The Creation of Yoshi's Island: How Nintendo Developed Its Timeless Hand-Drawn Art Style

Yoshi’s Island: The Enduring Legacy of Nintendo’s Hand-Drawn Masterpiece on the Super Nintendo Released in 1995 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island remains a shining example of timeless game design and artistry.

Developed by Nintendo, Yoshi’s Island is lauded for its distinctive, vibrant hand-drawn art style, which continues to captivate gamers nearly three decades after its debut.

As part of Nintendo’s platforming legacy, the title has seen re-releases across various platforms, including the Game Boy Advance and the Nintendo eShop, endearing itself to both original fans and newer generations. The Creation of a Visual Icon During E3 2018, Hisashi Nogami—currently known as the producer of Splatoon 2 on Nintendo Switch and an artist on the original Yoshi’s Island team—offered keen insights into the design process that birthed the game’s iconic visuals.

Speaking with Kotaku, Nogami detailed that the development of Yoshi’s Island’s hand-drawn look was a meticulous journey, overseen by art director Shigefumi Hino.

Hino suggested the team transition to a hand-drawn approach for this installment, hoping to set it apart from other Nintendo titles of the era. Nogami explained that the team experimented extensively, first by creating traditional hand-drawn illustrations and then scanning these images into digital form.

This experimental process required innovation: transforming those scanned drawings into graphics suited for the Super Nintendo’s capabilities while retaining the integrity of the original artwork.

To achieve this, the team laboriously translated hand-drawn sketches into digital sprites, manually filling in pixel art to match the scanned illustrations as closely as possible. “It was a painstaking endeavor, requiring us to render each image one pixel at a time,” Nogami shared.

He emphasized that he had to envision a "hand-drawing rendering engine" in his mind, guiding each pixel’s placement to ensure every sprite maintained the look and feel of traditional art.

This dedication, according to Nogami, consumed a significant amount of development time, but ultimately resulted in a game world that still resonates visually with players today. A Legacy That Endures Yoshi’s Island not only achieved critical and commercial success at launch but has also garnered acclaim for its artistry and innovation in the years since.

The title has influenced subsequent art direction in numerous Nintendo games and continues to be celebrated in retrospectives and through Nintendo Direct showcases.

Hisashi Nogami’s experience on Yoshi’s Island laid the groundwork for his later successes, notably with the Splatoon franchise on the Nintendo Switch. Across re-releases and digital availability via the Nintendo eShop, Yoshi’s Island’s blend of creative platforming and unique visual storytelling remains a gold standard for video game art direction.

Its continued popularity underscores the value of dedicated craftsmanship in game development, proving that time-intensive efforts can result in a legacy that endures for generations.

Nintendo Hisashi Nogami Shigefumi Hino Kotaku Yoshi's Island Super Nintendo Splatoon 2 Nintendo Switch