Welcome to VC Weekly, N-Europe’s guide to the wonderful world of Nintendo’s download service. Written by Sam C Gittins

A title which was entirely skippable for good reason the first time around is even less appealing in digital form. Anyway enough from me and on with the game!
 
Available for download this week we have...     

Yoshi Touch & Go

Price: GB £6.29, EU €6.99
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Released: 2005
System: DS
 
I can clearly remember when Yoshi Touch & Go was originally released on the Nintendo DS in 2005 as it was one of the first titles to be released for the machine coming out not too long after the system launched, yet not really showing anything that really warranted it being a full title as it never really advanced much from the demo which it had begun its existence as. The premise is simple in so much as you must guide Baby Mario and Yoshi by drawing clouds on the touch screen using your stylus featuring vertical stages where you must guide the falling baby plumber safely to a Yoshi waiting at the very bottom, plus the more familiar horizontal scrolling stages which play out in similar fashion to Yoshi's Island except without the spectacular level design.

From the start you have just two modes available, the first of which is Score Attack which is where Baby Mario is floating downward with balloons attached - though not in direct homage to Balloon Fight which might have made for a more interesting gameplay mechanic - so you must guide him away from the enemies, collecting coins along the way with your other defence being the ability to draw circles around the enemies which encapsulates them which turns them into coins which in turn boosts your score even more, until you reach Yoshi on the levels floor which then switches the gameplay to side-scrolling where you must guide Yoshi while throwing eggs or making him perform his trademark flutter-jump. While in Marathon Mode you just keep going to see how far you can get without losing any balloons or your young companion.

Other modes include Time Attack which has different levels - where the level design is still docile at best - plus you get to use Starman power-ups which make you invincible for a short time, there's also a new area to explore but it's still the same gameplay essentially; Challenge Mode gives you more enemies alongside obstacles to contend with which makes things a bit more interesting, also I should mention that the Vs. mode is no longer available meaning you get even less for your money than you did originally which wasn't much to begin with! I remember foolishly paying full price for this "game" back in the day and back then I thought it was light on content, it might have even reviewed fairly well for making good use of the touch-screen but now a decade on it's a travesty of a title to be charging for unless you really derive intense amounts of value in bettering your score, contributing to nothing more.

Everything is at least nicely presented but then again that's mainly because all of the visual assets - or at the very least the vast majority - have been taken from the original Yoshi's Island on the SNES which was ground-breaking for its time so of course still looks perfectly fine today as well, the animation seems solid though I'm sure I can recal the action slowing down especially in Challenge Mode perhaps due to the amount of enemies. Sadly the music wasn't ripped right from the aforementioned title as well, instead what you're left with is an underwhelming, plodding soundtrack with sound effects which serve only to break up the monotomy.

Had this game been given away for free then I would have said that it would at the very least be worth downloading but the fact that you have to pay a price which has been reduced from what other DS games normally are and I still think it's over-priced speaks volumes about the quality of this score-centric piece of software which really should never have been more than a demo. I cannot advise parting with money for this unless you absolutely must have every single game featuring Yoshi in the title, there are far better Virtual Console titles ripe for purchase which you would likely gain a lot more fun from than this cobbled together, functional demonstration of how the DS touch screen works.   

Verdict : Touch & Go? This demo had flatlined from the start!

That's it for another installment of VC Weekly which will return again soon. So until then, enjoy the rest of the week and Game On!