There's a moment at the end of world 2 where a cutscene plays, with the whole crew in a desert as Kirby lags behind, desperate for food as they then imagine their friends as said items. Of course, Adeleine makes food for everyone with her paintings and they have a nice picnic right there.

It's that kind of heartwarming, powerful energy that runs through the whole experience. This friendly, childlike pleasantry as you go across the galaxy with fun poplike music playing through the speakers, as your friends join you in a great amount of the levels to assist you. Whether that be sledding with waddle dee to king dedede himself helping you across lava chasms there's always a strong aura that feels like one very warm hug. If anything the only small issue is just that sometimes the game reminds you that it's a little old and shakes your attention by forcing you to grab a powerup twice from a completely different area for the true ending. But even still, the whole playthrough is rather forgiving, in that you can actually get a powerup mid-level, quit out of the level, and still have that powerup on you, including all the crystals you got in the level so far!!

Crystal Shards is very much a nostalgic, but also genuine fav of the kirby games for me. I'll always think about that final level where The Squad helps you out one final time before Ribbon carries you as you rail shoot an utterly corrupted angelic entity that bleeds while the game pleads with you to Tough It Out!!!

Kirby, you have crystals here that are 2 inches, 3 inches long. Yo, this is glass grade!

By the year 2000, most of Kirby's platforming counterparts had fully made the transition to 3D. Collectathons were king, and 2D platformers were becoming an increasing rarity. If there was ever a time to make the leap, it was then.

But rather than trying to adapt Kirby's gameplay and appeal to a 3D space (something Kirby's contemporaries were finding mixed success with), director Shinichi Shimomura and his team at HAL decided to keep Kirby firmly planted in 2D for his Nintendo 64 outing. Without the need to totally reinvent Kirby, HAL was able to evolve and refine what they already knew. The Crystal Shards is a pure distillation of what made the series work up to that point, and it comes pretty damn close to perfection as a result.

The Nintendo 64 allowed Shimomura and his team to create more dynamic set pieces and larger, more complicated boss battles. Everything here feels bombastic without losing sight of Kirby's cute, sugary sweet aesthetic. The story remains pretty simple and straight-forward, and is told through charming cutscenes that add just the right amount of flavor without being intrusive. It's fun to see Kirby's partners pop up in a level, though it's also a little bit of a bummer that you can't play as any of them. This is more than made up for by allowing Kirby to combine copy abilities, which allows for a lot of experimentation. I wasted a fair amount of time just running around and fusing abilities together to see what I could make, and it feels so natural that I often confuse myself into thinking it was a feature long baked into the series prior to The Crystal Shards.

Kirby 64 is a fantastic conclusion to the "Dark Matter Trilogy," and is easily my favorite game in the entire franchise.

It was also the second to last Kirby game director Shimomura worked on before... evaporating into thin air? I looked up what games he worked on and noticed he bowed out of the industry somewhere around 2002, with Nightmare in Dreamland being his last credit. Any attempt to find out why he left or what he's been up to has turned up numerous conspiracy theories, from Shimomura dying to having never existed in the first place. Perhaps this is appropriate in a way. There's an eeriness that's always lurking just beneath the surface in Kirby games, and so too is there something hauntingly mysterious about their development... Or maybe he just retired. who da hell knows

Great game, but not without its flaws. In terms of control, Kirby moves well enough even if he's still not as quick as he was in early games though thankfully not as outrageously slow as he was in the previous game. I do hate the way he "facefalls"(when Kirby drops from a greater height and falls flat on his face) in this game though, it feels much less controllable than in previous games. There's also a few odd times where if you try to inhale enemies off of platforms while dropping Kirby will be unable to move until the enemies actually reach his mouth, this could take a while if they get hung up on architecture and leave yourself open to either attacks or even dropping into a pit and dying. I forget if this can happen in other games, but I don't remember it being a very occasional problem like in this game which I'm assuming is because in the 2D games the enemies flew through the physical area of the stage to get to your mouth and thus never got hung up on anything.

