The History of Yoshi's Development

the Mario series has a lush and vibrant history of lovable and eccentric characters but I don't think there's ever been one as weird-looking as Yoshi maybe that's kind of a heated statement but I mean look at this guy don't get me wrong I love him to bits but he's this weird reptilian dinosaur creature who eats enemies with his tongue and turns them into eggs and so this got me wondering where on earth did this creature come from and the answer I found was something I totally wasn't expecting allow me to share it with you [Music] hi there welcome to Thomas game Doc's so send your mind back to the mid 80s Kyoto Japan and if we look inside Nintendo's development building we'll find artists programmers designers all hard at work on the next big entry in the Super Mario series Super Mario Bros 3 for the NES composer koji kondo was off in his studio writing the now iconic melodies from the game designers Tezuka a gucci Cano and Tanabe all names you might recognise if you follow this stuff were planning out each of the levels before handing them off to the programmers to code into the game but producer and co-director Shigeru Miyamoto the guy who created Mario in the first place was thinking to himself he he had an idea one he couldn't quite get out of his head I want Mario to ride a horse this idea of Mario riding some kind of creature had been in his mind ever since the first Mario game but this time Miyamoto was fully resolved to bring it to life and so he drew a picture of this horse back Mario just a rough sketch and hung it on the wall near to where he sat he wanted the world to ride the back of a horse just like he dreamt now while this was going on Super Mario Bros 3 co-director Takashi Tezuka was watching where the confusion more than anything else he knew that Miyamoto was a fan of horses or so he thought and so upon seeing Miyamoto's drawing he mused I think he wants Mario to ride something unfortunately though this idea of Miyamoto's couldn't be brought to life the technology of the NES just wasn't up to the task at least it was impossible for Nintendo's programmers and they knew their onions when it came to game development and so Miyamoto's dream sadly never quite came to fruition however a few years later Nintendo's developers started work on the next mayor game Super Mario World not only that it was to debut alongside Nintendo's exciting new console the super and yes super not only a name but also in nature it was much much more powerful than the plain old NES and Nintendo were keen to show off this power to the world with this upcoming Mario game early on the team decided they wanted the game to take place all in one central location an archipelago in the middle of the ocean as the player progresses through the game they'll explore more and more of these ocean Islands discovering new locations hidden worlds and the much desired bonus rooms now the name the team decided on for this archipelago was Dinosaur Land straight away Takashi Tezuka had a brainwave what if they worked Miyamoto's dream of this horse back Mario into the game it would be perfect and so he instructed artists shigga Fiumicino to draw some kind of horse-based creature for Mario to ride it had to be kind of dinosaur II and reptilian too to fit the whole Dinosaur Land aesthetic and before long he no returned with sketch in hand tada wait um yeah something seems a little off this is certainly not the oshi that we know and love and that's not just me Takashi Tezuka wasn't loving it either he thought it looked more like a crocodile than anything else not great actually I want to quickly pause here for a second and explain where I got get from you see it's actually from this guidebook for Super Mario World that Nintendo released in the 90s and it's placed alongside this interview with Shigeru Miyamoto however Miyamoto doesn't make reference to this sketch plus the sketches unlabeled it doesn't say where it's from either and so as a video maker I'm assuming that this is the sketch that he no drew however there is a nonzero chance that this was an older sketch drawn by Miyamoto or something in fact the sprite scene here is exactly the same as despite from the original Super Mario Bros game however the drawing perfectly matches the descriptions that Tezuka and he know gives of he knows drawing they said it looked like a crocodile it was a large lizard thing and that's exactly how this sketch looks to me either way he now returned carrying this pretty bizarre looking sketch of a lizard dinosaur terrifying creature that wasn't exactly what Tezuka had in mind luckily Tezuka had some art skills of his own you see back on Super Mario Bros 3 he wasn't just a director he also drew all of the game's art all the visual assets himself it was Tezuka who decided to add eyes onto everything and when I say everything he wanted to add eyes on to practically every block every cloud Miyamoto had to step in and put an end to the madness anyway point is Tezuka knew how to draw a thing or two and so he started