bouncing around kirby’s block ball

it had been a long time since i’d played a breakout style game, so i recently played through kirby’s block ball for the original game boy. (in terms of the timeline, the game was released in mid-1996, after kirby’s dream land 2 and before kirby super star on SNES.) i’d played alleyway, also for game boy, quite a few years ago, and at that time i’d mentioned that according to wikipedia: “Years later, the game’s designer Gunpei Yokoi would reuse much of Alleyway’s source code (such as paddle behavior and adapted physics engine) for the Game Boy game Kirby’s Block Ball while working with Shigeru Miyamoto’s team.” the game has a completely different feel, though, and the games don’t share much in common beyond them both being successors to ye olde breakout.

kirby’s block ball adds several key mechanics included, no doubt, to try to distinguish itself from other breakout successors such as arkanoid. like arkanoid, block ball adds powers, although not to the paddle itself but to the ball, activated by pressing the B button. the powers are inspired by the kirby games and are required for destroying certain blocks, although there are only four and they don’t feel particularly necessary. one of the bigger differences is that in some stages instead of controlling one paddle that moves across the bottom of the screen as in the other games you control as many as four paddles, one on each side of the screen. another big difference is that some bricks can only be broken when kirby does a “power bounce”, achieved by pressing the A button right as kirby hits the paddle. the power bounce also grants kirby extra speed, and invulnerability if he hits the spikes that border the stage. having to control more than one paddle and constantly press the A button to do the power bounce makes the game’s controls much fussier than other breakout-type games. others may enjoy the extra engagement, but i found the power bounces to be repetitive and tedious.

the game features ten stages each comprised of three normal stages, a sub-boss battle, and a boss battle. boss battles are exactly what you’d expect without much in the way of surprises, and each level has a high score target (called a “borderline”). in order to see the final stage and the actual ending you have to achieve the high score on every level, a feat that i quickly gave up on. the main reason for that is in order to get the high score you pretty much have to execute the bonus rounds in the levels perfectly. these are triggered by hitting a certain item and then clearing the rest of the level within a short amount of time, which proved to be overly difficult. of course a more-motivated player would actually try to improve her/his control over the ball, but even after playing through all the levels i didn’t feel particularly adept at making the ball go where i wanted it to. the game also features four mini-game type bonus levels that were more enjoyable, but don’t appear very frequently. so all in all, despite the always-cute kirby trappings, this wasn’t a particularly fun or memorable take on breakout. hopefully some of the other kirby spin-offs will impress me more.

bounce around these kirby’s block ball links:
- review of 3DS VC release at nintendolife.com
- page for the 3DS VC release at nintendo.com
- entry at kirbysrainbowresort.net, which includes scans of the instruction manual
- entry at kirby.wikia.com
- screenshots of the ending, at vgmuseum.com

easygoing kirby’s epic yarn

after the frustration that was goldeneye 007 i ended up finishing kirby’s epic yarn for wii. like most of the series the game is fairly mindless but genial overall. this particular entry sets itself apart in both its visuals (an arts-’n-crafts-aesthetic similar to the one seen in yoshi’s story) and its gameplay: instead of kirby’s usual swallow move which allows him to “steal” the abilities of his foes, in this game kirby transforms with each of his movements, such as turning into a parachute to drift down from a jump or into a car when dashing. kirby can also undergo “super transformations”, such as turning into a snowboarder or a dolphin, or one of the more entertaining ones, a fire truck.

the look is unique and eye catching and executed extremely well, and although it would seem to be almost overly “kiddy”, since the gameplay is rock solid (as you would expect) it doesn’t feel too cutesy, or at least not distractingly so. the visuals are charming and contribute to plenty of unique level designs, although there’s not much in the core gameplay that feels really brilliant. the game offers a fairly good balance between being too easy and being too hard: it adopts a very sonic-like approach where you can’t die, but get hit once and you temporarily lose all your loot (“beads” in this game). the number of beads you have by the end of the stage determines your medal (none, bronze, silver, or gold), and although medals don’t earn you anything (except in the case of boss battles) it does serve its purpose of giving more-experienced gamers more motivation to play more carefully. there are three treasures hidden throughout each stage as well to increase replayability, and the local co-op mode is also a welcome addition. the game also includes an extensive mode featuring different categories of bonus missions and an overly designed feature to decorate kirby’s apartment including the ability to customize your furniture with different fabrics.

all in all although, or because, this entry differs from the usual formula, it was one of the more enjoyable in the series. i wouldn’t say this ranks among the best of the genre, but this is a good option for younger players, fans of co-op, fans of the character, or people looking for an easygoing platforming experience.

