00:00Yoshi is having a bit of a moment right now, beyond the imminent arrival of Yoshi and the
00:05Mysterious Book. He's appeared in one of 2026's biggest films, which means he's also all over
00:10toy store shelves and popcorn buckets and every other possible merchandising opportunity. And yet
00:16it's somehow been seven years since he last headlined his own video game. Since Yoshi's
00:21crafted world in 2019, he's been stuck at the back of the queue, while Kirby, Donkey Kong,
00:26Princess Peach and the Jumpman himself, have all taken their turn to star in platforming
00:31games of one kind or another. I come to my first hands-on with Yoshi and the Mysterious Book,
00:36wondering if that leaves any room for our little green dino. It's a crowded roster, and with
00:41Mario the undisputed king of the genre, every other platforming mascot has to specialise
00:46in some way. They have to find their thing. Kirby and latterly Peach have cornered the market
00:51on transformations, while DK has recently pivoted into an extreme form of landscape gardening.
00:57So what exactly is Yoshi's thing? You might point to the very particular set of moves he's
01:02been packing since 1995. The floaty jump, ground pound, and gobbling of enemies. But, well, that
01:09sounds a lot like Kirby, doesn't it? The two are on similar turf in other ways, too. Both being
01:14little cuties, both offering a more approachable way into the genre for younger players. I'll admit
01:18that as an alleged grown-up, I can find the latter a bit off-putting. My gaming palette
01:23prefers the sophistication of Mario Mario, thank you very much.
01:27Okay, how about Yoshi as the art connoisseur of the group? Since the crayon aesthetic of
01:32Yoshi's Island, every new game has come with a fresh twist on the hand-crafted visual style,
01:37and Mysterious Book continues that tradition. Each level exists inside the pages of a book,
01:42rendered in a kind of sketchy coloured pencil effect. In play, this actually proves to be a bit
01:47of an aesthetic step down from Crafted World's incredible art-supply dioramas. To my eye,
01:53it looks more like the watercolour filter you can apply in Donkey Kong Bonanza's photo mode than a
01:58true bespoke visual style. And yet, having bounced off every previous Yoshi game before the credits
02:04rolled, put off by their soft-play approach to platforming, after a couple of hours in Mysterious
02:09Book's company, I'm convinced things will be different this time. And it's all thanks to Mr.
02:13E, helping Yoshi to finally find his thing.
02:20Mr. E drops onto Yoshi's Island and politely introduces himself by his full name,
02:25Mr. Encyclopedia. With his beady eyes, giant moustache and monocle, he looks like Mr. Monopoly,
02:31but try not to hold that against him. He's had a tough time recently, after some of his contents
02:36are mysteriously erased, and now it's up to the Yoshis to fill his pages back in. This begins with
02:41Mr. E opening up to a cutaway illustration of Wildwoods, a shaded undergrowth habitat that is
02:47essentially the first overworld of Mysterious Book. Using Mr. E's monocle as a magnifying glass,
02:52you pick one creature from the landscape to zoom in on, and then are transported into a more
02:57traditional side-on level. I say traditional, you don't beat these levels by making it to a
03:02finish line a few screens to the right, Mario style. They're more open-ended, and completed by
03:06making a discovery. What exactly that discovery might be, well, if you knew in advance, then it
03:11wouldn't really be one, would it? As you work your way towards this primary objective, you'll come
03:16across a lot of smaller discoveries, marked up on your screen as you do with a cute little diagram
03:21and text description. Kind of like if encyclopedias had achievement notifications. Generally, the first
03:27discovery you'll make in each level is, what does this critter taste like? Yoshi still has that same
03:32move set at his disposal, but now each action is a way of prodding at your subject and seeing what
03:37happens. The tong goes out, and now you know that this little beastie is bitter or sweet in the mouth.
03:42If you then try swallowing it into an egg, or spitting it back out, you might learn something
03:47else about the creature, all of which have at least a few interesting properties to be discovered and
03:51played around with. There's this one species of beaky creatures with a leaf on their head, like a
03:58missing link from the Lotad Ludicolo Pokemon evolutionary tree. Bounce on their heads and
04:03they'll sing a note, moving up the Do-Re-Me scale based, I think, on their colour. One discovery
04:08waiting to be unlocked in their introductory level involves getting them to play a simple tune.
04:13But I'll be disappointed if less tone-deaf players haven't got these leafy lads belting
04:18out Chapel Roan numbers by the summer. Another example you might have seen in the Nintendo Direct
04:22trailer that revealed Mysterious Book to the World last September, these little dandelion-looking
04:27things that scatter into the air when you run through them and take root wherever they land,
04:31with different effects depending on what kind of surface it is. Grass causes them to grow huge
04:36and yellow, for some reason. Alighting on a boulder, they'll soften the ruck up for a ground pounding,
04:41and if you can nudge them into a pond, they'll become absorbent, allowing you to control the water
04:45levels depending on how many you plant. Precisely manipulating their movements is a pain,
04:50it's like trying to control the wind. And yet even on the tight preview deadline, I can't help
04:55persisting until I've tried out every possible combination. Now imagine what happens to those
05:00combinations once the game starts introducing multiple creatures into a single level. At one
05:04point I end up riding a living skateboard across water, with a bubble-blowing frog riding on my back.
05:10It's a total accident, and I've no idea if this counts as a discovery, but I can confirm it's the
05:15most I've giggled at a video game in quite a while. You might have noticed I've not used actual
05:20names for any of these weird little dudes, and that's because Mysterious Book lets you come up
05:24with your own. You can take this responsibility very seriously indeed, or also treat it as a
05:30Jackbox-style prompt to write a little joke. There are robust profanity filters in place,
05:35naturally, but it's still a surprise to be handed naming rights by a company so infamously
05:39protective of its brands. Especially when the creature you're studying is a shy guy,
05:44but you've decided it should be Maskette, or Colin, or Kanan Lynch instead,
05:48and the game just starts referring to them by that name from then on.
05:51The only name I try that gets turned down is Yoshi. My personal justification that this is the only
05:57word in Yoshi's vocabulary. Mr. E gently shuts that one down, pointing out that things are going
06:02to get confusing. It's a little thing, but I love when a game sees you coming like this,
06:07and is something ready in response. The kinds of moments that Yoshi and the Mysterious Book seems
06:11poised to deliver to curious players. There's a lovely quality of experimentation that has long been
06:17part of Nintendo's best games, back to the bombable walls and secret exits of NES era Zelda and Mario.
06:23But that really has come to the fore since The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, and here it
06:27is
06:27again, albeit on a much smaller scale, presented in a way more approachable to the younger audience
06:33that will no doubt be coming to it straight from the Super Mario Galaxy movie. But none of that stops
06:38me,
06:38a jaded old man, from taking the same kind of joy in it, as I poke at things just to
06:43see what will happen.
06:44So this is Yoshi's thing, at least for this one game. He's a naturalist, leveraging his very
06:50particular set of skills to observe exotic lifeforms and record his findings in a book,
06:55The Charles Darwin of the Mushroom Kingdom. I can't quite believe how sold I am on that combination,
07:01nor just how impatient I am to gobble my way through a Yoshi game.
07:05So, will you be picking up this new Yoshi-coded adventure? Have you played his previous titles?
07:10Or will this be your first time controlling our favourite little green dinosaur?
07:14Let us know, and stick with GamesRadar for the latest on the greatest games.
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