedy rival and Waluigi, the Luigi version.

Just gangster.

Let's face it. If you're reading this, chances are you know all about the Mario cast of characters and the things they do. Mario is frigging everywhere. It's hard not to know him. You've played a game with him in it, I guarantee. 

Did you ever see THIS though!?

That's an official render by the way. They're for promotional materials for the next model of 3DS in Japan.

Well, I think we're done. Mario covers basically every aspect of Nintendo and if I wanted to honestly look at the series, I'd never stop typing. I'm also so freaking pumped for Smash Bros, that I can barely focus, so that's affecting this article.

I guess all I'd like to convey is that the Mario games are some of the purest gaming experiences you will ever have. If game has Mario in it, you know that the game isn't gonna have stupid bullshit in it. You know you're gonna have a game that is all about fun gameplay. There's no deep or hidden meaning, it's just a game in the most literal sense of the word, and you are going to have a blast.

In the no bullshit game Smash Bros. 3DS, Mario is lending himself, Luigi, Peach, Rosalina, who is a character from Super Mario Galaxy, Bowser, and Bowser's son, Bowser Jr. as playable characters. That is seven Mario characters. That's a ton. 

There's also a bunch of stages Mario is familiar with. We get 3D Land, based on areas from Super Mario 3D Land for the 3DS. There's Golden Plains, based on New Super Mario Bros 2, also for 3DS. We got Rainbow Road from Mario Kart 7, again a 3DS game. There's a stage called Mushroomy Kingdom, a stage modeled directly after world 1-1 from the original Super Mario Bros. Finally there's a stage just called Paper Mario, based on the Paper Mario series.

Sweet balls, this comes tomorrow.

So that's the countdown. We've seen all kinds of Nintendo based goodness and hopefully I showed you something you didn't know and it made you try a new game. That's really what I wanted to do, show you a bunch of Nintendo, and tell you what it means to me.

So now Smash Bros. comes out tomorrow. I'm so excited to start the next chapter of my Nintendo journey. It'll have all of my favorite characters and series and then some. So hopefully I'll see you guys online and, I feel you should do this with every Nintendo game, have fun.

Smash Bros. Countdown - #2 - Donkey Kong Series

Donkey Kong is a game that does something that's fun. I feel like I start all of these with some bullshit description that only exists to begin the article. So for this one, screw it, DONKEY KONG!

Good old DK got his start in arcades in the self titled game, Donkey Kong. In it, DK is the villain and he captures the beautiful Pauline. It's up to Mario, back when he was known as Jumpman, to rescue good old Pauline and defeat the dumb monkey.

RIP in Peace DK.

After Mario dropped an animal off of the frame of a skyscraper, he decided that shit wasn't enough emotional damage to a wild animal. He went ahead and kidnapped DK and locked him in a cage. It was then up to DK's kid, Donkey Kong Jr., to rescue his dad. This marks the only time that Mario filled the role of the villain.

He also destroyed the forest with some kind of chain maze. What an asshole.

Then to get away from Mario, Mr. Kong took up gardening. He got a greenhouse and started hanging out here. Only problem being, that the greenhouse already belonged to a dude named Stanley and he wasn't too jazzed about a huge problem being in his life. His solution was to shoot pure poison up DK's ass. Apparently, no one in the DK universe actually knows how to deal with big monkeys.

I guess this is a garden for horizontal lines and gold bars.

As for DK Jr., his hobby was a lot less fun, and a lot more why the hell was this a game.

He did math. He just did math.

After that, Donkey Kong had no action. Nintendo I guess was tired of animal abuse based games and decided to shelf the huge monkey. The focused on their other franchises, the ones not about destroying wildlife, and left DK in the dust. It wasn't until roughly ten years later, a glorious company called Rareware formed a harmonious partnership and began a reign of video gaming glory that would make all other games suck balls by comparison. Nintendo was so excited to be working with these new gods, that they offered up their collection of franchises and said, "Hey, pick one make a bomb ass game." Rare was like, "We want DK and we will rock your fucking world."

If you hear someone moaning, that's just me. Moaning.

