Yoshi Starring in New Wii U “Yarn” Game

The cute dinosaur gets his own game by the guys behind Kirby’s Epic Yarn.

Yoshi has gotten a short shrift in the Mushroom Kingdom. Sure, he started as a sidekick in Super Mario World, but he quickly became popular on his own with titles like Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island (1995) and Yoshi’s Story (1998). There’s been a few handheld titles starring Yoshi since then, but nothing on the home-bound consoles. That is, until Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo, announced this morning that development on a new Yoshi game was in the works.

“A new game is being developed by the team behind Kirby’s Epic Yarn,” Iwata said, referring to HAL Labs. “This time the main character is Yoshi.”

Takashi Tezuka – director of Yoshi’s Island and Yoshi’s Story – is “deeply involved” with the creation of the new fabric Yoshi game.

“It has been a quite a long while since we had a new game for the home console featuring Yoshi as the main character,” Iwata said. “We’d like to leverage the new graphics and hardware capabilities [of the Wii U] to show how attractive a new Yoshi game can be.”

Iwata didn’t mention any timeframe for the release of the new Yoshi game, or even a title, but it’s cool to see Nintendo experiment with its core properties a little bit more.

Plus, Kirby’s Epic Yarn was freaking fantastic.