Smash Redesign: Yoshi

Yoshi. The ultimate Dinosaur, the king of strange green creatures, and the master of tiny children’s games. He is just as recognizable as Mario and appears in a fair number of Mario’s games. He even has his own set of games allotted to him. But does he even represent the character in his games? I personally don’t think so.

While Yoshi does have a lot of really good moves, he just doesn’t seem to have a lot of moves from his games. He has a long list of games and a lot of them aren’t even represented. Today, we fix that.

Moveset history:

I don’t feel like it needs saying, but I’ll say it anyway. Any character from Smash 64 is nearly identical to their counterparts in Melee. Just a few tweaks and changes here and there, but nothing that changes how the character works. If you want a full view of all the different changes that Yoshi went through, go ahead, and click here to watch Madao Joestar's video on Yoshi.

I will mention a few things. His up B now gives him lift when he uses it so that he can actually recover if he loses his double jump, His forward tilt was changed to a tail attack, and he has become more annoying to play against. Overall, no real changes. Let’s go ahead and change a few things.

Rules:

The rules are simple, build Yoshi in his best, most represented form for super smash bros. Ultimate. Any games that came out before Ultimate are fair game. Any game that came out after Ultimate are not allowed. Now let’s build a weird dinosaur.

Neutral attack: Yoshi doesn’t have a lot of normal looking moves in his games, so we’re going to keep this.

Tilt attacks: There are going to be a few changes to Yoshi’s tilt attacks. I think that it’s kind of strange that Yoshi has several transformation moves in his games, but he doesn’t use any of them in Smash. We’re going to fix that by making a few of these moves transformation based.

Forward tilt: There is no real need to change this I feel. It can stay as is.

Down tilt: For down tilt, we’re going to have him change into Mole Tank Yoshi. He’ll then swipe with his two mole claws before transforming back. He'll also move forward slightly.

Up tilt: No need to change this at all.

Dash attack: For his dash attack, Yoshi will transform into a Motorbike before plowing through opponents. It will otherwise work a lot like his current dash attack.

Smash attacks: For Yoshi’s specials, we’re going to be spicing things up a little bit by changing a few things about his smash attacks.

Forward smash: Instead of a headbutt, Yoshi will instead shoot a quick shot of flames from his mouth. This will be a nice reference to his ability to breath fire in certain circumstances. It can otherwise have the same range, damage, and knockback as his current forward smash.

Down smash: There will be no change to this move.

Up smash: I don’t really feel the need to change this. There aren’t very many kinds of up smash type moves from any of Yoshi’s games.

Specials: Specials is always where I am most excited to talk about because I always think of really good ideas (at least I think that they’re really good ideas. For all I know, the ideas are actual garbage). Anyway, let’s get into the special moves.

Neutral Special: Yoshi’s neutral special is one of the most boring command grabs in the game. We’re going to fix it a little bit by giving it a few extra moves. The first thing that Yoshi’s tongue will be able to do is have a bit more variety to the attack. If Yoshi grabs a person with this move, instead of instantly pooping out an egg with the person inside, Yoshi will then hold the person in his mouth and can move around with it. He’ll have vastly reduced movement and won’t be able to do anything else until he does something with them (like how Kirby’s or King DeDeDe’s inhales work). While having a person in his mouth, Yoshi will have two options. He can either press down and turn the person into an egg (like normal) or he can press B again and shoot them out like a projectile. It will work similar to Kirby’s inhale ability when he shoots an opponent out at a fixed distance (depending on the opponent’s precent) which will do decent damage as a projectile and will even kill at higher percent’s. The person ejected will shoot out and take 10% after he finishes spinning.