some easygoing kirby’s epic yarn links:
- nice entry at kirby.wikia.com, which includes a complete run-down of all the transformations
- iwata asks interview
- the official site includes wallpapers
- entertaining commercial
- entry at wikipedia
- just for fun, “Check Out These Kirby Drawings from Nintendo’s Bosses” from 1993

headache-inducing kirby tilt ‘n’ tumble

of all the nintendo series, the kirby series continues to be my least favorite by a fair margin (though there was a notable exception in the form of kirby: canvas curse which i played and enjoyed early last year). it’s taken me some effort, but i finally finished another entry in the series, kirby tilt ‘n’ tumble, and overall for me it ranks the lowest among the kirby games yet.

the game deserves significant credit for being the first motion-controlled nintendo game, which was achieved by an accelerometer included inside the game cartridge. at the time it must have seemed like magic to move kirby while moving your game boy color, but now that it’s a familiar game mechanic the novelty isn’t enough to redeem the tedious and slow gameplay. it’s a bit hard to pinpoint why the game is so dull. for starters, being forced to regress back to the dimly lit GBC screen was painful (while the game does play on the bright-screened GBA SP, since the cartridge’s orientation is opposite of the GBC’s the controls are reversed, rendering the game pretty much unplayable). that’s not a fault of the GBC itself since for GB and GBC games in general you can find a good enough angle with a steady light source that it’s not too much of an issue. but in this game since you’re constantly moving the screen around, seeing the GBC’s screen becomes much more difficult than usual. adding to this frustration is one of the game’s central mechanics, which is to “pop” kirby up by quickly tilting the GBC up and back down to make him jump. this requires even more-extreme readjusting of your eyes back to where on the screen you were, leading to headaches and motion sickness even under the best of conditions.

on top of these issues i found that there’s just not that much variety in the levels or level design. the boss battles are pretty much all the same, and one of the prominent level elements is a donkey kong country-like rotating container that you have to jump out of at the right moment, and those sections were just as annoying here. the game could probably be most closely compared to super monkey ball, a game that i had actually enjoyed overall. on the surface it seems both games would receive a similar reaction since their core mechanics, tilting the world to make a ball move, are pretty much the same. perhaps that game succeeds because instead of finicky navigation through levels filled with elements that just slow you down, it instead limits its game mechanics so that you can focus on the challenge of speeding through a bite-sized level. the arcade experience of super monkey ball with its high degree of challenge gives the game a “one more try” and quick-shot appeal that balances out the precision required, whereas there’s little sense of progress or reprieve from the snail’s pace of tilt ‘n’ tumble.

the cute factor of the kirby games continues to be its biggest draw, but as this game doesn’t really introduce any new characters or surprises to the universe there’s really nothing to redeem the aggravating gameplay. i’m hopeful that yoshi’s foray into motion-controlled gaming, in yoshi topsy-turvy, fares better, and that the remaining entries in the kirby series are more worthwhile.

tilt ‘n tumble these kirby tilt ‘n’ tumble links:
- entry at wikipedia.org
- entry at kirbysrainbowresort.net, which includes scans of the manual, screenshots, and locations of all the special (red and blue) stars
- game informer included the game at #23 in its “25 best game boy games of all time” list. that page also includes a link to an entertaining commercial for the game.

kirby’s colorful canvas curse

after the great disappointment that was other M i was in the mood for something a bit comforting, so i picked up kirby: canvas curse for DS. although i’m not a huge fan of kirby games in general, they’re so genial and cute that you somehow can’t help but enjoy them on some level. the last game in the series i had finished was kirby super star for SNES, but i decided to skip over a few entries that didn’t seem to add much to the standard formula and instead play canvas curse which is notable for being entirely stylus controlled.