Getting 100% in this game fortunately isn't too obnoxious unlike a certain previous entry in the series(Dream Land 3) with only a few choice standout bastards to get, however if you count getting enemy cards as getting "100%" then unfortunately it's now just as obnoxious due to the complete rng of potentially getting "doubles" of said enemy cards(When Kirby picks one up at the bonus picnic stage at the end of a level and gets disappointed at it). This is a strike against it regardless, because it's just dumb even if it isn't required to complete the save file. The true final boss fight against 02 is also a huge joke, especially in comparison to the "fake final boss" Miracle Matter who's actually one of the harder bosses in the series.

The game is still amazing in terms of presentation with awesome graphics for the system and one of the best soundtracks in Kirby history, the power combo system is also fun with its creative combinations with standouts being exploding ninja stars and a Darth Maul lightsaber. Though I'd like to mention that this game's version of Cutter is horrifically terrible.

I had fun, still one of the better games in the series and I actually think my opinion of it has been reinforced thanks to replaying it.

How many people don’t know that Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards has mini-games? If you open the options menu, there’s a little 4 player mini-game tab, containing 3 mini-games: 100-Yard Hop, Bumper Crop Bump, and CheckerBoard Chase. I was one of those people until about a week ago, I stumbled haphazardly into the depths of CheckerBoard Chase… To summarize it, it’s a simple Bomberman-adjacent arcade game where characters walk around on a big platform, and whenever you press A you clear out a line of the platform in front of you. The goal is to stay on the platform without falling into the destroyed lines. What would seemingly be a simple, throwaway mini-game developed for some presumedly arbitrary reason ends up having a whole lot of depth when you search for it.

First off, let’s talk about the line-clearing itself. The platform is visually broken into a simple 8x8 tileset, and you clear 1 block wide lines from where you’re standing to the stage’s edge. Clearing a line itself has a bit of startup and animation recovery, so if you and someone else clear lines in each other’s direction, you’ll only barely make it off the block before it falls. If you acted a split second late - you’re gone. You might not even clear the lines at all if you don’t click it fast enough, you’ll get stuck in startup and fall through.

Line clearing itself is a 2 stage mechanic; first a line is highlighted one by one in a split second, then the blocks start falling in order. Because of this, there’s even a sort of proximity system going on here - blocks fall faster the closer you are to the ledge. Not only that, but characters have tangibility to them; you can bodyblock! This means that when you’ve positioned correctly, you can hold someone in a corner and quickly get a confirmed kill on them.

Walking in this game is slow and doesn’t have any diagonal movement, but line clears are can be easily reacted to from afar. It’s about when you choose to walk that the skill lies, as the advantageous and disadvantageous spots on the stage are constantly changing as blocks fall and respawn. Walking for too long can often lead to you being pushed into a disadvantageous position if you can’t defend your own ground, but long stretches of watching are especially important to the end-game as the stage closes in, and bad line clears become more punishable.

If you’ve been locked in the corner, you can clear the spaces on the map where your opponent can get a confirmed kill on you from - if you’re fast enough. Though of course this sort of playstyle is risky, as you’re forcing yourself to stick to what’s usually the corners of the stage, which begin to fall as the match progresses. That’s a comeback mechanic with at least as much design intelligence as Guilty Gear: Strive.

I’ve been able to find a lot of fundamental e-sportsy game design here: from positional advantages to concepts like spacing. This is at the very least an EVO side event-worthy game that can sit in the corner next to Puyo Puyo and those Sailor Moon SNES fighting games!! Breaking this game’s subtleties open and scouring for crumbs of depth can really teach you a lot about the simple arts of game design as a whole. It’s often the rigid, initially awkward aspects of a game that lead to its depth. When analyzing a game as sheerly un-emphasized as a little mini-game hiding under the floorboards of Kirby 64, it’s hard to see where intention starts and ends. Yet ultimately as players it’s our right to breathe meaning into the dusty ashes of whatever we stumble upon. Grassroots is beautiful. Made me feel like a Ryu player circa 1994 on the sticks, feeling out their buttons. “Feeling a standing fierce here” I whisper, eyes shut tightly, as I launch a Waddle Dee into the pit of oblivion

I played Kirby 64 by the way. I don’t remember what happens in it it was a long time ago

whoa I finally got to finish writing a main series Kirby review again I never thought I’d see the day

we’ve made it to the last game in the so-called “Dark Matter Trilogy”. once more we got the mystique Shinichi Shimomura as director for this Kirby game and this is without a doubt his most ambitious game. likewise with a couple other of late Nintendo 64 games, the game was originally developed for the 64DD before Nintendo realized “uh oh we screwed it up!” and had HAL shift development to the basic N64. even with the change of hardware Kirby 64 is a pretty impressive N64 game, dare I say it’s my favorite game from this console?

