Hands on with the DS-bound Yoshi's Island 2
Use Yoshi's sticky, stretchy tongue to capture enemies and save floating babies
Among the hardcore, the debate still rages as to whether Yoshi is a dragon or a dinosaur. For everyone else, the green reptile with the stretchy tongue is unequivocally known as one of Nintendo's cutest characters.
Cute isn't always the best things to be in the hard and brutal world of gaming, of course, but our hands on session with Yoshi's Island 2 (currently a working title) suggests his charms are being well-employed.
A typical Nintendo 2D platformer, the twist in Yoshi's Island 2 is the appearance of baby versions of Mario, Peach and Donkey Kong.
At any time one of these mini-icons rides on Yoshi's back as he rushes around the island levels, trying to work out what's happened to the kids who have disappeared from the island's schools.
Each baby gives Yoshi a different ability. For example, Peach's parasol means he can float higher in the breeze.
The babies are rather sweetly swappable at a stork station, which are dotted around the levels. When you activate one, a friendly stork flies in and drops off the baby of your choice.
But with the babies also comes vulnerability. If an enemy hits you the baby will float away in a bubble, and you have to use your tongue to bring them down to earth again before they vanish.
You'll also be relying on Yoshi's tongue to capture enemies that you then expel as eggs, either spitting them off the screen, using them as weapons against other opponents, or firing them to trigger interactive items in the environment such as magical steps. When you're doing this, the game automatically launches a continually-rotating arrow that points in the direction the egg will be fired, adding a certain demand for swift-fingeredness to the experience.
As the game is seemingly designed for a younger age group, however, we would expect it to remain a generally gentle affair, without too much hardcore action.
You can check out Yoshi's Island 2 for yourself via the "Watch It!" button above. It doesn't yet have a UK release date however, and it might not even make it before early 2007, so prepare to be patient.