Rare used CGI based graphics and stuffed them into a Super Nintendo cartridge and the result was Donkey Kong Country for the Super Nintendo and it was fan-goddamn-tastic. It took everything we liked about side scrolling platformers and made it legendary. It was one of the best games ever and I will fight you if you say otherwise. Just kidding, but really, I'll eat your legs. It was, and still is, one of the best games ever. It would be very hard to top.

You can rest assured, I am still moaning loudly.

The second game in the series is a god damn masterpiece. The music is perfect, the different worlds you visit are interesting and unique, and the team of Diddy Kong and Dixie Kong was really fun to play as. Seriously though, I can't splooge about the music enough. Go youtube the soundtrack for this game. Then after that, look up Serious Monkey Business. It's a cover album of the soundtrack and it does the actual music so much justice. This is easily one of my favorite Super Nintendo games of all time.

There was a third Donkey Kong Country, and it was fine, but after the pure majesty that was the DKC2, it was just ok.

Meh.

When Nintendo and Rare moved up to the Nintendo 64, they brought Mr. Kong to the next level. They started by giving Diddy his own racing adventure. The game not only solidified how good the Kongs could be, it also brought two beautiful animals into the world.

Look at that bear and that squirrel. Bright eyed and not being wasted by Microsoft.

Diddy Kong Racing was a fantastic god damn game. It's possibly one of the best kart racers of all time. Rare said, "Hey you like the Kongs on the Nintendo 64!?" We were like, "OH MY GOD YES PLEASE! HOLY SHIT!" and Rare was like "Oh yeah? Watch this shit."

Let's put it this way, I've finished moaning.

Donkey Kong 64 was Rare's Mona Lisa. It was perfect. It, with a few of Rare's other games, set a bar so high that so many good games are only fine compared to this. It followed five Kongs as they journeyed through eight huge worlds. Each Kong had unique abilities, and it was up to you to figure out the best place to use each of them. It is so good. Play it, play it so soon, or now even. Good lord it's tasty.

Then Rare had to go and sell themselves to dumb old Microsoft and DK and friends went back to being unused.

I shouldn't say totally unused, they used the DK character to star in a bunch of random games that focused on climbing and other stuff, but none of them had anything on the Rare games.

Oh cool. Playing bongos will make me forget how sad I am.

It wasn't until a little company called Retro Studios came and picked up the series ten years after DK64. They made a little game called Donkey Kong Country Returns for the Wii and it was brilliant.

We missed you, you beautiful animal.

The game was an amazing callback to the Rare games. Each level offered a new challenge, and the music and settings really made the games feel just like the classics. Most recently Retro made Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze for the WiiU, bringing the gorilla into the highest definition.

Whoa. These D's are so H.

So there you go. DK, Donkey Kong. He's had quite a journey, but it's all been fun.

In Smash Bros. 3DS, Donkey Kong and his nephew Diddy Kong are playable characters. As for the stage, we're getting one based on Jungle Japes, an area seen at the beginning of most of the Donkey Kong Country games.

Lol, that's an outhouse on the left.

So, there's only one series left. ONE. HOLY BALLS. If you can't guess what the one franchise one would need to talk about when discussing Nintendo, then what is wrong with you? Nintendo's mascot? It's-a me? He has parties, plays tennis, golf, races karts? No? Well, you'll see.

Smash Bros. Countdown - #3 - Zelda Series

The Legend of Zelda series lives up to name. The games are god damn amazing. Every one follows our hero, different incarnations of Link, and he usually ends saving the princess. Each one named Zelda and all are part of the Hyrule Royal Family bloodline. The villian is almost always the evil Ganondorf, who uses his powers to survive throughout multiple generations.

Dang he's cool. He's like if Ryan Gosling was unbelievably evil.

Now all of the games are fantastic. They all start off with a young guy who has no real skills and by the end helps out everyone in the world and the princess and blah blah blah who cares. None of the individual stories really matter all that much.

Except Majora's Mask. That game is a god damn miracle.

It wasn't until 2011 when Nintendo released the coffee table book, Hyrule Historia, and in it Nintendo revealed the official timeline. Fans had been guessing up until this point what order the games went in. They came up with multiple theories, most them involving the game Ocarina of Time. At the end of that game, Link defeats Ganondorf and sends him to a magic prison, and Zelda sends him back in time to warn a young Princess Zelda in order to stop Ganondorf before he has a chance to be evil. So while some fans assumed there was merely a simple, straightforward timeline, some people thought it split after Ocarina of Time. Since Link was sent back in time to alter history, the timeline splits in two. One timeline stays in the future where people deal with the world after Ganondorf, and the other is if the events of Ocarina of Time never happened.

