There’s nothing quite as terrifying as watching Baby Mario float away in a bubble as a big red 0 materializes in the top right corner of your game screen. That’s as true in “Yoshi’s New Island” now as it was back in 1995 when “Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island” first introduced Nintendo’s signature plumber as a secondary character to his prehistoric steed.

In his Nintendo 3DS debut, Yoshi packs many of the same tricks he did nearly 20 years ago — he can gobble up enemies and turn them into eggs (for shooting, of course), morph into vehicles at certain junctures and, as his plumber friend before him, hop on enemies to defeat them. Just as Mario in the New Super Mario Bros. series, Yoshi has a couple of jumbo powerups this time around.

The first of these is merely an egg that’s four times the dinosaur’s size. At certain points in the game, a giant Shy Guy will pop out of a pipe and require a bit of effort to turn into an egg. This projectile can knock over certain walls, uncovering collectibles and secret paths. The second new powerup is the giant metal egg, which functions much like its non metallic brethren, but with the added bonus of allowing Yoshi to walk underwater.

“Yoshi’s New Island” greatly benefits from the hardware it’s running on. The game looks gorgeous. It’s the perfect mix of 2D crayon art backgrounds and 3D character models. Online screen grabs and video don’t do the game justice — there’s nothing quite like traversing this updated Yoshi’s island.

But that doesn’t mean the game isn’t without its flaws. The vehicle sections exclusively use the 3DS’s gyro controls, which aren’t ideal for navigating meticulously through, say, an underwater tunnel as a Yoshi submarine.

The standard controls also feel a bit more sluggish than they did in the SNES game. Whereas Yoshi could practically turn on a dime and unload an egg instantaneously in his first solo adventure, it takes the dinosaur a bit longer to complete these actions. The platforming, fortunately, doesn’t suffer too much from this mechanic.

“Yoshi’s New Island” is, at times, a punishingly difficult platformer. There are segments where movements need to be so precise that a single misstep has Baby Mario wailing uncontrollably as you chase after him, tripping over hazards and repeatedly hurting yourself all the while. The game ranks right up there with contemporary platformers like the “Donkey Kong Country Returns” series and latter challenges of the “Super Mario 3D” games.

It’s unfortunate, then, that music in “Yoshi’s New Island” doesn’t quite fit with the ruthless sentiment the game world conveys. Much of the tunes are a riff on the original overworld theme, which is a tad on the cheery side. Even this game’s version of the athletic theme doesn’t do much to instill a sense of urgency in the player.

Nit-picky complaints aside, “Yoshi’s New Island” is well worth the $39.99 price tag that it commands both at retail and on Nintendo’s eShop.