there’s a lot to talk about here this time. those god damn pesky Dark Matter are back at it again but it seems they learned their lesson this time because instead of invading Planet Popstar they decided to go and bully some fairies over at Ripple Star and take over their planet with absolute ease. the Fairy Queen orders some pink-haired fairy named Ribbon to escape with this big ass crystal they have lying around to make sure it’s safe from the Dark Matter. she manages to get out of there but three Dark Matter named Dark Rimuru, Dark Rimura, and Dark Rimuro (don’t ask why they have names they just do) chase after Ribbon and send her flying to Popstar with the crystal shattered into pieces. she bumps into Kirby and they both find two Crystal Shards shortly after. while they team up and explore Popstar, they encounter Waddle Dee, Adeleine, and King Dedede along the way; all three have been possessed by Rimuru, Rimura, and Rimuro respectively (Dedede can’t and won’t ever get a break). once the team is assembled, they all venture towards different planets to collect and piece together all the Shards. this is where I’d end things but this game actually has full on cutscenes throughout the game. later Kirby games would also include cutscenes in various different forms but I feel like they already perfected the cutscene format with this game. the cutscenes do a great job making you feel as if you’re truly on a journey with your friends. you’re eating together at Rock Star, you’re stone skipping together at Aqua Star, you’re running for your life together at Neo Star, and while this isn’t exactly a cutscene, at the end of each non-boss level there’s always a picnic at the end with your friends waiting for you. this adventure is a group effort. and if you thought it couldn’t get better than that, THE MUSIC SYNCS WITH THE CUTSCENES. whenever something happens such as a character emoting or moving, a Crystal Shard appearing, Dark Matter being on-screen, etc., the music briefly shifts to give you the illusion that sound effects are currently playing, when in actuality these “sound effects” are actually a part of the music. no better does this enhance the experience than in my personal favorite cutscene at the end of Neo Star. unlike the previous cutscenes where the group shares a goofy and light-hearted moment, here they’re sprinting away from an active volcano that has begun to erupt. on its own the cutscene would be fine, but the intensity is amplified by the dynamic music playing in the background. those brief three seconds of Waddle Dee desperately running towards the portal before Kirby comes in with the clutch by popping up and inhaling him inside are some of the most dramatic moments I’ve ever felt in a video game no joke. the presentation is off the charts in this game and I love it so much.

oh yeah I have to talk about gameplay. although we’re on the N64, the game’s still a 2D scroller so no need to familiarize yourself with a different gameplay style, it’s not time for 3D yet. Kirby has all his moves from Dream Land 3, as well as most of the Copy Abilities from that game. Kirby loses out on Clean and Parasol, but in exchange he gets access to the Bomb Copy Ability, a fair trade-off unless you’re a huge Clean and/or Parasol enthusiast, don’t worry they’ll be back in some later games. unfortunately the Animal Buddies have sat this game out but in their place, Kirby gains the power to mix and combine his Copy Abilities. each combination gives Kirby a unique Copy Ability to use that’ll help him defeat enemies and destroy certain blocks. for example, Burn-Cutter gives Kirby a giant flaming sword to swing and throw, Stone-Spark lets Kirby swing a boulder chained by electricity, Ice-Spark turns Kirby into a fridge that throws out healing items you can consume, Needle-Bomb turns Kirby into a Gordo that can explode and shoot spikes, there’s a bunch of more Abilities but those are just a few to give an idea on how it works. to this day this is the only Kirby game where combining Copy Abilities gives you a completely unique Ability with its own properties and characteristics. Squeak Squad and Star Allies may have had their own methods of combining Abilities, however it was only restricted to elemental and weapon-based Copy Abilities (Fire Sword, Water Bomb, Spark Cutter, etc.). that said, I need to address the elephant in the room, or rather the puffball in the room. Kirby’s movement feels….off. he’s noticeably slower and heavier in this game than he was in every other side scrolling game before and after, I suppose that’s fitting though since Kirby does look a bit chubby this time around. look no further than when he goes into a puffing state, not only does his puff movement feel slow, he actually gets tired if you puff too long and begins descending out of exhaustion. bro’s been eating and gaining too many pounds if the track title “I’m Hungry” is anything to go by. but hey, that’s okay because your friends will show up every so often in the levels. Waddle Dee will lead you to some riding segments together, Adeleine will draw and give out healing items as well as clues to solve puzzles, and King Dedede will give you a piggyback and use his hammer to destroy walls Kirby (probably) can’t do on his own. once again I must state that this is a group effort. your bros and gals are by your side helping you out and if they weren’t there, Kirby would probably be stuck in Rock Star being confused or something.

