Summary
For those unfamiliar with the long history of Mario’s red-shelled dino friend, Yoshi originated in a 1991 game developed byGame Freak(in collaboration withNintendo) simply called Yoshi. It’s a falling block puzzle game people refer to as ‘Yoshi’s Egg’ because you need to match two halves of an egg and hatch them to succeed.
Game Freak would go on to collaborate with Nintendo, Sega and others until striking gold in 1996 with a little-known pair of games called Pokémon Red and Blue. The studio occasionally collaborated on non-Pokémon titles over the next two decades, but no doubt catching them all became the priority for Game Freak, for obvious reasons.
Yoshi (1991) Reborn
The studio never forgot its roots, though, as evidenced by the discovery of an unreleased 2007 remake of Yoshi built in the engine that would eventually be used forPokémon Black & White. This piece of software was found in the massive Game Freak, along with sometroubling Pokémon lore,cut content from the Kalos regionand much more. Those in possession of the stolen content have managed to get this new version of Yoshi’s Egg working, and it’s essentially a straightforward remake of the original puzzle game with updated visuals.
As commenters beneath apost by Lost Media Bustersabout the leak have pointed out, the title screen reads ‘1995’, which may indicate this is a port of a cancelled Super Nintendo version of the game that was never released. Game Freak releasing a remake of Yoshi in 2007 doesn’t seem likely, so this minigame was likely used as a test for Black and White’s engine.
The original Yoshi has been made available multiple times throughout each of Nintendo’s console generations. It was available on the Wii’s virtual console, the Nintendo eShop and is now available on Nintendo Switch Online.
Additional information from the Game Freak breach is released every day as those in possession of the files continue to dig out unreleased content and internal documents.Game Freak has acknowledged the breachand has apologised to employees and ex-employees whose personal information has been compromised.
