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Somewhat off the radar, with no mention yet by NOA, Yoshi’s Universal Gravitation recently came out in Japan for Game Boy Advance. The game uses a special cartridge that can sense when you twist your handheld clockwise or counterclockwise, similar to the cartridge used for Wario Ware Twisted! (It does not sense when you tilt the unit left or right as did Kirby’s Tilt ‘n Tumble for Game Boy Color.) This twisting motion allows you to change the direction of gravity in the game, enabling you to climb up walls, roll boulders, move platforms, change the direction of falling objects, swing wrecking balls, and interact with your environment in a wide number of ways.

When you begin the game, you’re prompted to calibrate the cartridge by twisting it one direction and pressing A, and then twisting it the other direction and pressing A. The reason I bring this up is that with the language barrier, I missed the calibration process completely and on my first time through, played the game without any balanced center and with gravity shifting at the slightest movement, causing frequent and merciless deaths.

Even when properly calibrated, altering gravity with a twist of your GBA or DS takes some getting used to, especially in tandem with the control pad. Platforms or cannons might not respond as you expect, and jumping is difficult if you don’t mind which way is down. There may be unexpected results as well such as an enemy rolling down the hill and into your face. Aside from the twist sensor, A jumps and performs Yoshi’s characteristic hover while B sends out a good old-fashioned tongue-lashing. Unfortunately, although the game does keep track of your egg collection, you won’t be tossing those eggs at any crows or shy guys.

Yoshi’s Universal Gravitation is a platformer with a story-book presentation closely resembling the N64’s Yoshi’s Story. Each stage is split into about four different sections or rooms, with a door at the end of each room. The rooms in a stage may be significantly different from each other: the first room could have you jumping over moving platforms; the second may have you riding an amusement park ride; the third could involve rolling a ball over a xylophone; and the fourth might have you on a ski jump. The variety of gameplay and difficulty keeps you guessing, and the game consistently throws in new means of manipulating gravity to your advantage or, more often, disadvantage.

Some rooms even feature Yoshi transformations (Yoshi no Henshin) that turn the green dino into different types of vehicles. There’s a falling Yoshi balloon that you must guide between spiked corridors, Yoshi boats requiring you to tilt the water levels, and even a super-bouncy rubber Yoshi ball that can smash blocks and enemies in its path.

Yoshi’s Universal Gravitation isn’t just about simply getting to the end and out the door though. Each level also has a character challenge that you must complete. You may need to eat three fruit, or collect 30 coins, or kill 20 enemies, or rush through under a time limit, or avoid killing four enemies. Completing the requirement nets you a silver medal for the stage and finishing it nearly perfectly will gain you a gold medal. You need to have a certain number of medals in each world before you can advance to the next. Each world introduces a new type of character challenge and also has more stages than the last. So while World 1 only has three levels to complete, World 6 has twelve. Later stages also require you to complete multiple challenges or fight your way through auto-scrolling levels.

Even with about forty four stages, the game isn’t terribly long, but individual rooms can be difficult. An above average number of stages have deadly spikes on the ground or walls, and as you get farther along, the game begins to pile on more and more things to worry about simultaneously. One room has you tilting the system to ride a giant bowling ball above a spike pit. At intervals you have to jump onto platforms and then jump back on the moving bowling ball. All the while, you need to avoid boos and spiked enemies on rails. Oftentimes, when there are moving platforms with spikes below, there will be a number of things trying to knock you off. And because stages are set up as a series of rooms, the doors are increasingly placed in ways that will have you going through them by mistake before you meet all the challenge goals for a room. Doors may be lining the floor, forcing you to bounce up to coins without falling in the hole, or the “door" itself may bounce around as you twist the system.

Once you make it to the end (which skilled players might be able to do in a day), a new shuffle mode unlocks in the menu. Shuffle mode puts you randomly into different rooms until you die or fail to meet a room’s challenge. It then ranks your highest number of rooms completed on the scoreboard. There are several other challenge modes to unlock as well, so despite a relatively quick main adventure, there is some replay value. Getting all gold medals in the main game is no easy feat either.

Yoshi’s Universal Gravitation is certainly more than a quick gimmick. The concept of altering gravity via the twist sensor actually fits quite well into the natural challenges of a platform game. It would have been nicer if the game had some longer stretches and wasn’t so linear, but fans of classic Mario and Yoshi games might want to give this one a look.

Aside from the story scenes, the only snag in terms of importing is the initial calibration when you first turn the game on. However, once you’ve done that successfully, the menus are simple to navigate. Yoshi’s Universal Gravitation can be imported through our partners at Lik-Sang.com.