Normally, whenever you start Yoshi’s Island and select a save file, you will start with 3 lives.

This patch re-enables an unused feature in Yoshi’s Island which keeps track of the player’s life count between resets, similar to the GBA version of the game. This means that you’ll start the game with however many lives you had when the game was last saved.

Yoshi’s Island saves in the following situations:

• The player completes a stage for the first time
• The player gets a new high score on a stage
• The player wins or loses a bandit minigame

There are two patches included: one for headered ROMs, and one for headerless ROMs. Patch using your IPS patcher of choice. (I recommend using Floating IPS)

This patch is also available as a configurable ASM file over on SMWCentral.

• Database match: Super Mario World 2 - Yoshi's Island (USA)
• Database: No-Intro: Super Nintendo Entertainment System (v. 20210222-050638)
• File/ROM SHA-1: C807F2856F44FB84326FAC5B462340DCDD0471F8
• File/ROM CRC32: D138F224