sketching out a simple design which he no could use as a guide now I don't think any record of this sketch still exists trust me I've had a good look I really think has been lost to the mists of time either that or Nintendo are hoarding it in a cellar deep down under their HQ either way this sketch proved incredibly useful to he know who quickly drew up some much better-looking drawings and sprites it still took a little refining though at first they've looked pretty different when you picture Yoshi it ain't like this actually the only true record of these early sprites comes from this blurry photo Nintendo shared a while back so huge props to super blue e27 for 9 from the sprite as resource who painstakingly recreated them by hand anyway he no continued to fiddle with these sprites changing small detail here and there until eventually he ended up with the Yoshi that we know and love or at least almost he needed to add some animations first and there's one animation out of them all that has caused a bit of a stir over its lifetime this one let me play that again but slower that's right it's the animation that plays when Yoshi sticks out his tongue you see the myth was always that Mario was punching Yoshi to get him to stick out his tongue across playgrounds throughout the world children were debating whether or not Mario the tyrannical plumber was punching poor Yoshi in the head but the consensus the internet generally landed on was no Mario wasn't punching Yoshi as blog supper Mario brought pointed out a few years back yo she starts flinching before Mario sticks out his hand look again si plus the game's official art shows exactly what's going on here Marion is pointing that's all at least that's what we always thought in an interview from 2017 sugar fuming he know had a pretty stunning revelation for us many people thought Mario was pointing forward and saying go and that's why Yoshi sticks out its tongue actually we did the animation with the idea that Mario is hitting Yoshi on the head and Yoshi is sticking out its tongue in surprise there's even a balk sound but we thought people would feel sorry for Yoshi so we decided to pass it off as Mario saying go and with that surprisingly brutal animation added the character of Yoshi was almost complete the only thing left was to get him added into the game Takashi Tezuka wanted to make sure Yoshi was approved by Nintendo as soon as possible so he kind of forced the design through telling the team it's related to turtles in fact that's why Yoshi has a shell on his back that's right this thing here isn't a saddle it's actually a turtle cell whose purpose was to make it clear that Yoshi was related to all the other turtles from the game and therefore the character should be approved and clearly it worked Yoshi did in fact make it into Super Mario World plus he received his very own game 5 years later Yoshi's Island there's actually a to talk about in regard to that game but I'll save that for some other time Yoshi went on to become a Mario series staple featuring in his own series of Yoshi's Island games plus every single Mario spin-off Under the Sun tennis check golf check go-karting check and I have to say I'm glad I like Yoshi a lot there's something about this little guy that's just really endearing and that could only have come to fruition due to the constant iteration and reiteration of Tezuka and he no I mean could you imagine if he still looked like this what a dark dark dystopia that would be of course we mustn't forget Miyamoto's part in this all either this now ubiquitous character this whole legacy of games and spin-offs and merchandise it all came from a simple idea he had back in the 80s and a rough sketch he put up on the wall hey before you go I felt I should note there's another possible influence on Yoshi check out this guy Tama gone from an old NES game called devil world it's essentially a bizarre pac-man blue and the game's designer was none other than Shigeru Miyamoto as I'm sure you've noticed the main character Tama Gong has a lot in common with Yoshi and I'll be honest I don't know how he ties into Yoshi's creation devil world is a game Nintendo really swept onto the rock considering it's full to the brim of religious symbols it's called devil world for goodness sake plus at its core it's not much more than a pac-man glutton and so I really wouldn't be surprised if this Tama Gong character really did bear some influence on Yoshi's creation however if that is true I really don't think Nintendo are likely to tell us I think this is one mystery that will remain unsolved anyway follow me on Twitter at Thomas T docks for updates on future videos plus you can subscribe to this channel to see those videos as soon as they come out either way I'll see you next week bye

Channel: Thomas Game Docs

Views: 669,684

Keywords: Nintendo, Yoshi, gaming, NES, SNES, Super Nintendo, Super Mario, Super Mario Bros, Mario, Luigi, Yoshi's Island, Nintendo Online, Thomas Game Docs

Id: iGOWKHwD4s4

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 20 2019