What have they done...
They basically took almost everything that was awesome in the original, butchered it, ate it and then vomited it out.
First thing I noticed was that the music is not the same. They changed or remixed every single one of the great tunes that I loved in the classic Yoshi's Island, and the sound effects too. The whole audio in the game is terrible and mediocre compared to the original.
Then what's next? The super fun power-ups and items have all been removed! What is the excuse here? There is no excuse, why did they do this? No more water melons or egg power-ups or ANYTHING! The mini-games are back but they are pointless now since the ONLY prize that can be won from them is extra lives, but ironically you're really going to need them as we now get to the probably most severe disability of this game... the difficulty.
I enjoyed so much playing the original Yoshi's Island, it was challenging at times, especially the Extra stages, but it felt rewarding and was fun from start till the end, but this game...
This game is one of the hardest 2-D platformers I've ever played. Contra 4 and Henry Hatsworth's Puzzling Adventure were very difficult, but Yoshi's Island DS still takes the cake. The most deceptive part about it is that behind this cute and colourful exterior hides this brutal, unforgiving, cheap, unfair, lame and numbing difficulty.
The bonus stage of the first world is nearly impossible to clear with perfect score. You need 30 stars, which are often hidden in invisible spots, and you only need to get hit ONCE and you lose them enough so that you won't be able to have 30 of them by the end of stage. While I was playing this stage I was banging my head to the wall and asking myself: "Why are there no items?" In the original you could use a star power-up before the goal and recover the lost stars, but all that is history now.
I haven't felt so deceived by a game since Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales. It's like a cruel joke. "Hey, let's remove all the items and have all these minigames which only give you one-ups since we made the game so difficult that lives are the only thing one will need." So by the time you reach the first extra stage you probably have about 30 lives and there's no reason not to keep playing until you've lost them all. So, two hours and 30 lives later it's time to start collecting some more one-ups... Wait, I have to first collect the pieces of my broken DS off the floor, it didn't survive when it met the wall, oh how could they do this?
Alright, here is my honest scoring. The fact that they destroyed everything great about Yoshi's Island automatically reduces the overall score of the game to 1.0 (Since zero is not available), but I'm not that unforgiving, unlike the game designers.
1 point for great graphics which are faithful to the original.
1 point for the multiple-baby system, it's actually quite fun to have more characters.
This raises the score of the game to a total of 3.0, with the title of BAD!
Those seven minus points come from ravaging one of the best SNES memories of my childhood.