likewise with Dream Land 2 and 3 you have collectibles to obtain throughout the levels, that being the Crystal Shards, and regrettably this is when I have to go into something I don’t like about this game. I have to admit: this might be my least favorite Shimomura game to 100%, and as someone who almost always goes for 100% completion every time I replay a Kirby game, this is a bit of a damper. Dream Land 2’s Rainbow Drops may have been a pain to get but at least there were just 7 of them, with only 3 of them being trouble. as for Dream Land 3, it may have had 30 Heart Stars but most of them weren’t really that too difficult to obtain. Kirby 64 has 74 Crystal Shards, each non-boss level housing three of these things, and a good portion of them are just, not fun. to give two examples, Aqua Star 3’s last Crystal Shard requires you to hold onto Stone-Cutter for the second half of the level and has you use it against a mid-boss before reaching the area you’re required to use it on. Stone-Cutter isn’t exactly the most reliable Copy Ability combat-wise and if you end up losing it in the water, you’ll need to restart as Stone enemies are only during the first half of the level. Neo Star 2 tops that by having you drag along Stone-Bomb, a very risky Ability that can actually injure you, throughout most of the entire level with a tough section filled with bottomless pits and enemies all over. if you lose a life, you have to do it all over as there are no Stone and Bomb enemies in the entire level, meaning you need to get the Ability from an entirely different level not only before, but every time you fail an attempt. so yeah, it’s a big hassle, but if you manage to pull that off and collect all the Crystal Shards, you get access to the real final boss as well as the true ending. I’ve mentioned this in my Dream Land 2 review, but I feel that a good way to go about this is by making your first playthrough a casual one, collecting any Crystal Shards that show up in your direction. after that if you’re still itching for more of the game, that’s when you should go back and obtain the ones that you’ve missed before.

so how about them graphics? well it’s an N64 game alright. it doesn’t hit as hard as Dream Land 3’s did, but I imagine it’d be a pain to replicate a crayon drawn art style, so instead they opted for a pop-up storybook style which I enjoy. and with all the checkerboard patterns everywhere, it reminds me a bit of early CGI, especially with the whole training room. I always thought this game looked like early Veggietales, until I went and looked back at Veggietales and realized they’re not that alike. nonetheless the graphics have this old school 3D vibe that still holds up surprisingly, especially in the cutscene department. now let’s talk about the music. Super Star’s soundtrack was pretty bombastic, while Dream Land 3’s soundtrack was more on the relaxed side. Kirby 64 takes the best of both worlds and offers a nice balance of those two styles. while there’s a lot of catchy tunes here, it isn’t afraid to offer you some mellow tracks as well. you know how people joke about Wet-Dry World having this odd negative aura? that’s kinda how I feel whenever I listen to this game’s file select theme. something about it feels quite melancholic, but perhaps it was intentional considering some of the stuff that happens in this game whether it’s in the story or the background. Quiet Forest is literally a Chrono Trigger track prove me wrong. it’s a crime this track only plays in one singular level but then again I feel like that’d take away some of the magic it has. I like how each possessed friend battle theme progressively gets much more fast paced. Waddle Dee’s is pretty chill, Adeleine’s is very upbeat, and then King Dedede’s is literally adrenaline overdrive, it’s such an intense theme for a battle that’ll probably only last thirty seconds. Rock Star has a crazy energetic vibe for a track that plays out in a desert, it makes this otherwise relaxing stroll feel more like Mad Max (I have never watched Mad Max). the Ruins theme from the same world goes the opposite direction and has more of a quiet atmosphere of wonder and mystery. Aqua Star is without a doubt a Kirby track. You know how people can listen to Green Greens and Gourmet Race and go “yeah, that’s Kirby”? Aqua Star is with them and man do I love this track. very upbeat and catchy, an earworm that makes you want to listen repeatedly, and that iconic Kirby synth. yeaaaaahh baby fill my eardrums with that ARR1 sample!!! even something simple as a map screen has bopping music. Neo Star’s map theme is almost 50 seconds long and sounds like something that you’d hear in Crash Bandicoot 1 or 2. Ripple Star’s map theme should sound familiar to you Kirby fans since it got remixed into other tracks in later games such as Helper’s Rest in Super Star Ultra and A Well-Deserved Rest in Triple Deluxe. oh and how could I forget to mention that boss theme? this is the best Kirby boss theme, nothing else comes close (okay Robobot’s and Star Allies’s do but you get the idea). oh yeah this game has three Sub-Games and one of them titled Bumper Crop Bump has an absolute banger track, one of the best in this already great soundtrack, and it’s stuck inside a Sub-Game!