Nintendo blew everyone's minds when they revealed the time line they made us shit our pants. They showed not a regular timeline, not even a split, but the mythical double split.

It's like Nintendo retroactively made this. COULD YOU IMAGINE?!

The timeline have both theorized timelines from Ocarina of Time, but also includes one in which Link is defeated by Ganondorf.

The timeline in which Link warns Zelda of Ganondorf's intentions sees Ganondorf's execution go awry. He escapes and leads an invasion on Hyrule with help from the Shadow Realm.

In the one from the future after Ganon gets sent to magic prison. He escapes and mounts an unstoppable invasion. The three Goddesses flood the world in order to stop the invasion. The people Hyrule are then forced to find new land. Eventually the people found New Hyrule and begin advancing their technology.

The timeline where Link loses sees Link and Zelda constantly repelling Ganon and his forces as he is constantly revived by various followers.

Look at this dastardly plan. What pure evil.

The whole series is very solid. Every game sees challenging puzzles, interesting and powerful enemies, and all kinds of weapons and equipment to get. As they've gotten newer, they've only gotten better at playing with that formula. The first one just threw out a bunch of concepts and didn't really think them totally through.

For example, thanks for straight up hiding entrances to places you needed to go under a random bush.

Oh. I guess it's not that--

  Son of a bitch.

The game holds up for the most part, but just throws you into the world without any kind of indication of what the heck you're supposed to do. Granted, this was the mid 80's and players got their money's worth from games in the form of cryptic nonsense and difficulty. If you look at it that way, it's great. If you look at it from a modern perspective, this game is kind of a mess.

That being said, I've played it like six times.

As much as I like the series (I'd say it's my favorite), I'm gonna keep this short. Otherwise I would go into the lore, and the world, and all of the characters, and the fictional history, and everything and it would get really freaking long. 

The series is so rich and has created such a full fictional world on par with Hogwarts or Middle Earth. Now that the series has started paying attention to the timeline, the stories are starting to fit neatly into the timeline and it's easier to piece together what direction the story is taking.

In Smash Bros., we get Link, Zelda, Sheik (Zelda's alter ego), Ganondorf, and Toon Link (Link as he appears in the New Hyrule timeline). For stages, we get a stage based on Gerudo Valley, the desert of Hyrule, and a Spirit Train, one of the trains that was built in New Hyrule.

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Now I can see what Mario will be like in an Indiana Jones movie.

The next series on our list doesn't have as much lore or story or anything terribly complex. All it has is walnuts, peanuts, pineapple smells, grapes, melons, oranges and coconut shells. So we'll see how that goes.

Smash Bros. Countdown - #4 - Metroid Series

The Metroid series is easily one of my favorites. They games always have an eerie atmosphere, what with you being alone in space and all. The series follows Samus Aran, a bounty hunter who travels to various planets on various missions and uses her power suit's arm cannon to mow down enemies.

The first game, Metroid on the original Nintendo, saw Samus visit the Planet Zebes, and traverse through the areas known as Brinstar, Norfair, and Tourian in order to defeat the main antagonist group of the series, the Space Pirates. The Space Pirates were cultivating a deadly, parasitic life form known as the Metroids, whose cardinal trait is their ability to suck energy out of living things and their only weakness being extreme cold. The Space Pirates were planning to use those life sucking aliens for intergalactic domination. Samus infiltrated the Space Pirate's base of operation and defeated the three Pirate leaders, Kraid, Mother Brain, and Samus' archrival Ridley.

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He's a dragon in space. That's fucking awesome.

In the end, all traces of Metroids were wiped from Planet Zebes.

If you finish the game fast enough, you would be treated to one of the earliest twists in video game history. You learned that your fearless bounty hunter, who has bee shooting aliens and blowing shit up, was a woman this whole time.

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Oh cool! A strong female prota-- aaaaand she's in a bikini.

The game was later remade in 2004 with the title Metroid: Zero Mission. It added another section to the game in which Samus loses her Power Suit and must pass a trial of the Chozo, an ancient race that once lived on Planet Zebes.

