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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Hard to make Yoshi go ‘Topsy-Turvy’

The Spokesman-Review

“Yoshi Topsy-Turvy”

Nintendo for

Game Boy Advance,

$34.99

•• (out of four)

Rating: E (Everyone)

Yoshi, Mario’s little green dinosaur buddy, has made a name for himself as a headliner on quality platform games for Nintendo’s game consoles. “Topsy-Turvy,” a colorful blend of platform adventure and puzzle solving, twists control conventions in knots, but the result is just a ho-hum Game Boy Advance title.

The gimmick here is a tilt feature. By leaning your GBA left or right, you tilt the environment. You can swing massive pendulums, roll boulders about and the like. You can even have Yoshi run up walls and jump to new heights by shifting the ground around him.

But the tilting never feels right. I often found myself tilting my head with the screen and losing sense of the fact I’d tilted the handheld. And sometimes, after a bit of play, I’d let it slip too much to one side and Yoshi would slide off a platform to his doom. Ouch.

Tilt-induced frustrations aside, Yoshi’s latest outing offers plenty of diverse gameplay. Our dino hero can transform into a ball to bash things, take the form of a ship and hit the high seas in search of treasure, or even change into a floating balloon.

The goals are fairly original, too. In one level, you may have to whack a dozen enemies; in another, you have to topple no more than four foes.

So while the short, yet creative stages and their goals are clever, the tilt controls do little more than jumble the good stuff. “Topsy-Turvy” still is fun – just not as much fun as it could have been.

–Ryan Huschka, Knight Ridder

“Capcom Fighting Evolution”

• (out of four)

Capcom for

Xbox (also for

PlayStation 2),

$39.99

Rating: T (Teen)

Evolution? Hardly. Evolution would imply progress or growth. No, this jumbled mess is regression, a hefty misstep after a successful string of fighting games for Capcom.

This latest fighter was stitched together by cutting and pasting from previous titles. You toggle between your two selected pugilists plucked from an oddball lineup made up of four characters from each of Capcom’s franchises: “Street Fighter II,” “Street Fighter Alpha,” “Street Fighter III,” “Darkstalkers” and “Red Earth,” never before seen in the United States. While a ridiculously diverse cast of more than 20 characters seems adequate (try pitting a dinosaur against a teenage Japanese schoolgirl), the exclusions of several fan favorites – like Ken, Blanka or Sasquatch – is baffling.

Even knowing that, I was still rather excited about playing some old faves in new digs – until the fighting started. Instead of creating a fresh experience, Capcom has concocted a Frankenstein of a fighter, an unpolished hodgepodge marred by clunky gameplay.

The visuals are shoddy as well. The brawlers are essentially identical to previous incarnations, riddled with raggedy bitmapped sprites. And the forgettable guitar riffs and synthesizer garbage they’re passing off as background music? Please.

Hard-core fans who might be tempted to give it a try for its online play likely already have a better arena where they can beat down their friends.

Pass on this “Evolution,” and wait for a revolution.

– Ryan Huschka, Knight Ridder