Specifically, as perceived by dinosaur tongues.
Different species perceive flavor in different ways. This is something you could probably intuit given the widely-commented on smelling power of canine and swine.
For those unaware, taste and smell are intricately linked senses. A head cold can mess with your sinus, and ultimately make food taste weird.
Theropods - strictly upright dinosaurs that are largely obligate carnivores - are the ancestors of our modern birds. Yoshi's posture indicates that he is a theropod, although some ornithischian were likewise upright walkers. The diet is the key: the "bird-hipped" ornithischians were obligate herbivores - and Yoshi is not. His omnivorousness, upright posture, and presumably three claws inside his shoes make him a theropod.
What does the exercise in Linnaean nomenclature have to do with taste? Yoshi cannot taste sweet. This is not even up for debate. All birds have lost the genetic molecule to detect sweetness, which means the evolutionary departure must date back to before birds separated from more-dinosaur like forms.
Obligate carnivores - which the evolutionary stock for modern birds almost certainly were - really only detect savory, salty, and bitter flavors. The first two deal with the tastes of their prey and the last is a defense for detecting spoiled food. Even birds with diverse diets, like Yoshi, only add a fourth flavor: sour, used to detect unripe fruit.
Hummingbirds have re-evolved their taste for carbohydrates by modifying their savory sensors. They don't eat savory food and so they are repurposed for sweetness. They still lack the physical structures for detecting and genetic compounds related to tasting sweetness that other animals have, they just found an adaption.
That does mean the Mysterious Book screenshot saying the Crazee Dayzee "tastes sweet" must be written from the perspective of the book, not Yoshi. Yoshi would not be able to taste Dayzee's sweetness, just the suffering of its crushed flesh.
I believe it screams. Yoshi, and his dinosaur hearing, would hear it clearly.
Jon is out this week. This is a transition that is akin to giving a new driver a manual transmission with a completely fragmented clutchplate. It doesn't matter.
James took to the RFN Bluesky to ask for emails. And you rewarded his... panicked realization that there was a dearth of content this week and a lack of motivation to do anything about it.
This week we are asked to explain the state of "modern" light gun games, which means we spend the majority of our time talking about things that came out nearly 20 years ago.
We are also asked to identify games that just need to be paced better.
It fell to us to predict which of three impossible things will happen first - what was clearly a setup to put us in position to talk about a Rexian Bargain. We are calling it that now.
Our fourth question asks us, the masters of predictions, to look forward ten years and predict the entire future of the console space.
Question five is a simple proposition: what's the weirdest experience you had related to Radio Free Nintendo?
Our final, an impossible sixth question, asks what Yoshi would think we tasted like. The answer, as we discussed, is meaty.
...I really need to preview emails before we start reading them.