That’s the first part of Yoshi’s tongue. The second part will be much more interesting. This will also work as a type of reflector. If a projectile comes at Yoshi, Yoshi will be able to grab and put the projectile in his mouth (the range for projectile grabbing will be much larger than the range for person grabbing). While the projectile is in Yoshi’s mouth, he can move about freely and can use any of his abilities. Pressing B will launch the projectile out of Yoshi’s mouth, but the projectile will not do extra damage or knockback like most reflectors do. Instead, if you press down while the projectile is in Yoshi’s mouth, it will be turned into an egg. This egg will follow Yoshi around like they do in his games and can be used in Yoshi’s egg toss move (more on that later). If Yoshi uses a projectile in this manner, then the egg will gain the knockback and damage of the move that he swallowed. Yoshi will only be able to have one such egg at a time, but he’ll still be able to use his tongue ability. Yoshi will not be able to make a different egg like this one from a projectile until he has gotten rid of the original (basically, pressing down while having an egg already will simply not do anything). To help balance this move, it will have lots of end lag, and the person grabbing part will only be active while the tongue is moving forward, but not when it’s moving back. The range will also be pretty short, but the possibilities are endless.

Side Special: This will be changed to Yoshi’s egg throw. The egg throw itself will be changed drastically. Instead of doing what it used to (Yoshi reels back and then throws which change slightly based on which direction you input), a cursor will appear while you hold the B button and will sit a little bit in front of Yoshi. This cursor can be controlled by the player to point any direction that Yoshi is currently facing (but it can’t move away from Yoshi. Just up and down). When one lets go of the button, Yoshi will throw the egg in the direction that the cursor was last at in a straight line (instead of the arc it traveled before). The egg will have the same damage and knockback as Mario’s fireball, but there will be a little twist involved. The egg will explode like normal if it hits an opponent, but it won’t explode when it hit’s the ground. Instead, it will ricochet off the ground and turn a different color. If it hits an opponent after it changed color, it will do extra damage. Each ricochet will increase the damage that the egg does, to a maximum of 25% if it does five ricochets (knockback will remain unchanged). After the fifth one, it disappears. The distance the egg travels will be a little over half of final destination, but a ricochet will reset how much distance the egg will travel. If the player just taps the attack, Yoshi will throw the egg straight in front of him. To add some high-risk high-reward elements to it, Yoshi will not be able to cancel out of this move, He will not be able move while the egg is out, and there will be an appropriate amount of end lag suitable for something like a Samus charge shot after firing it (current charge shot, not my new version). An egg that has a projectile in it will not gain any extra damage from a ricochet (I.E. is the egg would do 20% if thrown normally, it will do 20% after a ricochet as well).

Down Special: There is no need to change this. Yoshi has had ground pound ever since his first appearance.

Up Special: Yoshi is one of the very few characters who doesn’t have a recovery up special, and that’s just sad (don’t worry, we’ll get to Jigglypuff in due time). While his double jump is great for recoveries, it’s still pretty easily exploitable. But instead of giving him a second recovery option, they just put super armor on his double jump. So, what we are going to do is remove the super armor from Yoshi’s double jump and give him a real recovery. For Yoshi’s up special, he will transform into Helicopter Yoshi from Yoshi’s Island. It will work a lot like King K Rool’s up special with the exception that it will make Yoshi slightly bigger (since he’s turned into a helicopter).

Aerials: Yoshi’s aerials are actually pretty decent for him. I just want to change a few things about them.

Neutral air: His standard kick is fine. It is definitely one of his best aerials.

Forward air: No need to change. I think it’s fine.

Back air: No change.

Down air: Yoshi’s down air will be change from it’s current multikick to something completely different. Instead, Yoshi will transform into a jackhammer and plummet to the earth at high speeds. This will work a lot like other moves of this nature (Toon Link for example) where Yoshi will fall a certain amount before being able to recover. It will be able to spike at the beginning of the move but will hit diagonally after the spike opening is gone. This will be a nice little nod to New Yoshi’s Island where one of the transformations is him turning into a jackhammer.

Up air: No change

Grab: Yoshi’s grab is fine. I entertained the idea of maybe using this for Yoshi’s command grab abilities, but I decided against it. Because of this, there will be no change to his grabs or throws at all.

So that is my idea to make Yoshi more interesting in Super Smash Bros. Do you like these ideas? Do you have anything better or some better ideas on how to balance out Yoshi? Let me know in the comments.

That is be it for this post. If you enjoyed this, then please share it around. Until next time, stay bewildered.