Kirby's Epic Yarn floored everybody at E3 this year, largely because of its unique aesthetic: everything, from Kirby to the enemies to the environments, are made of yarn or string. You can say it's the same sort of look Little Big Planet is going for - everything is made of something. A lot of onlookers forgot that Kirby's new 'do was not unique, and in fact appeared on a much-derided Nintendo 64 game called Yoshi's Story, itself a pseudo-sequel to the celebrated Super Nintendo title Yoshi's Island.

This game is widely disliked. It's usually chastised as being too easy, too "kiddie," or "Not Yoshi's Island." Developed by Nintendo EAD and released with some amount of fanfare, Yoshi's Story was knocked for its simplicity and extremely short length. That, and the outrageous price of cartridge games ($60 in 1998 was not cheap) led to poor sales. Indeed, the game is incredibly brief. Players need only complete six stages to beat the game, and each of those six stages can each be finished, literally, in a matter of minutes. 

This would be the Super Happy Tree, which sounds like something out of a Japanese game show, and is the McGuffin that the little chameleon-dinosaurs need to rescue.

The goal of each level is amazingly simple: eat 30 pieces of fruit. Fruit literally dots the landscape, and can further be discovered by doing ground-pounds or completing certain tasks. You can easily find and consume 30 pieces of fruit - WELL above the daily recommended dosage - in about five minutes. Additionally, each "world" in the game is made up of four stages, which are numbered one through four to denote their difficulty. There is some strategy, here as you unlock the more difficult stages by finding enough Heart Fruits in the previous world. So, if you have the drive, you can actually make the game as hard as you want it to be.

"I'm super! Thanks for asking!"

The trick with the fruits is that, for the best score on each stage, you must find 30 melons. These are not often lying around. Instead, they require sniffing at the ground (an annoying and time-consuming activity), winning mini-games, and completing races. Luckily, after completing a stage in the main game, you unlock it in Trial and Practice Modes. There's also plenty to find and do. Mini-games dot the landscape, and there are two "extra" Yoshis to finda; a black one and a white one. They have some special powers that the normal Yoshis don't have, and it's also just plain bad ass to play as a black Yoshi.

Yoshi's Island has been turned into a pop-up book by Baby Bowser, who has stolen the Super Happy Tree. Don't you hate it when turtles steal trees and turn your house into papercraft?

The most notable feature of Yoshi's Story is its presentation: everything is made of something. Some bits are inflated burlap balloons, many backgrounds are made of cardboard and string, and a few levels look like they're made of yarn. I wonder if Nintendo actually looked back at Yoshi's Story while developing Kirby's Epic Yarn and said "we should try that again." Yoshi's Story is also ridiculously colorful. Even the last world, Baby Bowser's Castle, is rife with chromatic corrugation. I can't say the same for the sound effects, though. Nintendo saved money on this one by only creating background music for about half of the stages. The rest of the audio is all ambient noise, which is provided by Shy-Guys and the titular dinosaurs.

One wonders if we have this game to thank for the awful implementation of Yoshi in Super Mario Sunshine.

The Yoshis make noises that would embarrass an 8-year-old girl. They all sound like toddlers on the brink of discovering language, using the power of onomatopoeia to describe their situations. Even when standing still, these tiny theropods won't shut up: "Bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum" they chant, rhythmically. The Shy-Guys perform much the same way, walking along with a constant, "hup-ho, hup-ho" as if they're in the Shy-Guy military. Other creatures make noises too. It's just a never-ending parade of sickeningly cute baby-babble.

If you can get past that, however (perhaps by pressing the "Mute" button), Yoshi's Story is actually quite fun, assuming you have the self-respect to find all those melons. This is classic platforming action at its best, with a wealth of unique ways to get around, including Poochy, grapple points, slowly-descending hover platforms, and sky dragons. Many enemies present interesting challenges to defeat, and the boss encounters, while few and far in between, never fail to be interesting and, at times, challenging. And hey, there is some pyschodelic stuff in the game, I'm not even kidding. And it's available now on the Virtual Console, and $10 is a lot better than $60.