I starting thinking about this run back when KennyMan666 submitted his, 'cause I knew his could be improved. But then I forgot about it, so most of the work for this run was done in the last couple weeks. This game is quite fun to play, and it's not very long, at least not for simply clearing Story Mode.

Thanks go to KennyMan666 for doing the initial run of this game. Even though some of his route decisions were... misguided, I'd never have thought to run this game if he hadn't done so first.

I think my route is pretty good. It may not be perfect, since I'm not too familiar with the game, and I didn't spend ages planning this.

As for the details...

Stage 1-2: Surprise!!
This stage has about the same fruit density as 1-1, but the first heart is earlier. Since I'm going to Blargg's Boiler, I need one heart, and that makes this stage faster than 1-1. I did pretty well here, aside from walking into one enemy.

Stage 2-2: Blargg's Boiler
Ah, lava. Isn't instant death fun? But this stage has nice fruit density, so it's the fastest choice. I missed one fruit, but there are 31 before I have to roll the ball (slow...), so I'm fine. Except when I tried to pick up the last couple fruit and wasted a few seconds 'cause I'm used to doing a suicidal jump at the one which is #29 in this run.

Stage 3-1: Cloud Cruising
This stage doesn't look very fast at first. But it is. There are a few different ways to do the first room... I think the one shown is the fastest, but it's only a few seconds difference either way. I almost picked up too few fruit... it worried me a bit at the end; I usually have a comfortable buffer.

Cloud N. Candy is an easy boss, even for this game.

Stage 4-1: Jungle Hut
Not only does this stage have a better fruit density than the other jungle stages, but it has easily accessible hearts, which I need to access a fast stage on the next page. My route for this stage changed a few times during practice. I'm not sure if this is the absolute fastest, but I'm pretty sure I have the minimum number of room transitions. My execution was a bit messy, but I didn't miss any fruit. The banana I ran past on my second trip through the central room is my buffer, in case I screw up fruiting a shyguy... I probably should have grabbed that and skipped the far melon in the last room instead. Oh well.

Stage 5-3: Shy Guy Limbo
And now for a nice, short stage. For what I do here, the lucky fruit must be grapes. When the jumping coins spread out, I probably should have abandoned them. There are a couple more fruit right after the last one I grabbed.

Stage 6-1: Mecha Castle
I was getting nervous by this point, since I was significantly ahead of my previously fastest run. I made a few small mistakes because of that. But, mostly, this stage went well.

I then proceeded to what is probably the worst part of this run: the Baby Bowser fight. Missed the first egg, which let him get away from me.... Still, it only cost a few seconds.

---HAPPY END---

This run was done with more grace than you'd expect from a dinosaur.

Hello there, people. This is the first console speedrun I've ever done! I hope you like it!

DISCLAIMER: If you don't like lots of commentary, don't read mine, because it will be A LOT of it.

I decided to run Yoshi's Story because there was a NES game I wanted to do a speedrun of (Ufouria), but a few things kept me from doing that. Some broken NES parts... so I looked through my games to find another game to do a speedrun of, and realized that Yoshi's Story is a cute, fun and easy game, that probably could be finished in less than thirty minutes.

Said and done, I started practicing and planning fruit & heart-routes. If you have played this game, you know that you don't finish a stage until you have eaten 30 fruit. And to select more stages than one on the next page, you need hearts. So I had to know what stages was the fastest to eat 30 fruit in, and what hearts I could/had to get to reach those stages. I think I pretty much found the optimal route, only thing that could be done better is the execution of the route... especially Jungle Puddle and Mecha Castle could be improved, but... I wanted to play it safe in there.

So, some individual stage commentary:

Page 1: Treasure Hunt
I can clear this stage in less than 1:30. But I can't do that this time around, because I need to grab a heart so I can choose Blargg's Boiler for page 2. Bone Dragon's Pit is just a big no-no, since I have to collect three hearts on page two... it's definitely worth it to take the little extra time here. One of the stupider mistakes in the run is actually already here, with me hitting that information box. But I decided to not start over. Maybe that box-hitting gave me the luck I needed to actually finish the game without any other major stupid mistakes this time! I don't know how many failed attempts I had, and I don't want to know either.

