Yoshi's Cookie

Yoshi's Cookie

NES - USA - 1st edition.

Developer Home Data, Tose, Bullet-Proof Software Publisher Nintendo Published 1992-11-21 Platforms Game Boy, NES, SNES Genres Block pusher, Passive puzzle, Puzzle, Single-screen, Match-making Themes Cartoon Series Mario Multiplayer Simultaneous versus Distribution Commercial

Yoshi's Cookie is a match-making video game developed by Home Data and Tose and published by Nintendo for the NES and Game Boy on 1992-11-21, as well as the SNES by Bullet-Proof Software and released on 1993-07-09.

The objective of the game is to rearrange cookies to form lines of matching types, but you can only move an entire row or column of cookies at a time. The NES and Game Boy ports are very similar and feature two active puzzle modes: a 1-player action mode where you must line up cookies before the screen fills up, and a two-player competitive mode where you must line up a set number of cookies faster than your opponent. The SNES port adds a third passive puzzle mode where you have to line up all the cookies on a jumbled board within a set number of moves.

The game started out as an arcade title developed by Home Data called Hermetica, but it sold poorly in test runs so Hermetica decided not to publish it. Bullet-Proof Software bought the rights to the game and began working on an SNES version of it. Nintendo became interested in the game and allowed their Mario IP to be used with it and hired ghost developer Tose to make ports for the NES and Game Boy. Tose actually finished their ports before BPS finished, however the BPS version included an proper AI, and the puzzle mode with the layouts designed by Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov.

The game was remade in 2003 for the GameCube in the compilation title Nintendo Puzzle Collection.

Personal

Own?	No.
Won?	Yes. SNES Puzzle mode and action mode on low speed.
Finished	SNES puzzle mode: 2023-08-13 / SNES action mode at low speed: 2023-08-15.

I don't think I even knew Yoshi's Cookie existed when it came out, either that, or the idea of a game based around virtual cookies sounded so uninteresting, it didn't stick in my memory. Nobody I knew owned the game, so I never played it. It wasn't until SNES emulation became popular that I played the SNES port in my late-20s. I found it to be an interesting puzzle game, and I played it frequently against friends who similarly enjoyed competitive puzzle games. I tried the action mode and found it to be quite dull, but was able to beat the AI at equal settings shortly after learning to play the game. I'm not a fan of hard solo-puzzle games, so I never made any attempt to solve the solo levels of the game. In my 40s, I decided to see if the puzzle mode was worth trying to beat. I had little difficulty in the first 7 worlds, but things started to get hard in 8. The level I had the most difficulty with was 9-5 which had me stuck. I played that same level off-and-on for a couple weeks spending several hours it before I finally solved it.

Review

5	5	4	4	6

Best Version: SNES

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• The versus mode is good fun. Juggling your own board and seeing your opponent's score raise gets your blood pumping.
• The Yoshi cookies triggering an action adds an extra dimension to the game. You must monitor the actions and sometimes hold off on getting a Yoshi cookie line to make sure you don't trash yourself. You must take extra care not to clear them prematurely from a combo.
• Although it's only present in the SNES port, the puzzle mode presents you with a lot of complex challenges.

Bad

• The game's graphics are strangely off. I like the cartoonish look of Mario and Yoshi in the menus of the NES and Game Boy ports, but everything after that looks bad. This is strange because the SNES port borrows graphics directly from the beautiful Super Mario World, but it somehow manages to get the pixel art, animation, and colors wrong. The end result is a game that looks like a bootleg knock-off, and certainly not to the normally high standards of Nintendo.
• For each of the ports, the music is a bit primitive sounding. Despite being made late into the development of each of its target platforms, it sounds like the music heard in the very first round of games before the composers had decent trackers and were still trying to get used to the audio hardware.
• The actions aren't well balanced. "Blind" is a minor inconvenience (and totally pointless against the cheating AI), and "slave" causes very little disruption. "Panic" is decent, but, really, the only ones worth getting are the boring +3/-3, and the elusive +7. More work should have been done to come up with more interesting and balanced actions.
• The characters in SNES versus mode are poorly balanced. Yoshi is objectively the best, having stats much higher than the others, while Peach is objectively the worst. The total points are: Yoshi: 38, Mario/Bowser: 25, Peach 21.
• I found the puzzle levels of the SNES port to be incorrectly ordered. I was able to finish several levels in world 10 without too much difficulty, but some earlier levels, 9-5 in particular, had me baffled for hours.
• It's clear that the designers were going for slapstick comedy in the cutscenes between stages, but they failed.
• The game only lets you enter a 3-letter name. However, this can be hilarious when you name your character "ass" and get the action "slave," and then your opponent becomes your "ass slave."

Ugly

• The 1-player action mode just isn't very fun. You start with a layout of cookies that appears to be solvable, but you're only given a few seconds to clear it. If you make any mistakes (and you probably will due to the lack of time), you'll be left with a few errant cookies at the end. You will then have to wait until random cookies fall in the hopes that you'll get the ones you need, which you most likely will not. And, if you don't get the ones you need soon enough, the accelerating speed eventually makes it near-impossible to finish. However, sometimes you get lucky and get precisely the cookies you need early on, but, it's just random. This just isn't satisfying enough play to base a game on.
• None of the AIs are well-written. The AI in the Game Boy port is able to fill up its point meter at an insane rate, which may seem impressive until you realize it's not actually playing the game off-screen, the developers just give it points at a fast rate meaning the whole thing is a cheat. When you compare this to the SNES port, where the AI actually has to play on-screen, you can see how poorly the AI really is. I'm not very good at the game, but I can still beat the AI consistently when playing with identical settings. The only way to get a challenge is to purposely handicap yourself. The NES port doesn't have an AI, not even a cheating one.
• For as difficult as the puzzle mode is, it has a very anticlimactic ending.

Media

Covers

• 

  Game Boy - Japan.

• 

  Game Boy - USA / Europe.

• 

  Famicom - Japan.

• 

  NES - USA.

• 

  Super Famicom - Japan.

• 

  SNES - USA.

• 

  SNES - Europe.

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  NES - Logo.

• 

  SNES - Logo.

Documentation

• 

  Manual - Game Boy - USA.

• 

  Manual - Famicom - Japan.

• 

  Manual - NES - USA.

• 

  Manual - SNES - USA.

Screenshots

• 

  SNES - Password display.

Videos

Game Boy - Longplay - Vs. and Action modes.

NES - Longplay - Action mode.

SNES - Longplay - All modes.

Play Online

Famicom, Game Boy (Japan), Game Boy (USA), NES (Europe), NES (USA), SNES (Europe), SNES (USA), Super Famicom

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	The only woman is Peach and she's only in the SNES port, but she's very minor.
Bechdel test?	Fail	No women ever speak.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	Everyone is white.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no queer characters.

Titles

Language	Native	Transliteration	Translation
English	Yoshi's Cookie
Japanese	ヨッシーのクッキー	Yosshi no Kukki	Yoshi's Cookie

Links