The player controls Yoshi, a friendly dinosaur, on a quest to reunite baby Mario with his brother Luigi, who has been kidnapped by Kamek.

A long time ago, Kamek, a Magikoopa,[2] attacks a stork delivering baby brothers Mario and Luigi.

[4] Yoshi and his friends relay Mario across the island to reach Luigi and rescue him from Kamek, who is in the service of the young Bowser.

[5] Yoshi defeats Bowser, saves Luigi, and the stork successfully delivers the brothers to their parents in the Mushroom Kingdom.

[6][3] In the Super Mario series platform game tradition, the player controls Yoshi in run-and-jump gameplay.

The player controls one of many Yoshis, which take turns traveling through 48 levels across six worlds[7] to rescue Baby Luigi and reunite the brothers.

[3] Yoshi also collects coins to earn extra lives[8] and retains his long tongue from Super Mario World.

Yoshi can also pound the ground from mid-air to bury objects or break through soft earth, and use his long tongue to grab enemies at a distance.

[8] While Yoshi is "virtually invincible", if hit by an enemy, Baby Mario will float off his back in a bubble while a timer counts down to zero.

Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto asked Yoshi's designer, Shigefumi Hino, to develop an original project.

[13]: 96 To give the gameplay a more "gentle and relaxed pacing", the levels lack time limits and feature more exploration elements than previous games; Yoshi's flutter jump also makes him easier to control in the air than Mario.

[13]: 96 In 2020, a prototype for a platform game with similar graphics to Yoshi's Island was discovered, featuring a new protagonist wearing a pilot suit.

[17][full citation needed] Development was spearheaded by Hino, Takashi Tezuka, Hideki Konno and Toshihiko Nakago.

[12][18] Yoshiaki Koizumi animated the opening and ending, while series composer Koji Kondo wrote the game's music.

Partway into the development of Yoshi's Island, Donkey Kong Country was released, which resulted in its computer-generated graphics becoming the norm for contemporary SNES games.

[21] The Game Boy Advance version is a direct port of the original, apart from implementing Kazumi Totaka's voice as Yoshi[10] and adding six additional levels.

[39][4] Reviewing the SNES release over a decade later, Kaes Delgrego of Nintendo Life said the crying and some easy boss battles, while both minor, were the only shortcomings.

[20][4][42] Nintendo Life's Delgrego felt "goosebumps and tingles" during the ending theme, and marked the soundtrack's range from the lighthearted intro to the "epic grandeur of the final boss battle".

[4] GamePro writer Major Mike noted, "[Yoshi's Island] doesn't rely on flashy graphics or jazzy effects to cover an empty game.

[8] Diehard GameFan's Taylor wrote that there was enough gameplay innovation to make him cry and listed his favorites as the Baby Mario cape invincibility power-up, the machine gun-style seed spitting, and the snowball hill level.

Reviewing the Game Boy Advance release in 2002, Craig Harris of IGN wrote that Yoshi's Island was "the best damn platformer ever developed".

[41] IGN's Harris also noted a few Game Boy Advance-specific issues: framerate drop in areas where a lot is happening onscreen, camera panning problems due to the screen's lower resolution, and a "poor" implementation of the "dizzy" special effect on the handheld release.

[7] Of the similar version for the Wii U, Watts of Nintendo Life also noticed the framerate issues and problems resulting from the screen's closer crop, which were "not enough to ruin the game, but ...

[2] Edge felt that game's only disappointment was the linearity of its overworld following the exploratory Super Mario World and that the sequel would "inevitably ... have less impact".

[46] IGN's Lucas M. Thomas wrote it marked where Yoshi "came into his own" and developed many of his definitive characteristics: the "signature" flutter jump, and ability to throw eggs and transform shape.

[42] The Nintendo producer Takashi Tezuka maintained the "handicraft feel" in later Yoshi games, which later included yarn and similar variations.

[46] IGN's Thomas wrote that the hand-drawn style of Yoshi's Island made the computer-generated Donkey Kong Country appear outdated, though both games sold well.

[46] In 2004, Nintendo released the tilt sensor-controlled Yoshi Topsy Turvy for Game Boy Advance,[55] which was developed by Artoon[55][56] and received mixed reviews.

[60][61] GameSpot commented that the developers have "produced a sequel that seems fresh and new while remaining every bit as awesome as the original" and IGN called it "a solid recreation of the Yoshi's Island elements in a two-screen-high format".

[47] It received mixed reviews, with criticism for its graphics, art-style, soundtrack and similarity to the SNES original; though the level design and overall charm did attract some praise.