'Having said that, though, giving users the ability to simultaneously control both Yoshi's movement and the direction they throw eggs in proved challenging and gave us quite the headache!' However, it proved to be a crucial element of the game. 'We wanted to include egg-throwing as throwing actions weren't something that had appeared much in Mario games,' Tezuka tells us. Instead of containing items or more Yoshis, as they did in the likes of Super Mario World, eggs could be thrown, rebounding off walls, breaking through barriers, collecting objects and smashing enemies. However, by pushing the down button with an enemy in Yoshi's mouth, the player could have Yoshi lay an egg.

As in Super Mario World, Yoshi could use his tongue to eat enemies and then spit them back out at other enemies as an attack. However, the ability that most closely tied into Yoshi's existing skillset was his unique capability to create eggs. So while Yoshi had certain established abilities such as his ability to grab enemies with his tongue and eat them, the team had a great deal of freedom to decide on new abilities and a new style of play that would provide a clear break from traditional Mario games. But none of these were platform games, and Yoshi's only appearance in a platform game so far had been as a sub-character. Mario's trusty steed had previously headlined three games, the puzzle games Mario & Yoshi and Yoshi's Cookie, and the Super Scope blaster Yoshi's Safari. This wasn't Yoshi's first starring role in a game, of course.

'Yoshi turned into quite the cute character, and we were very interested in creating some kind of spin-off with him that's where it all began.' We thought it would be better to have a new character rather than a horse, so Mr Hino and I went about creating one,' Tezuka tells us. 'The idea for Yoshi came about because Mr Miyamoto wanted to have Mario ride a horse. What made Yoshi the character of choice over the likes of Wario, Luigi or Peach? This goes back to the creation of the character for Super Mario World, as we discover. That makes sense – but the Mushroom Kingdom is home to many interesting characters, many of whom have also starred in spin-offs.

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Yoshi's story theme 10 hours