i wasn’t expecting too much since the game was released early in the DS’s life and the novelty of touchscreen mechanics has largely worn off since then, but i was pleasantly surprised. the game is a robust platformer, and due to the touchscreen focus the developers had to largely dispense with the typical kirby mechanics (and those of platformers in general). in their place they came up with a design centered on drawing rainbow lines that is completely solid and enjoyable. the levels have enough variety to keep you playing, and although the game is over quickly, finding the three medals in each stage and getting the best rank for the two types of trials for each stage definitely give incentive to keep playing. for a full complete the game also requires you to beat the game with four more characters who lack kirby’s copy ability (which feels underutilized anyway, no doubt as a result of the levels having to be completable without it). these four characters have slight differences to kirby’s weight and bounciness, but those modes don’t really add much to the experience. replaying stages does still somehow manage to be enjoyable, due to the fact that drawing lines with precision is such an active task. it’s not hard to get through a stage with badly drawn lines, but to get through a stage with perfectly drawn lines that send kirby exactly where you want to go instead of continually trapping him between a line and a wall (a common occurrence, as anyone who has played the game will attest) or sending him off in the wrong direction, is gratifying. so much so that it kind of made me wish that the time trial mode was more reliant on this type of skill rather than simply spamming the dash move to get to the goal, especially if collecting all the stars in the level were part of the challenge. in any case, i can’t think of many other games where the difference between just getting through the game and sailing through it with aplomb is so large that there is a distinct pleasure in executing the “elegant” solution.

although canvas curse has rocketed to the top of my list of favorite kirby games, it didn’t quite break into my top games of all time list. like DK: king of swing, canvas curse doesn’t just introduce a new game mechanic, it explores it thoroughly and continually provides twists on the central premise. just a bit more level variety and more substantial differences in the locales beyond the differences in background images would have helped a lot. still, this is definitely one of the better games i’ve played in a while, and although it’s only february this is already likely to be one of the best games i play this year.

kirby’s canvas links:
- kirbysrainbowresort.net has some great stuff on the game, including official artwork and a catalogue of all the enemies
- entry at kirby.wikia.com
- entry at wikipedia
- FAQ at gamefaqs
- sketches from HAL labs. the link to HAL labs’ official site has a lot of great canvas curse concept art.

super kirby

i seem to be continuing to relive my previous year of gaming. last year i played kirby’s adventure for NES, and at that time i was somewhat pessimistic about my future with the series, although my first foray into kirby super star for SNES offered a glimmer of hope. the game is eye-catching, with bright, vibrant colors, and it provides a somewhat wider variety of gameplay than previous kirby games, thanks to its 8ish (depending on how you count) distinct sections.

although i quite enjoyed the game and definitely rank it above kirby’s adventure, i still don’t quite see the appeal of the series as a whole. the design is quite good and kirby continues to be as wuvable and huggable as ever, but once again the game’s lack of difficulty makes the game feel rather feeble overall. as with other kirby games, oftentimes you can just float past the opposition, and although this game introduces a huge arsenal of flashy moves there really isn’t any need to master more than just a few basic ones. this game also includes “helper” characters for the first time whereby you can recruit enemies (or a second player) to accompany you; fun, but their presence ultimately just makes the game even easier. judged as a platformer the level design continues to disappoint as well. this review from zentendo of its DS remake sums up my feelings rather well:

As is the case with other Kirby titles (and the SubSpace Emissary in Brawl), the level design here is mostly uninspired and seemingly random. So many points in the game feel inconveniently put together so they don’t flow very well … Kirby’s main problem — as it always has been — is that enemies feel like fodder more than adversaries and the levels and controls just don’t have the precision, fluidity, and expert pacing that more superior platforming titles (like the Super Mario games) demonstrate.

the game does offer up a bit more depth in the form of treasures and special powers to seek out, but i didn’t have much motivation to spend more time with it. one thing that struck me while playing, though, is how much of the game reminded me of the smash bros. series, including kirby’s new movesets; the boss fights, particularly a boss that is pretty much exactly like master hand; and “the arena”, a mode very much like the all-star and boss battles modes. a cursory search online didn’t turn up much on the comparison, although i’m definitely not the only one who thinks so because on a smash bros. wiki it says that “It is believed that the combat mechanics of Super Smash Bros. are based off that of Kirby Super Star” and that “In many ways, Kirby Super Star may be considered a prototypical Smash“.

anyway, it’s hard to fault the game too much, though, as i’m sure it’s perfectly fine for younger players. still, it doesn’t look like the series is going to end up ranking among my favorites anytime soon. but there are still a lot of kirby games to play, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

kirby’s super links!
- entry at wikipedia
- once again rainbow resort provides a great site, including maps and audio.
- 8-part comic about the game at brawl in the family
- IGN compiled review scores for every kirby game
- video of every ability. also, here’s a video of a samus cameo. apparently there’s also a mario cameo, but i haven’t found a video of it.

adventures of kirby

kirby games aren’t my favorite, mostly b/c they’re so easy, but since playing brawl i’ve wanted to see meta knight’s first appearance, which was in kirby’s adventure for the NES. kirby’s adventure is the second game in the series and the first to feature kirby’s now character-defining ability to copy enemies’ abilities by swallowing them (who knew that such ruthlessly carnivorous behavior could be so darn cute?).