The next game got rid of all the colors in favor of portability. Metroid 2: Return of Samus followed our heroine as she journey to the home world of the Metroid, a planet only known as SR388. The Galactic Federation that regularly employs Samus decided that Metroids are too big of a threat to even exist. So the sent a team of researchers and the like to destroy them and report some of their findings. The Federation lost contact with the team, so another one was sent. One after the other, the teams were disappearing, so the Federation decided that the best person for the job was Ms. Aran herself. Once there, she destroys every single Metroid on the planet. While doing so she notices that on their home planet, they mutate into giant monsters compared to the smaller parasites we had seen prior. Samus eventually finds herself confronted by the Queen Metroid and makes short work of it.

It's like they want us to shoot them with missles.

As Samus leaves the planet, she stumbles across a Metroid egg as it hatches. The baby Metroid believes Samus to be it's Mother and doesn't inherently attack Samus. Samus brings the now domesticated Metroid back to the Federation in the hopes that researchers can learn more about the species.

The third game, Super Metroid for the Super Nintendo, takes place immediately after the last one. Samus visits the colony where she had left the baby Metroid. Research has shown that the Metroid's ability to draw energy into their bodies could be harnessed for good. On arrival, she finds that it had been attacked and the baby had been taken by the Space Pirate, Ridley. She chases him back to Zebes, where she explores the familiar setting once more.

 "This is where I got drunk and peed in the bushes."

She defeats her old pals Kraid and Ridley again, and also squares off with two new Space Pirates, Phantoon and Draygon. She ultimately ends up shooting all kinds of missiles at Mother Brain again in a similar fashion to the first game. The boss goes down, just like the first game, and all seems good. Except, OH SHIT, just kidding, Mother Brain has a new terrifying form that looks like if a Godzilla monster had a baby with a terminator.

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Metal as fuck.

The new and improved Mother Brain puts up quite a fight and nearly defeats Samus. Things look bleak for our armored friend as Mother Brain charges up a huge laser beam attack. But then, HOLY BALLS, the baby Metroid, now a large normal Metroid, swoops in and takes the full blast. The Metroid then uses it's energy transferring power for good and, rather than suck out energy from Samus, transfers all of the energy from the laser blast into Samus' suit before dying a hero. Samus shoots the balls out of Mother Brain with her newfound laser and escapes the planet as explodes.

Metroid Fusion for the Game Boy Advance saw Samus investigating an abandoned space station. A new parasite simply called the X Parasite had been discovered on the home planet of the Metroids and had gotten stuck on Samus' power suit. The X fused Samus to her suit and it had to be surgically removed. Turns out the only predator of the X was the Metroids, but since Samus single handedly shot every single one with missles in Metroid 2, there wasn't a whole that could be done. One scientist, however, managed to scrape together some cells from the domesticated baby Metroid and was able to slap together a vaccine. 

The vaccine's side effects included the Metroid's weakness to cold, but also let her be able to interact with the X without any problems. Samus learns that the X will copy whatever DNA it attaches to. As a result, she is confronted with genetic copies of aliens, humans, and even a clone of Ridley. As she explores the station she soon finds that she is being pursued by a genetic copy of herself. One that carries the weapon used to destroy Metroids, the Ice Beam, which Samus is now weak to.

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Sup.

Between running from the copy of herself and trying to figure out what the hell is going on, we learn that the space station is a replica of the SR388 environment, and it was being used to raise Metroids for some of the good purposes that had been discovered. The Samus clone, being made of the thing Metroids eat, is not psyched about that fact and decided to start shooting everything Metroid related.

Samus says, "Fuck this shit" and blows up the entire goddamn space station and flies away. So now the only trace of Metroid DNA resides in Samus' blood, thanks to that vaccine.

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Thanks Obama.

The next three games are all one trilogy, referred to as the Metroid Prime Trilogy. The three games are Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, both for the Nintendo Gamecube, and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption for the Nintendo Wii. The games switch gears and make the action seen through Samus' eyes. Gameplay is in a first-person perspective but other than that, the games are still Metroid. There is a fourth game that takes place between the first two called Metroid Prime Hunters, but literally no one has played it and it's pretty much boring filler in terms of story, so who cares.

