Yoshi's Island for GameCube

Freshness, originality and innovation have become astoundingly dispensable qualities for some of Nintendo's big Game Boy Advance titles.

The latest game to be resurrected from the Super Nintendo days of the early and mid-'90s is "Yoshi's Island," released this week for GBA.

It's too familiar to seem brilliant, and it would be too promotional to call it "classic." But it's terrific, and at the common sale price of $25, a steal.

Video games often defy succinct synopsis, and "Yoshi's Island" isn't easily summarized for many reasons. Its sense of humor, for example, is overwhelmingly visual.

It won't make you laugh out loud to read that Yoshi the dinosaur snaps out his tongue to swallow enemies, enabling him to lay an egg he can hurl as a weapon. But you're likely to end up with a goofy smile on your face as you play your way through.

The graphics are very good by GBA standards, and the game has long-lasting appeal. You can skip tasks to complete levels, so you can challenge yourself to a do-over and try to master everything.

"Yoshi's Island" also has a story line of sorts, but it's irrelevant to the game's charm, which holds up impressively in its new handheld form.

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The only problem with Microsoft's recent acquisition of the British game development company Rare is that it won't mean anything for consumers until spring 2003. That's when Rare is scheduled to deliver the first of five games already being designed for Microsoft's Xbox.

But the Xbox needs must-have games now.

The amount of buzz that remains attached to the Xbox is a mystery. It's still considered cool -- technologically anyway -- but its entertainment value lags way behind Sony's PlayStation2 and Nintendo's GameCube, which is hitting its stride with exclusive games of exceptional quality.

Rare is a great development firm with the rights to material such as a new "Perfect Dark" game. And yes, there are some immediately upcoming Xbox games from Microsoft and other companies that could prove compelling. Maybe "Blinx" (next month), maybe "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell" (November). It's just a relatively short list.