although the second in the series, this was my third kirby game, and the game held very few surprises, particularly since i’d already played the game immediately following, kirby’s dream land 2. kirby’s adventure often gets good reviews, even today (e.g. lucas m. thompson’s review of the VC release on IGN), and a lot of people seem to count it among their favorite games ever. but my reaction to it and dream land 2 were similar: in my mind both suffer from painfully easy levels without enough variety in enemies or geography to keep the scenery somewhat interesting to compensate at least partially for the complete lack of interesting gameplay.

i actually don’t have much more to say about this game, other than that i enjoyed kirby’s adventure more than dream land 2. the game as a whole feels bigger, and it includes additional powerups, more sub-boss and boss battles, and a colorful ambience provided by the NES that the gray-scale game boy lacked. it was also nice to see the original appearance of characters i was introduced to when i played the puyo puyo spin-off kirby’s avalanche. but it seems supremely pointless to me that the game’s “extra” mode is just beating the whole game at 100% with no saves.

nintendo fanboy i may be, but the kirby series is still ranking pretty low on my list of favorite nintendo series. but i played through the first part of the next game in the series kirby super star, which appears on the SNES and was recently remade for the DS. and even though super star is still as easy as ever, it looks like kirby has a lot of new moves and that it’ll be more interesting overall.

it was recently announced that the starfy series would finally be coming to the US, and although i’m definitely excited to have more games that were previously exclusive to japan, i’m leery of the starfy series being even more mindless than the kirby series. but of course i’ll be keeping my eye on it anyway, and i haven’t completely given up on kirby. i’ll try to keep an open mind as i find out how the rest of the series pans out.

kirby’s adventurin’ links:
- as usual kirby’s rainbow resort has tons of great info on their kirby’s adventure sub-site, including official artwork and loads of screenshots, most of the instruction manual, and the soundtrack.
- youtube video of (almost) every ability
- here’s a FAQ (or two) if you’re missing the last few secrets to get 100%.
- 1up has a nice history of kirby, recapping all the main games as well as all the spin-offs
- screenshots of the ending at vgmuseum.com
- entry at wikipedia

kirby avalanched

to change things up a bit i started playing through the SNES puzzle game kirby’s avalanche, which is apparently heading to the virtual console very soon. the game has an interesting history in that it was the 2nd version of puyo puyo (created in japan in 1991) that was released in the states. the first was dr. robotnik’s mean bean machine for the sega genesis and released in 1993. kirby’s avalanche followed two years later, and apparently both are modelled after the original version of puyo puyo instead of the updated version puyo puyo tsu (a.k.a. puyo puyo 2) released in japan in 1994. [isn't wikipedia helpful? what did we ever do w/out it?] this distinction is noteworthy, as i’ll get into below.

anyway, history lesson aside the game itself was probably one of the first tetris-like games to feature chain reactions, which i’d gotten to really enjoy through playing a similar game, super puzzle fighter 2 turbo, on the PSX. my sister and i used to play puzzle fighter head to head for hours, but after a while we found out that in most cases throwing blocks down quickly but fairly haphazardly yielded better results than playing carefully, and so the game became much less interesting.

avalanche proved to be a more challenging game overall, in part b/c a random approach usually won’t give many chains. with unlimited continues it’s not too hard to play through to the end, but i set myself the challenge of playing to the end with no continues. this turned out to be harder than one might think, mostly b/c the game is designed so that once you get a lot of enemy blocks on your screen, it’s fairly difficult to get rid of them. as the original version of puyo puyo, the game doesn’t have some of the more convenient features added to the second version, and in particular it doesn’t include the rule of sousai. this is a simple feature where the garbage blocks you’re about to send over to the other player are subtracted from the amount that s/he’s about to send over. this means that rounds last much longer b/c it’s common to have cases where both players are negating the others’ garbage blocks and bouncing small sets of garbage blocks back and forth. when you don’t have that feature, as in avalanche, once either side builds up a long chain the other side is pretty much bombarded and doesn’t have much chance to recover, so kirby’s avalanche forces you to play quickly and accurately. after spending way too many hours trying out various strategies, i decided the best thing to do is really just build as many chains as possible, and have chains working side by side so as they fall they chain with two colors instead of just one.

avalanche is one of those puzzle games that don’t really have much to do w/ the franchise except that the characters are featured, but the characters add color and some of the dialogue is pretty hilarious. all in all it was def. fun to play the relatively primitive version of the game, and i’m def. going to be playing through the subsequent iterations. i’ll prob. also track down the sega genesis version (which is available in the sonic mega collection disc which is on the gamecube and the other platforms) just to see if the gameplay’s exactly the same or not. yeah, i’m a geek.

