The latest Nintendo Direct explains aspects of Yoshi’s New Island gameplay.  While most of the discussion covers aspects we already know, we did learn of the Metal Egg-Dozer, a giant metal egg that crushes anything in it’s path.  While following Yoshi, the Egg-Dozer can act as a weight for Yoshi so he is able to explore underwater areas.

Following the Egg-Dozer, Nintendo Direct showed off Yoshi’s newest transformation, the jack-hammer. As with all of Yoshi’s transformations, the jack-hammer can be controlled with the 3DS’s gyro controls.

Power-stars make a return in Yoshi’s New Island.  Instead of powering up Mario, these power stars affect Yoshi, so that he is able to sprint up walls and ceilings.  It looks like there may be different kinds of power-stars in this game.  If you look closely, you can see that the yellow star is what gives Yoshi his running power, but a red power-star make him fly like a comet.

Finally, Nintendo Direct shows off the final power-up, the flutter wings, which will allow Yoshi to fly his way across the level.  Continuing the trend of assisting players having trouble with levels, the flutter wings will appear if the player has died a certain number of times.  As with other titles, getting the wings is entire optional.

 

Yoshi’s New Island will release on 3DS and 2DS on March 14th, 2014