These two comics were published in 1995 and 1998, for the releases of Yoshi’s Island and Yoshi’s Story, in special edition supplements to the official German Nintendo magazine, Club Nintendo. The first, Yoshi’s Island, is a directly game-inspired primer for how the gameplay works, although obviously with a lot of chatter and humorous moments. If you’ve read my DKC2 translation, you should know what to expect (although there’s even more explanation of game mechanics in this one). The Island comic also includes a little preview page from the magazine before the main thing starts.
By the time of the Yoshi’s Story special, the comic supplement style had changed to include multiple short comics that, in this case, are pretty tangential to the game itself. More silly and surreal, closer to a lot of the comics printed in the magazine itself.
Story is the stronger package, because it’s more amusing and has new, wacky storylines. But Island is still good and focuses on the singular main Yoshi and his reactions to the various challenges that crop up on his journey. They’re an interesting contrast on how the style changed over the years.
This was a lot of work to put together. Both comics are quite long, and were done over a period of time (with a break in the middle). But I knew I wanted this done in time for the new Yoshi game. My old collaborator Caramelman started to help me translate Island, but got busy and I struggled through the rest. Later I got in touch with the coordinator of the awesome Supper Mario Broth, who is familiar with German. They translated Story very well for me, and even provided fresh, high-quality scans! They also provided some tips for improving Island. As always, my helpful wife did a spot of proofreading and drew the credits page art for Island. A part of Story also calls back to a previous Club Nintendo comic, which had been previously translated by Opentrain (now at opentrain.theyear199x.org). I pulled their translation pretty much verbatim for that part, so thanks very much to them.
Said part brings up some inconsistencies, like how the Yoshi in question was an adult but is now a child(?). Bet hey it’s just a comic, you should really just relax. You may also notice if you’ve ever played Island that the Chatterbox that plays the role of secondary character who advises Yoshi spouts some blatant lies about game mechanics. You can’t grab floating coins with your tongue, and coloured eggs won’t just break on a wall and release items! So don’t listen to him all the time.
If you’re playing the Holerö game at home, look out for a couple of examples here. It’s the secret word for these comics, essentially a kinda made-up greeting that is often said by various characters. If you haven’t noticed it before, look out for it.
Well that’s it, this is the biggest translation project I’ve released so far. A gift for Yoshi fans everywhere. If you like it, send me some appreciation here or at my twitter, twitter.com/Miloscat. Also check out www.suppermariobroth.com for some sweet Mario (and spin-offs) content. Thanks to them, and to Caramelman and Opentrain for making this possible. Share it around and enjoy!
UPDATE: I found new scans of the Yoshi’s Island comic. They’re not massively better quality so I’m leaving the originally translated pages, but there were also extra pages not present in the first scan. So now there’s 11 extra pages in the YI special!
Yoshi’s Island
Yoshi’s Story