Ever wonder about Yoshi’s backstory?

Hazel Plancarte, staff writer|December 16, 2022

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Picture of Yoshi and the sky.

Background

Yoshi is one of the well known characters from the Mario game franchise. He’s known for being Mario’s companion. Also, he has special abilities to help him with his quests.

Introduction

Yoshi’s character was initially inspired by another Nintendo game called Kirby’s Dream Land. Kirby swallows his enemies and gains special powers, connecting to Yoshi in how he can swallow up enemies with his tongue or eggs that he lays when he swallows an enemy, and gains abilities like breathing fire. Also Yoshi was inspired by an image of Mario riding a horse that Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto drew in the ’80s. I got this information from kidadl.com and vg247.com.

Early Design 

Nintendo made a companion for Mario: Super Mario World’s Yoshi. Apparently Yoshi looked like a dinosaur of some sort. Yoshi’s early sprite is in November of 1989, in which the iconic dinosaur looks more like a sad turtle. His full name is also T. Yoshisaur Munchakoopas. My information is from gamedeveloper.com.

How he became so popular

Yoshi became so popular in 1955 in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, which served as a prequel to the original game where the player controls Yoshi and not Mario or Luigi. With this status Yoshi was now confirmed as a front-line mascot. And to date Yoshi has appeared in almost 90 different video games. Yoshi would get his own outing on Nintendo’s new 64-bit console, the N64.   

Why Yoshi Was Created

Yoshi was created when Shigeru Miyamoto first designed Yoshi for the game Super Mario World. His first appearance is on the cover of Super Mario World, which is also his debut in video games. Shigeru Miyamoto (A Japanese designer that created the Mario games) wanted Mario to ride an animal companion after the completion of Super Mario Bros. But, from technical restrictions it kept Mario from being able to Ride Yoshi. With the development of the Super Famicom in 1990, Yoshi could be created.  

I interviewed a student from AJMS and asked them about my presentation. This student said that, “Yoshi is a great character with an amazing backstory to him, and an amazing character design and more people should know about him.”