>>723285819
First, it's presentation is exceptional. It is the best looking SNES game, no question. The sound track is awesome too.
Then, the gameplay is super tight. Movement is great, and the difficulty is calibrated to be on par with other 2D Mario games. There are plenty of secrets to find, but unlike say Wooly World, YI is still a "get to the goal" game first, just with extra stuff to find. The bosses are extremely memorable, and all in all, the game is just fun as hell.
The reason Nintendo has never followed up with a properly good sequel is because Yoshi's Island was made by Nintendo's A-Team, and every other game was treated as a spinoff and either given to a third party or the b-team, except for Yoshi's Story which was dumbed down for reasons unknown.
The only real attempt at a proper sequel was the DS version by Artoon, and you can just tell that they don't have the ability that Nintendo EAD had. It gets handicapped by bad level design, though I did enjoy it overall.