The Metroid Prime Trilogy has it's own story that fits in between the first game and the second one, but doesn't really impact the story. It's kind of just what Samus was doing between games. What she was doing, was traveling to the planet Tallon IV to check out some disturbance. There she is introduced to a substance called Phazon and sees that the Space Pirates are all about that shit. Turns out that, SURPRISE, it's the Metroid's fault. More specifically, it's Metroid Prime's fault for being the source of the Phazon on Tallon IV. Samus blows it up and walks away, but not before the Metroid Prime absorbs Samus' suit and is reborn as Dark Samus.

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Half Daft Punk, half Tron, all baller.

Metroid Prime 2 sees Samus go to the planet Aether and solve their problem of an evil race called the Ing. Metroid Prime 3 ultimately brings Samus to Phaaze, the source of all the Phazon and blows it up along with Dark Samus.

Don't take the short explanations as me not liking the games. They're fantastic, some of Nintendo's best work, but I like the storyline with the actual Metroids more, and the Prime games are just kind of 'Adventures with Samus' so, not too much story there.

That being said the most recent game, Metroid: Other M, was part of that story line and it's a mess. The game received a lot of criticisms specifically for the story. The gameplay was different from the rest of the series as well, but, personally, I liked the way the game played. Rather than explore a planet and find a bunch of stuff, the game was now shoot everything that moved. That was fun. 

The story though was horse shit.

It sort of seemed like Nintendo had everything wrapped up nicely at the end of Metroid Fusion. No more Metroids, no more Ridley and the Space Pirates, no more anything that had been in the previous games. The Metroid Prime series was able to have it's own thing going on, so you would think that this game would do the same. 

Nope.

The game is set between Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion and the important things are that Metroid cells that were found on Samus' suit were used to genetically recreate Metroids to use for good, but UH OH, I guess some of the cells were from something else, that something else turns out to be Ridley.

So Ridley's alive, I guess.

The Metroids start going apeshit, because someone thought it would be a good idea to engineer them without their weakness to cold, and so Samus quarantines them all in a part of the ship and then blows up that part of the ship.

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"How come every place I go explodes?"

This is where things get retarded.

So, I guess Mother Brain had always been kind of a remote control thing for the Metroids. With out which, they just kind of, do... something else... so they created this android lady, MB. to act as a controller for the fake Metroids. They must not have thought it through, because even with this MB shit, the Metroids still went apeshit.

At the end of the game you fight another Queen Metroid and blow it the hell up, and then ultimately blow up the entire space ship, cuz that seems to be Samus' thing now.

The whole thing with the MB android and all the nonsense about Metroids being all controlled by radio waves or some BS is just stupid. We had these cool, feral, alien parasites that occupied space and for some reason, it was decided that they need radio waves to be more feral. Never mind the fact that we've seen both evil and good Metroids before now. No, now we need some dumb ass robot to control them so we can make them into a bio weapon. As if them sucking your life out of your head wasn't deadly enough.

I don't know. That whole segment of the game was just so weird, I'm not even sure I totally get it.

"Fuck it! Just put a robot lady in here!"

Ridley doesn't even survive the game. By the end, the Queen Metroid sucks his life out. The theory is that his body was moved to the space station in Metroid Fusion and that's how there was able to be a clone of him in that game.

So basically, the game's story just exists because, and at best fills in one tiny plot hole.

Not to mention they made Samus all introspective for some reason. Granted, in her older games, she was silent because 8 to 16 bits were not enough for deep narrative. In Metroid: Other M, they kept giving her monologues and flashbacks showing Samus being a teenager and decided that, as a teenager, she was a piece of shit.

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First it's this. Next thing you know, she's telling someone they smell like a butt.

For seemingly no reason, young Samus was all about opposing authority, even though she pretty much joined the military. After a while she grew up, but then became this overly obedient stooge. Throughout the game, your commanding officer will let you use various weapons and stuff. 

He doesn't at first because fuck you.  

There's one part of the game where Samus has to run through a lava filled section. Understandably, it's hot as balls and just being in room takes health away from her. It isn't until you've been running throught this hot ass room for a good 10 minutes does Mr. CO contact you and say, "LOL you can use the heat suit now."

