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Mario curmudgeons despair. I’ve been playing videogames for most of my life. I know the rules, for they have barely changed since Space Invaders. Turn and fire. Turn. Fire. Fire, turn. The controls may have evolved from two directions to four, from four directions to eight and from eight to circle strafe, and the days where a single bullet is all that lies between you and failure are long distant, but it still remains one of the few constants in videogames. Turn. Fire. Catch? Touch? Draw? What the fuck? Where did that lot come from?
The genius of Yoshi Touch & Go (or Catch! Touch! Yoshi! if you’re fond of punctuation) is as simple as this… It takes all of the acquired skills you’ve fought so hard for and throws them out of the window, places a stylus in your hand and… Catch... Touch... Draw…
You’re back where you started. It’s not so much a question of learning how to play this one game. It’s about desperately trying to forget everything else you’ve ever learnt before. Bad guy heading towards Mario? Forget it, he can’t turn and he sure as hell can’t fire. You’d better find another way of dealing with the problem. Fortunately, the game gives you plenty of options for dealing with the bad guys. What at first appears to be a fairly limited palette of tools – drawing clouds basically – gradually morphs into a beautifully balanced range of techniques.
Before you know where you are, you’re scribbling, scrubbing, blowing and generally coaxing wonderment out of the DS. Slow and steady will get you far in this game, but risky play will net you huge rewards – want to bounce Yoshi into the top screen? You can. Want to herd the bad guys into multiple coin bonus-boosting bubbles? Sure, go ahead. Want to play safe and egg-bomb your way through a tough bit? Why the hell not?
Forget the confusingly monikered Mario 64 DS, this is the game the DS was designed for. All of which begs the question… Why did Nintendo even bother putting a d-pad on this marvellous little machine? April 2005
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