Page 2: Blargg's Boiler
I like this stage because it's straightforward and all the three hearts I need aren't hidden at all. The reason I need all three hearts is so I can go to Frustration on the next page, because that's the only stage on page 3 that can be done fast enough... I don't do anything really stupid on this stage, it's just move forward, eat fruit, kill the occasional enemies. Oh, and by the way, you might wonder why I fill up on eggs in the beginning of this stage. Well, that was a safety measure. I found out during practice runs that on page 1 I got more than enough eggs by just eating enemies, but that wasn't true for all other stages. I ran out of eggs more than once. So I decided that I would fill up on eggs at the start of all other stages. I stop eating fruit on this stage when I have 29 because there's more than 30 fruit on the way to the third heart. It's possible to jump over the first Blargg but I decided to not do it because it can easily fail.

Page 3: Frustration
This is one of the easiest stages. Especially the melon race is hard to fail. The heart I need to get is luckily right in my way. I make one mistake, which leaves me with 28 fruit instead of 29 when I enter the pot, it was in the section with Lakitu and the see-saw platforms I missed one fruit. Optimally the water melon will be the 30th fruit, but it's not that much time lost.

Boss battle with Don Bongo was all but optimal. It is possible to just jump-throw-jump-throw-jump-throw and then he's dead, but as you can see, that didn't happen. Then I even missed with the fourth egg, and I fool around too much... blech. If I ever do individual stage runs of this game I'll show you a perfect Don Bongo fight.

Page 4: Jungle Puddle
Aah, Jungle Puddle. The watery spot in the middle of the jungle. I FUCKING HATE JUNGLE PUDDLE. It was the major bane of this run. I failed more in this stage than any other. So finally, I decided that I would care more for survival than speed here, as long as it didn't look TOO sloppy. First part of the stage ain't THAT bad, but the problem is one: water. Swimming is kinda slow in this game. But, well, the first part is way easier than the second part, so I decided that I would collect as much fruit as possible in the first part so I could end the second fast... "So", you might ask, "if you hate this stage, why didn't you do stage 1?" Because Jungle Hut is, together with Bone Dragon's pit, one of the slowest levels in the game. Big and with lots of paths & dead ends. And I need to get two hearts. I can't play Jungle Hut at all. Jungle Puddle is by far the fastest stage on this page, Piranha Grove and Neuron Jungle are big no-nos. So, the problem with the second part is those fish. The red one ate me many times. So if you ever see me stand still, it's simply to wait out the fish. Man I hate this stage so much... luckily, I'm on my way to...

Page 5: Shy-Guy Limbo
...my favourite stage in the entire game, so I was happy when it turned out to be the fastest stage for page 5. Well, that's not very strange actually - stage 1 and 2 are both underwater levels, and as I said, swimming is too slow. Stage 4 is just annoying. Well, this is a quite easy stage - it's just running and egging and eating. This is the second stage where picking up a heart fruit helps for speed, btw - because when you ground pound with it, all bubbles burst and Shy Guys turn into Lucky Fruits. This is the only stage where I don't have to care about hearts because anything else than stage 1 on page 6 is just ridiculous to try for speed.

Page 6: Mecha Castle
Jungle Puddle was the worst stage, but this clearly takes second place. If you think I'm slow here, it's because I was careful to not die. Well, there's not much to say about this level - just learn where all the fruit and traps are and you are home free. ...not. You still have to AVOID the traps, which sometimes can take time... you see me walking on that rolling thing before the presses? Well, that place ended many a successful run, so I wanted to make sure I didn't become a flat Yoshi. Still, you see I just avoided one... that was not planned. :s

Baby Bowser is a wuss. As you can see, I kill him before he even has time to do anything.

I love the ending of this game.

A 100% of this game would be 30 melons and 3 hearts in all stages. I assure you, I'm never, ever going to do that.

Now that I have gotten this run and the Ufouria run sent in, I can try my hands on my current highest targets: A low% Ufouria run, and a single-segment run of Mega Man Anniversary Collection...

If you have any questions, find me on the forums, IRC (spawncamp in #metroid at metroid2002.com, and you'll run across me sooner or later) or mail me at KennyMan666 АТ gmail.com!