Nintendo Officially Unveils Yoshi’s Land for Wii U

This morning’s Nintendo Direct unveiled a new, Kirby’s Epic Yarn-style platformer starring Mario’s boot-footed riding dinosaur slave, Yoshi, and it looks really cool. Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwata neglected to give the game a title, but back when the Wii U launched in November, a game called Yoshi’s Land was rumored to be forthcoming. It was first revealed via the accidental “Miiverse Debug Mode” discovery, and then later posted on Best Buy Canada’s site.

While the game is being developed by the team behind Kirby’s Epic Yarn for the Wii, Yoshi’s Land is being supervised by Takashi Tezuka, the producer of 1998’s Yoshi’s Story for the Nintendo 64, who also served as one of the directors for Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island.

The game looks like a pretty fun, cool platformer, but what really has me drooling are those textures. LOOK AT THE TEXTURES! I think I want this game. Hopefully there’ll be some solid, innovative mechanics that we can only begin to guess at. It’s Nintendo—this is what they do best.

What do you think? Are you as surprisingly jazzed about this one as I am? Or am I just crazy? Check out the rest of the screens: