Most games treat drugs with a high degree of absurdity. Just about any mysterious substance ingested by your character sends them on a harrowing spiral into another dimension, or at the very least something which alters your perception to the point where you lose about 80% of your control over your avatar. The depiction of intoxication in Yoshi's Island may be all cutesy and 'Nintendo', but to an eight-year-old me experiencing it for the first time, it was one of my first insights into the world of drugs, and was probably a gateway to me becoming obsessed with eating furballs in the hope that they send me loopy. On the level, Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy, Yoshi turns into a wobbling, stumbling mess whenever he comes into contact with mysterious floating fuzzy balls. The effects of consuming these balls are powerful Yoshi gets the visual distortions of LSD, the dis-coordinating effect of Ketamine, and the wide-eyed, dilated eyes of a tweaking meth fiend. Of course, in my childlike mind, I just thought "Awww, silly Yoshi's gone all dizzy", but looking at the game now, it's perfectly clear to me that Nintendo's been forcefully feeding its iconic dinosaur a powerful cocktail of drugs for years to keep him sedated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8anVmdVBZ8k
Gamer, Researcher of strange things.
I'm a writer-editor hybrid whose writings on video games, technology and movies can be found across the internet. I've even ventured into the realm of current affairs on occasion but, unable to face reality, have retreated into expatiating on things on screens instead.
