Yoshi's Island: Yoshi's Island

Announced at E3 2001, Yoshi's Island is a starter stage in Super Smash Bros. Melee, also available as a Melee Stage in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. It is also Yoshi's home stage, but you face Bowser and his teammates here in All-Star mode.

This stage has a unique design. On the far right of the stage, there is a hill sloping upwards. You can go up the hill, but if walking too far it could result in a side screen death. You are also closer to the top of the screen death area, so don't go up too far. On the left side of the screen, there is a warp pipe supported upwards by two small warp pipes. In the center of the stage are 9 Turning Blocks. Six of the blocks are in the air, while three of them are in the middle of the stage, building a bridge. Below the three middle blocks is a pit. If you attack a block or jump into it from below, it will start spinning, like in the original Super Mario World. You won't be able to stand on the blocks while you they are spinning. Be careful when fighting near the 3 center blocks as it is easy to fall down into the pit where it is possible to get trapped, making it somewhat difficult to recover.

In Brawl, playing as Fox, Falco or Wolf and activating the Landmaster Final Smash when at least one of the three Turning Blocks in the middle rotates will cause the Landmaster to fall through the resulting hole, despite the fact that the Landmaster is much bigger than the opening. This is because of a game physic in which the actual character is still on the field and the characters cannot stand in midair. It is believed that the characters are in the direct middle of the Landmaster. If the Landmaster only hangs over the edge a little, it will not fall. The Pokémon Trainer also occasionally moves above the hole, even though there is clearly nothing under him.

Origin
This stage comes from Super Mario World. In SMW there are these yellow boxes with two vertical lines in it. If one was to hit under the box, the box would spin and, one could go past it. In Melee, this is still true but, one can hit any sides of the box for it to spin. In SMW, there are these diagonal pipes that one can get shot out of to get to the other side of a giant hole. In Melee, a diagonal pipe can be as part of the stage but, you can't get shot out of it. In the background of the Melee stage, there are numerous features that are in SMW, like enemies, blue rounded-topped mountains and, long, round clouds. The apple trees in the background are references to the apples that Yoshi could eat in Super Mario World. The two background tracks for this stage is the athletic stage theme for SMW and a medley from Super Mario Bros. 3 (utilizing elements of the main theme and the Map 1 theme).

Trivia

 * The trophy of Metal Mario in Melee, if inspected closely, reflects a still image of this stage.
 * Attack a block so it spins, then pause, zoom in on the block and angle the camera. When these blocks are spinning, they become two-dimensional; this explains why characters are able to fall through them.
 * Super Mario World did have large diagonal pipes like the one on the left of this stage; however, all of them angled up and to the right, unlike this one which angles up and to the left.
 * If Pit performs his Final Smash, Palutena's Army, on this stage, the clouds will continue to move in front of Palutena's face.
 * Although Super Mario World was part of the main Mario series, in the Smash series this stage is part of the Yoshi universe. However, all Yoshi universe properties can also be considered part of the Mario universe, due to Yoshi having first appeared in a Mario game, and appearing in various others (especially sports titles and the Mario Party series) since then.