You, rightly, noted how Donkey Kong Country was a success because it was a new universe for gamers to explore. I can tell you this is spot on. The gameplay may not have been as rich as, say, Super Mario World, but the universe and “texture” of the game have endeared themselves to the minds of gamers.
This is where I think you are being inconsistent with regards to Yoshi’s Island. Yoshi’s Island may not have had the counter-culture attitude of DKC, and this is why it may have not done as well, but man, it was a VAST new universe with a VAST new stable of characters and enemies and scenarios. I cannot tell you how BIG that game. You have said you’re fan of Atari and SEGA fan ClassicGamer (as am I), take a look at his review of Yoshi’s Island. He was blown away.
When Nintendo gamers are asked which of Nintendo’s games are “magical,” Yoshi’s Island is usually among the most cited. I think this is something worth noting.
I’ve never said Yoshi’s Island is a ‘bad game’. I am saying it is not a Super Mario Brothers game. Instead of saying ‘Super Mario Brothers game’ we should say ‘Mother-of-killer-apps’ since that is what Super Mario Brothers games are. Any game compared to a Super Mario Brothers game, with the exception of Wii Sports, will be very small in comparison not due to the game being bad but due to how much power Super Mario Brothers has.
The fact is that Yoshi’s Island never drove momentum of the SNES. Donkey Kong Country did. Yoshi’s Island didn’t.
Did Yoshi’s Island make the Mario series more or less popular? The answer is less popular. In a way, Yoshi’s Island has more in common with Super Mario 64 in that regard.
As for new content presented in Yoshi’s Island, no.
Much of it is typical Mario monsters. Even the Yoshi and Dinosaur Land is from Super Mario World. The Shy Guys are from Super Mario Brothers 2. There is nothing new in the game.
Do you know where the rumors about Miyamoto not liking Donkey Kong Country came from? It all revolves around Yoshi’s Island. I can confirm at the time that Yoshi’s Island’s graphical style was extremely controversial. In a time period where games like Mortal Kombat were the ‘hot’ title, where Super Mario World was already castigated by competitors’ marketing as ‘lame’ (one of the reasons why Sonic became popular), Yoshi’s Island took the bad cutesy trends of Super Mario World and injected steroids into it.
It was Donkey Kong Country that saved the SNES, not Yoshi’s Island. The rumor wasn’t that Miyamoto hated Donkey Kong Country but hated that its success caused NOA to ask for a more realistic graphic style for Super Mario World 2. And when Yoshi’s Island came out, Mario fans did not gravitate to it. If anything, they gravitated more toward Donkey Kong Country.
There is a problem with gaming that as graphical capabilities have gotten so much better, eccentricities of developers tend to put off the mass market. For example, western game makers turning their games into ‘brown’ with ‘space marines’ with ‘super realism’ is a massive turn off especially to the Japanese audience. But it goes the other way. The super cutesy cartoony style of Japanese games is a turn off to many Western gamers. One only has to look at Wind Waker to see this. And this is an issue a worldwide selling company like Nintendo is deeply wrestling with. How far should the art style go? How much is too cute?
There has been a trend for late SNES games to become more popular in age, far more popular than they ever were when they were released. Aside from Yoshi’s Island, I’ve noticed this heavily with Super Metroid. To many younger people, they think Super Metroid was this mega-hit when it was released. This wasn’t the case at all. The game quickly got overshadowed by Donkey Kong Country. To Metroid fans at the time, Super Metroid was seen as a disappointment. The game was WAY easier and lacked the ‘enigma’ and mysterious theme that the NES Metroid had. The enemies in Metroid were deadly and scary. In Super Metroid, they were a bore and only seemed to have the purpose of slowing down the player from Point A to Point B. However, the game was a triumph in how extremely atmospheric and moody it was.
As time passed, many tastes have changed in gamers. Today, NES games seem ‘extremely hard’ but they were considered ‘normal’ back then. A game like Super Metroid seeming ‘easy’ back in 1994 is now considered to be ‘just right’ difficulty. The extremely atmospheric and moody atmosphere was not as appreciated in 1994 but is valued more today.
I believe the trend for later generations to gravitate to the latter SNES games has little to do with the quality of those games but due to the mediocrity of modern gaming (and this includes Nintendo’s offerings on the Gamecube and N64). The move to 3d broke the core arcade gameplay line from the Atari to the Genesis/SNES in many genres like platformers.
I fully expect a younger person to gravitate to Super Mario World instead of the NES Super Mario Brothers games. Super Mario World is easier, is easier on the eyes, and not very demanding. But that doesn’t mean Super Mario World had a bigger impact than the previous Super Mario Brothers games because it didn’t.
I am not saying Yoshi’s Island is a bad game, I am trying to get people to stop re-writing history. Yoshi’s Island was no phenomenon. It didn’t make the market catch fire. In an alternate timeline, if Yoshi’s Island was slated for 1994 holiday release, we would be writing today how Sega won the 16-bit console war.