Owned by Yoshi

I spend an inordinate amount of time huddled with a controller in hand or huddled over the tiny screen on my Nintendo DS -- certainly more time than someone approaching 40 should do. Yet the thrill of controlling little avatars of myself hasn't changed over the past 25 years or so, back when a few pixels were enough to entertain me.

Which doesn't mean I love everything about gaming, and my ire this time is directed at a seemingly innocent title, "Yoshi's Island 2." I mean it sounds so cute and innocent -- and looks it as well, with a neat 1980s Nintendo vibe to the graphics and baby versions of Mario and the gang teaming up with dinosaur Yoshi for an old fashioned 2-D platformer (for those of you reading who don't know what that is -- Donkey Kong was the first popular platformer; this is more evolved, but the basic is the same, you jump and climb over obstacles; and try to defeat enemies to get to the end of the level, and then you do it another level, and so on).

OK, cute vibe, insane gameplay. I mean, dying 30 times in a row at the same place on an early level insane. I finally gave up midway through the second world (which is pretty early in the game) after spending 30 minutes trying to complete one task. It just wasn't worth the blood pressure spikes. And by looking at the saves from the other people who rented the game before me, it looks like they had given up in similar places.

Now difficulty is an important part of these games, but can anything be considered successful if most of the people abandon it long before the end? I don't mind working hard for any kind of success -- some of my favorite books and films made the audience work for the payoff -- but games are expensive (this one would have been 30 bucks; and that's a cheap one) and all too often seem to be crafted for some kind of (probably) mythical hardcore gamer that will gladly spend hours perfecting their skills. For the rest of the people who may want to play this for some kind of distraction from everyday stress, that isn't going to work. We'll just slam down the controller (or expensive hand held device, which did bounce once off the carpet on the toss, but seems OK), give up and grumble about the money wasted and vow to never come back to the series/designer/publisher/game platform. Not the best way to build an audience.