Name: | Yoshi's Strange Quest |
Author: | yoshifanatic |
Added: | |
Demo: | No |
Hall of Fame: | No |
Length: | 100 exit(s) |
Type: | Standard: Very Hard |
Description: | This is the sequel to Mario's Strange Quest. Picking up where Mario's Strange Quest left off, it turns out that the part where Yoshi's eggs hatched at the end of MSQ didn't actually happen. What really happened after Mario beat Bowser, rescued Yoshi's eggs, and saved the princess was that Yoshi and his sleepy friend decided to move to a new land so that he can protect his eggs from Bowser before they really hatched. So, both Yoshis do so and they find themselves in the land of Weirdonia. However, it seems that Bowser apparently insists on stealing Yoshi's eggs, since Yoshi's eggs were stolen again while Yoshi was out shopping. Since Mario isn't around to help this time, Yoshi goes on a quest by himself to retrieve his eggs. However, just like Mario's Strange Quest, this isn't your ordinary quest. The land of Weirdonia is a strange land filled with bizarre gimmicks, weird themes, and possibly jelly filled donuts and pizza. Expect the unexpected during Yoshi's journey. This hack's features: - 71 levels (100 exits) - Custom Graphics - Tested on and works on a real SNES - Custom Music - Custom ASM - Lots of level variety - Plenty of (possibly) unique gimmicks and themes - Lots of silliness and general weirdness - A box art image, a cartridge sticker image, and a game manual (download links are in the readme) - Older versions of YSQ (V1.0, V1.1, V1.2, and V1.3 Beta) are linked to in the readme for those that are interested in seeing what YSQ was like in past versions - Lots of secrets to find - Free novelty T-shirts with every download* *T-shirt not included. Note: Be sure to read the readme that comes with YSQ. It contains a ton of useful information that will help you out in YSQ. |
Tags: | asm bosses crude content custom character exgfx exploration gimmick health huge level music powers story variety yoshi |
Comments: | 37 (jump to comments) |
Rating: |
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1.93 MiB | 53,396 downloads
Comments (37)
I didn't know something like this could be thrown together, none the less accepted onto this site. I think I speak for everyone when I say thank god this individual has been quiet since producing this.
I rest my case. If I could put 0 stars here, you bet I would.
- The flutter mechanic is really janky. If you don't optimally flutter or if you time your flutter a frame too late, you will sink a lot, plummeting to your death.
- Touching a ceiling can cancel your flutter jump, throwing you off completely. There's a lot of claustrophobic areas and jumps in this game, so this is guaranteed to happen to you at least once.
- Majority of the difficulty mainly comes from overly precise/picky jumps combined with the length of the levels. There is only one midpoint in each level, despite the ridiculous length at times. Some obstacles really makes me wonder if this hack was even tested legitimately (World 6 castle is a good example. There is a tedious boss that takes 7+ minutes to kill and if you die there, you would have to redo a big chunk of the level which would add up to at least 10+ minutes)
- Whenever you take damage, you get knock-backed a lot. Most of your deaths will probably be you dying to a pit because of how overly punishing knock-backs can be.
Despite the flaws this hack has, there is clearly a lot of effort and thought put into this. The story, textures, flavor, asm, and custom music are all very impressive. The humor is sometimes pretty good, though some of it are usually fourth wall breaks and poop, fart, fat yoshi jokes. The design is the lowest point in this hack (which is the most important aspect in my opinion).
I am aware that there is a mellow version of this hack, which is the more friendlier and playable version, but I wanted to play this one because it's the one accepted on SMWCentral and I was partially curious to see why this hack was so infamous. To everyone that is reading this, if you want to play this, I recommend playing the mellow version instead. It fixes most of the issues that I mentioned. I personally wouldn't recommend this version to anyone. But if you decide to play this version, know what you are REALLY getting yourself into
You kept the same lame error messages when entering a pipe from Mario's Strange Quest. Totally pointless.
The story choices about "what would you do" were very cool, though.
I hardly have ever seen so much creativity for each level like on this hack. In that sense, excellent work. I wish you had put more effort in the boss fights, though. They don't make up for the level themselves.
You are clearly obsessed with poop, fart, diarrhea, fat yoshis and bathrooms. Those are recurring themes and frankly overused. It was funny the first 3 times you did that... then it became weird. Poor Yoshi didn't deserve to swim/climb in pools of poop.
I specially hated playing the fat yoshi because his collisions are weird with that sprite and you made him that way due to a senseless forth wall break chat, as usual.
Food world was the worst to me because you made all kind of excuses to pretend the food is harmful. Also the barbecue/hamburguer background was awful, the worst of the game.
House of Confusion was one of the top 3 most annoying level I have played in a hack. It's everything: creative, cool looking, challenging.. but not fun.
Reversed Cavern... why trick people to make such an annoying level again if you don't find the secret exit?
Ghosts very overused in the special world.
Palace challenges were well thought and interesting.
Rainbow Road was annoying, Too slow, too repetitive.
Mirror Ghost House should be erased from existence. Not annoying as the confusion house, but wat longer.
Blackout Mansion wasn't as hard but very annoying.
Also too many levels with reverse controls, reverse images, the scenario flipping upside down...
I liked the interaction you made between the npcs, except when you included yourself as part of the story. Evil Yoshifanatic was a totally shoehorned boss at the end.
Glad you didn't overused chucks like everyone does. However... you made A LOT of parts where you jump to a far place, and only then an enemy like an Eerie, a bullet bill or something like that surprises and kills you. Also abused a lot of invincible Rip van Fish on earlier worlds.
Yoshi physics need adjust. Press jump again a pixel later and sink like a rock to your death. Eggs are way more useless than in the original game, I forgot they existed for the vast majority of the game.
I missed the powerups. The amount of green coins you need to compensate a would-be mushroom is too high for such a hard game, at least on hard mode.
I'd give the hack a 9/10 for the first half and a 7.5/10 for the rest.
Was all this poop idea from drinking too much milk perhaps?
This is the download link for Yoshi's Strange Quest Mellow Mode, an official version of the hack created by myself which makes the level design more forgiving to make the game easier.
2023 Edit: I made the above "fantastic" comment before playing through all 100 exits without tool usage. This was one of the first SMW hacks I ever played and the Mellow Mode version I made was where I learned to use Lunar Magic, so nostalgia certainly affected my view. I would say now that I have mixed feelings about YSQ.
This hack is very impressive in a number of areas, but playing through the levels can be frustrating. Although not a perfect fix, just changing some of the mechanics of this hack (knockback and checkpointing) could make it far more enjoyable. Knockback can be annoying as getting hit at the wrong time can instantly kill you (if you are above a pit, for example). In some cases, the hit point system can feel pointless because death is a frequent threat even if you can take a few hits. Many levels are very long and every level has only one checkpoint (which I assume was a product of multiple checkpoints not being present and extra vanilla checkpoint systems being less well-known when this hack was made). While just the knockback or just the checkpointing could make things a little annoying, both of these problems existing leads them to exacerbate the issues caused by the other.
I am very conflicted regarding this hack because there are a lot of things to like about it. It is very confident in its presentation (and as a result feels very ambitious), has a number of interesting custom elements and almost every exit feels unique and distinct from the last. Sometimes the focus of a level or exit is simple and almost entirely aesthetic (but still neat) while others are more complex in how they change the gameplay. Although the ideas backing each exit of the hack are creative, I was disappointed to see that some of the hardest and most involved secret exits (especially in World 7) only led to previous parts of the overworld map, which never felt particularly rewarding.
There is a good amount of variety and the hack feels willing to try a bunch of different things (some of which work better than others). While I do think the hack has far too much text, there is definitely some charm and humor to be found it all of it. (The humor was sometimes too far out there for my taste but even at its worst I could tolerate it.) The story, while (again) bogged down by too much text, is pretty good compared to my admittedly limited knowledge of stories in SMW hacks. Despite all of the good qualities of this game, however, a few of the mechanics and sometimes the actual designs of the levels can make those good qualities difficult to appreciate and even remember.
It's getting increasingly difficult to make progress, world 5 has been a slow haul to say the least (Could have something to do with it being a water world), but it's clear that this hack went all out on the impressive arsenal that yoshi has to offer. Can't wait to see what the other half of this game has to offer, so i'll just list off my top 5 favorite/least favorite levels so far:
Favorite:
5. www.level.com (Secret exit is fantastic)
4. Slimy Cave (Very difficult, but also very well done)
3. Key Cliffs (Great design, going all the way down and then all the way up in the same level is really cool)
2. Cookie Crisis (Love levels designed around speedrunning)
1. Key Plains (Very clever, fun, challenging and unique)
Least favorite:
5. Misty Mines (The barrels are and always will be an awful idea)
4. Castle Crush (Horribly designed auto-scroller with spike-spam)
3. Tiger Path (This level is random nonsense)
2. Forest Access (Absolute Disaster)
1. Giant Chasm (Quite possibly the worst cave level i've ever played, absolutely nothing about this level works, very annoying, infinitely frustrating, narrow, awkward, confusing, slow, and topped with one of the most finicky and badly-conveyed secret exits i've ever seen, to the point where i had to awkwardly lured a football into the the corridor below the pipe so i could jump off of it instead of leading the chuck to the boxes blocking the key to completely skip the secret exit, 0/10 do not look forward to getting the dragon coins for this level. inexcusably bad, seriously, how did this get past testing?)
I'm feeling a light 8/10 on this game so far.
The hack is wonderful, it sounds like a new game from Nintendo. I'm just having a problem, I put on my Flashcard to play on the SNES and it crashes immediately when it is part of the initial dialogue, and realized that the SRAM is 128kb, please help me !!
Level Design 8/10
Not the very best level design. Some levels are very plain. But still, I can see the effort put in this hack. Some levels have very good gimmicks. The difficulty is, just like it says, hard. Fitting difficulty, kinda plain levels with cool gimmicks.
Graphics 9/10
Even though it's redrawn graphics, they fit in the levels and some levels have purely custom and different graphics. The food graphics are very well made. These graphics may be one of the best I've ever seen. I really liked them.
Music 10/10
Perfectly fitting music. Nothing else to say here.
Story 8/10
That... is... truly... a unique story. The plot twist was unexpected.
Now, back to the begining. Back then when the eggs were stolen, I actually thought it was Bowser ho took them. But no, it was the Yoshi. (I really laughed when Yoshi fell asleep) The rest was plain, Yoshi must retrieve the eggs.
Overall 35/40
4.5/5
9/10
That's all to it. It's a good hack. One of the best. I would really love to see a new hack from you, Yoshifanatic.