linkies:
- the great kirby site at classicgaming.gamespy.com has the definitive guide to the game, with sprites, screenshots, music, instruction book text, game dialogue, and more.
- wikipedia’s page on the original version of puyo puyo describes the gameplay and shows examples of how to make chains
- and here’s wikipedia’s page on the game

kirby’s original dream land

so i actually played kirby’s dream land the day i decided to set aside f-zero GX. i suppose i was in the mood for something fluffier and easier, and so even though i’d been quite disappointed with kirby’s dream land 2 i picked the original up. part of it, i suppose, is that i was interested in seeing how they would compare since i knew the original game was before kirby had developed his now trademark “copying” ability.

i hadn’t had high hopes, but surprise, surprise, i much preferred this game to its sequel. i’m sure i’m going to be in a minority on this, but the blatant “try and die” game mechanics which really detracted from the sequel were nowhere to be seen here. to clarify what i mean: in the sequel there’s one section where the screen forces you to move to the left and you’re constantly having to choose between two paths that look equally plausible. so if a player picked randomly, on average he or she would have to waste 4 or 5 lives getting through this level. no skill involved whatsoever, just dumb chance. other sections were less blatant than this, but similarly annoying.

in contrast, in this game there’s just good, solid, old-fashioned 2D platforming. colorful characters, fun boss fights, and good gameplay mechanics. there’s no doubt that the fact the game is only four levels long limits its appeal, but the big surprise for me was that after you beat it the game provides a code to access the hard mode. the hard mode is really what elevates this game from a bit of genial distraction from a now well-established franchise to a really respectable game in its own right. the harder mode includes more aggressive enemies that take off twice as much energy and boss fights which, while featuring the same characters, are in two out of the four cases considerably different and in all of the cases definitely more challenging. continues are less forgiving as well, as you’ll have to start at the beginning of the level instead of the last screen you were on if you lose all your lives. luckily this doesn’t apply to the final boss fight. before beating the final boss you have to encounter the previous four bosses again, but fortunately if you get trounced by the final boss you don’t have to re-fight the four others. all in all a pretty worthwhile way to spend a few hours.

i’ve mentioned the great kirby site at classicgaming.gamespy.com. their page for the game is great as well. they also have a nice “gameology” and some interesting info about kirby’s creator and why he was dissatisfied with the video game industry (much of which i completely agree with). and to close here’s a link to a good FAQ at ign.

i’ve been really enjoying these straightforward game boy games. as with some other things in life, length really isn’t necessarily the biggest factor (haha). i have some more game boy games lined up, although i should probably start playing through the SNES games i’ve gotten recently. hmm …

kirby landed

i finally finished kirby’s dream land 2. i haven’t really come across many negative comments about it, but i found it to be mostly tedious. i’d played a bit of kirby’s adventure on the NES a while back, and from what i remember i enjoyed it, but this game was just too mind-numbingly easy. the levels were fairly well constructed, but the vast majority of them required practically no effort other than holding down the right button and jumping every once in a while. there were def. some worthwhile challenges near the end, including a pretty rad boss fight at the very end, but it was a case of too little too late. the game def. gets points for style (inc. a great trio of animals in the supporting cast), but along with the easiness, one of the other gripes i had about it was that the few “puzzles” near the end were of the arbitrary kind where they don’t really require any logic, just too much time spent on endless trial and error (e.g. finding the last rainbow drop on level 7-7). other games do this as well (eternal darkness, i’m looking at you yet again) and to me it’s a sure sign of poor design. compare those to the puzzles in the zelda games, which are clearly presented but still challenging. i finished at 100% though, which was nice. does anyone out there know what happens if you get perfect in the post-game win bonus mode or completely through the boss mode? i’m sure someone out there knows.

i happened to get the original kirby’s dream land at the same time, but apparently it’s short and you don’t even copy enemies’ abilities in that one. i’ll prob. hold off on that one and go back to the NES or SNES game first (eventually!).

two links fer ya:
- awesome site devoted to the game including screenshots of all the powers, the instruction manual, music, and enemies. i love the names of these enemies. “scarfy”, “sir kibble”, “squishy” haha. i also like their description of crack tweet: “This little chick is cute and is hatched from an egg. Unfortunately he’s not on Kirby’s side.” haha. i think it’s unfair of nintendo to make the enemies so cute.
- FAQ at ign