Before continuing on with Heretic, I took a slight detour to finish off another game instead: Yoshi’s Island DS. I hadn’t touched it in quite a while, but I only recently realized that there are only five worlds in it instead of the original’s six worlds, so I was closer to the end than I thought.

I only had to complete five more levels, but it took a bit longer than expected. Either the difficulty ramps up a huge amount in these later levels, or my platforming skills have waned a lot. I’d built up 87 extra lives by this point, but by the time I finished the game, it had fallen down to only 44 left. It felt like I’d spent forever redoing some parts, especially one in 5-7 (called “Superhard Acrobatics!”, appropriately enough) that involved annoyingly-placed piranha plants and dodging fire wheels while on moving platforms.

The final level was interesting in that it had five different paths you could take through it, depending on which baby type you selected. I tried all of them but wasn’t having much luck until I gave Wario’s a few tries, and eventually did it that way, since it was mainly based on puzzles rather than speed or precision. And then, ironically enough, the final boss fight was fairly easy, and I got it the first try.

Now, am I going to go back and get better scores in order to unlock the secret levels and bonus games? Hell no.