Up until this game, if Samus was dying or something, she would do what she needed to, you know, not die. Here though, she's like "Tee hee, don't wanna break the rules," as her head melts.

Whatever. Aside from the stupid story, the gameplay is alright. 

So that's Metroid. The games are amazing. You get new moves that let you progress further and further into the game and feeling of growing and progressing is really satisfying.

For Smash Bros. 3DS we get Samus, as well a version of her without her Power Suit, called Zero Suit Samus, as playable characters. We also get the area Brinstar, from Planet Zebes, as a stage.

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Come out you damn game.

We are just winding down with these write ups. After this there's only three more. THREE. I really want these next few days to just go by fast, but as the next series taught me, I shouldn't try and force it.

Smash Bros. Countdown - #5 - Yoshi Series

The Yoshi series has the unique distinction of being it's own series, while also being a part of the Mario series. While Yoshi has had multiple adventures without his mustachioed buddy, his first appearance was in a Mario game. Super Mario World, for the Super Nintendo, saw Mario travel to Dinosaur Land and come into contact with one of the many Yoshis.

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Close physical contact in front of a fireplace.

The game introduced us to Yoshi's trademark ability to eat enemies with his long tongue. He could spit out whatever was in his mouth and use the projectile to defeat enemies that weren't lucky enough to be in Yoshi's mouth.

Yoshi's next platforming venture was the first game in Yoshi's personal series. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, took place during Mario's infancy. As a stork delivers Baby Mario and Baby Luigi to their parents, the evil Kamek tries to kidnap the tykes. After using his magic to see the future, Kamek saw that the Mario Bros. would grow up to be a problem for the Koopa Troop as well as Bowser, who was also an infant at the time. Kamek manages to kidnap Baby Luigi, but Baby Mario falls into a clearing. He's discovered by the Yoshi's who ultimately decide to help him save his brother. Using the ability to transform into vehicles using Morph Bubbles, he helps the tiny plumber save his greener half.

At least, that's the reason I was given to kill these screaming flowers.

The game gave Yoshi his other cardinal trait of turning the enemies he ate into eggs, which could then be tossed at his enemies. It also debuted his ability to kick his legs while in the air to gain extra height.

The third game also took place during Mario's diaper days. It didn't feature Mario in any way, but instead made Baby Bowser the source of unhappiness. He earned that title by literally stealing the happiness from the world by stealing what's known as the Super Happy Tree.

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I'd be sad too if someone took my Lisa Frank plant.

The game used familiar Yoshi concepts and had Yoshi eat an absurd amount of fruit along the way. It wasn't until the next game that game decided to try something crazy.

Yoshi Topsy-Turvy, for the Game Boy Advance, had a gyroscope built into the cartridge. By tilting the Game Boy Advance, the world's gravity would alter accordingly.

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See? See how I'm tilting my Game Boy right now?

It's hard to convey through screenshots alone, but the game would have obsticles that would need to be physically altered in order to progress. The game got very mixed reviews, but it's fun just to play with tilty landscape.

The next few games acted as sequels and sister games to Yoshi's Island. Yoshi's Touch & Go had you use the touch screen of the Nintendo DS to guide Yoshi to the end of each stage. Yoshi's Island DS was a direct sequel to the Super Nintendo game and not only saw Baby Mario help Yoshi on his adventure, but Baby Peach, Donkey Kong, Wario, and Bowser also go on Yoshi's adventure with him. Yoshi's New Island, for the Nintendo 3DS, had Yoshi and Baby Mario once again set out to save Baby Luigi.

A new Yoshi game is in the works. Yoshi's Wooly World for the Nintendo WiiU sees Yoshi as we all know and love him, but this time he's been given the appearance of a yarn doll.

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Warning: Game may be so cute you shit flowers for the rest of your life.

More often than not, Yoshi serves as a secondary Mario character. Most of his appearances have been in Mario sports titles and the Mario Party series. 

In Smash Bros. we get Yoshi as a playable character and Yoshi's Island, as it appeared on the Super Nintendo, as a stage.

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My son drew this.

With this article, there are only five days left until Smash Bros. I can count that shit on my hand. The next series helps me remember that all I have to do is not screw anything up and just roll with the punches and maybe things won't suck for too long.