Yoshi’s Cookie - Two-Player VS Mode (Actual NES Capture)

[Note: This video and description were originally posted on Youtube in September of 2021.]

This is a capture of me and a friend playing the two-player VS mode of Yoshi’s Cookie for the NES. This is not an emulator and was not played on the Wii or Wii U Virtual Console, or Switch Online. This footage was recorded directly from Keet’s front-loading NES using a real Yoshi’s Cookie cartridge. I’m player one and Keet is player two.

While I was visiting Keet in Florida, we also managed to record the competitive multiplayer modes from a couple NES puzzle games that I brought with me: Yoshi and Yoshi’s Cookie. To my knowledge, Keet had not played Yoshi’s Cookie before, so it was nice to show him this puzzle game while I was there.

Keet’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiMG...
You can watch our goofy commentary here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=silts...

I actually grew up with this game in the early ’90s because my mother was a puzzle game fanatic at the time. She bought Dr. Mario, Tetris 2, Yoshi and Yoshi's Cookie for our NES, and we had tons of two-player battles along with my brother. My brother and I also had the original Tetris on our Game Boys, and our neighbor (my mom’s friend) owned Tetris on the NES, as I recall.

Yoshi’s Cookie was one of my mother’s favorite games, and I have to admit, I enjoyed it quite a bit as well. In fact, despite us already owning the NES game, I have some memory of my mother renting the SNES version because it had an additional mode and better graphics. It’s an addicting game when you have someone to play against.

Not surprisingly, Keet quickly took a liking to this game and the battle between us got pretty intense. We did three full games and things got really close at the end. However, we weren’t paying attention to the special Yoshi-face cookie effects displayed below the timer bars, so we didn’t even bother to time our Yoshi lines for strategic benefits. We were just matching cookies as fast as possible. I think I completely forgot about the trigger for the special effects while we were playing.

Also, since Keet’s HDTV couldn’t display the NES at all, we played on an old rear-projection big screen that he still had in his house. However, the green and blue cathode ray tubes must have burnt out on the TV because it only displayed everything in red, making us feel like we were playing on a giant Virtual Boy. This caused me a little bit of a problem at first because of the lack of color separation. I actually ran out the timer once or twice because I was unable to find five cookies to line up. However, I eventually got used to the red display and started picking up speed.

Recorded with the Hauppauge HD PVR 2 and a composite connection at 60 frames per second. We’re using standard NES controllers.