REVIEW: Yoshi's Safari 1993 SNES
	By:Nintendo Type: Super Scope Players: 1-2 Difficulty: Easy

    No-one is ever sure whether the Super NES Scope add-on (you know, that bazooka thingie which was supposed to be a 16-bit answer to the NES Zapper gun) was an overlooked stroke of genius or a slightly rubbish idea. In any case, it didn't sell too well, so Mario and Yoshi's marketable muscle was thrown into the fray with Yoshi's Safari. Basically a semi-3D "on rails" shooter, with a good dosis of Mario faves thrown in, this was the Scope's only "big" game. The storyline involves the king and pince of Jewelry Land getting kidnapped, and their 12 saint jewels getting ripped off, resulting in an earthquake that split their kingdom in two halves (on account of the jewels having some kind of protective power). Peach, who is a close personal friend of the prince then rather bossily sends out Yoshi and Mario, who is somehow armed with a Scope bazooka, to righten this situation and beat the pants off Bowser and co (as if you hadn't guessed that they were behind this by now).

    Ninty have really pushed the eye-candy on this one. Considering that this game heralds from 1993, where polygons were still a long way off, it's attempts at achieving a 3-D look are quite impressive. Allright, you can tell that everything is really made out of flat sprites, but they're huge and colourful sprites that move about very well. Mode 7 never looked sweeter, with crisp backgrounds moving along smoothly (it's sort of a Super Mario Kart on turbocharge look). Seeing all those adorable Mario regulars fleshed out so lovingly and with such detail is enough to at the very least catch any Mario fanatic's attention. Playing the game, however, is a slightly more hit-or-miss affair. Granted, Yoshi's Safari does it's thing very well, but the trouble is that the concept of such 3-D shooters "set on rails", even when fleshed out with all the likeable freshness of the Mario universe isn't all that great. Just pump the screen full of bullets, with hardly anything imaginative or taxing for you to do. Actual player involvment is pretty limited. Add to that levels who are short, straightforward and hardly inventive, and the fact that you can easily beat this game in just under an hour, and it's all beginning to look a bit pants. As for the Scope itself...It turns out that you're your own greatest enemy with that thing. Sure, on paper, a big bazooka lightgun seems like a superb concept (and you know how many people get kicks from big guns-mostly younger men in my experience). Alas, it doesn't work all that well. You're forced to painfully squint to see into the tiny visor, which doesn't allow you to see all of the screen. Not handy when baddies are flying onto the screen from various angles. Holding that huge thing also ends up giving me shoulder cramps (maybe it's because my shoulders are too narrow and shapely for such a thing...well, maybe not), it makes you sweat like a thing posessed and peering into the visor will end up giving you golfball-like eyes (I also really need to wear contact lenses while playing this-it's resolutely impossible to use a Scope while wearing glasses). Bref, the way you'll look after an hour's worth of Scope-toting, people will think you've come back from a torrid rendez-vous with Jean-Claude van Damme during which something went horribly wrong. Not the sort of thing that makes playing an already flawed game smooth or enjoyable, really. I know, you can't really blame the game itself for this, but still.....

    And still, despite all these drawbacks, it's not -quite- possible to fully dislike Yoshi's Safari. You know that it's a very limited and flawed game, but the novelty concept and the gorgeous graphics, with all your beloved Mario faves and some groovy mechs thrown in will have you coming back once or twice, when you feel like a bit of mindless blasting with a little something extra, and it -is- possible to sort of get used to the awkward Scope (or if you're a masoshist, you might actually get to like it). There's also a clever two-player option, where one player fires the Scope, with the other controlling Yoshi-chan via the D-pad. It's not a bad idea, and makes the game less linear and predictable. But you'll keep arguing over who gets stuck with the Scope and who gets to be Yoshi. Tip: the one who is forced into using the torturous Scope will be treated to a full-on massage once the game's over. And I would like to point out that some of the background music is very well done, with the "float castle" BGM casting a spell on me. So there's still something to like in here, and it's quite a nice try, but alas, it's hardly enough to counterbalance the game's shortcomings, and certainly not enough to counterbalance the whopping price tag of the Scope. - Toasty 71%
[Key to the reviewing system]

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