For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to Peardian's Yoshi: Topsy-Turvy (GBA) maps.
As it's Easter, let's take a look at a game with our favourite egg-laying hero! In Yoshi: Topsy-Turvy (known outside North America as "Yoshi's Universal Gravitation"), a powerful spirit named Hongo magically puts Yoshi's Island and its inhabitants into the pages of a storybook, in order to trap Bowser, who is causing trouble yet again. Yoshi sets out to lock away Bowser so that Hongo will release Yoshi's Island. Along the way Yoshi will have to appease various book spirits by completing missions to clear each course.
The biggest feature (or gimmick) of this game is the tiltable world, hence the title. Using the tilt sensor built into the cartridge, one can tilt the entire storybook world, causing effects such as unrolling platforms or turning sheer walls into slopes. This pre-Wii motion control was simple yet effective, and though this game is not as well-remembered as other Nintendo platformers, one might wonder if the gyro technology built into Yoshi's Topsy-Turvy (and a few other GBA games) paved the way for Nintendo's Wii Remote, as the Wii was released shortly after this.
It comes as no surprise that Peardian (a Mario and Yoshi fan) would take on this game, so that this Yoshi game will be remembered as more than just a footnote. Thanks, Peardian!
So to give universal gratitude to Universal Gravitation, Peardian's Yoshi: Topsy-Turvy (GBA) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for March 2016.