of course, I need to describe something maybe a few of y’all were expecting me to mention, and that’s the fifth world. Shiver Star tells out an entire story just by its visuals and music. when you first arrive after witnessing that volcano cutscene leaving Neo Star, you’re greeted to a much more realistic looking planet from the ones you’ve seen before. the track when you enter the map screen is very discomforting, a stark contrast to the previous themes, letting you know that you are unwelcome in this territory, as well as giving you a hint of what's to come. then all of a sudden, you’re hit with a huge mood whiplash as you start the first level and are greeted with cheery Christmas music taking place at a friendly winter wonderland, you even get to go snowboarding with your bro Waddle Dee! by the time you get to the cloud level listening to even more upbeat and cheerful music, you’ve pretty much completely forgotten that unnerving first impression when you first got here. Shiver Star has successfully given you a false sense of security, and you’ve fallen right into its trap. with your guard down, you enter the next level which appears to be some sort of shopping mall. when you’re first going through the level, you’ll probably think nothing of it, but when you begin to take note of the entire place, you’ll notice something’s definitely up. for example, let’s compare and contrast to Forgotten Land’s “Alivel Mall”. while both are similar on the surface, the two of them have very different vibes. Alivel Mall has moving walkways and escalators, a dining room on the inside and outside, that one big hallway with the giant window you can look out of, this is a genuine mall being kept alive by the enemies of that game. Shiver Star’s on the other hand feels more like a mish-mash of seemingly random stuff. low ceiling rooms with random blocks everywhere, elevators powered by wind up keys, a big ass garden and aquarium, and some weird room with a bunch of giant nuts and bolts on the ceiling and floor, in a way it barely qualifies as a mall. even with Shiver Star’s theme playing, something about the whole place is uncanny. it feels very strange and robotic, it makes you wonder just what exactly was this mall’s true purpose. the final level of the world has you go down into an underground location. it’s then that reality hits you. yep, you’re inside an abandoned industrial factory. King Dedede shows up to help put you at ease for a bit, nevertheless the mood is still tense and those hammer machines with the psychotic grins certainly aren’t helping in your favor. then you get to the next room and spot a bunch of big test tubes in the background with various giant creatures inside of them. a pink hippo thing, some white bird, a black cat without any limbs. And some humanoid creature wearing an old-fashioned hood. what the hell was going on in this area? if you pay attention long enough, you’ll notice that the cat actually blinks and moves its ears. these things are still alive. just how long were they left inside these tubes and what kind of experiments were the inhabitants performing down here? at last you make it to the end. before you’ve been battling mostly cartoonish looking bosses (not sure what Pix’s exactly supposed to be), but that changes as you’re now face to face with a GIANT ROBOT. it’s no Iron Giant, it’s packed with missiles and changes its formation to some kind of Heavy Lobster expy, this thing was built for combat. by now you should have pieced everything together. giant robot, abandoned mall and factory, test tubes, the striking resemblance to real life planets. there used to be a human-like civilization living on this planet, however it’s all but been abandoned as all its residents have “moved away”. unfortunately we’ll probably never get any more information about Shiver Star’s backstory as it has never appeared or been mentioned in a Kirby game since. unless you have Shimomura on speed dial, we’re all out of luck.

okay let’s (thankfully) leave Shiver Star so I can briefly talk about the true final boss music of this game. this track right here is probably the second most iconic Kirby final boss track right behind none other than King Dedede’s theme. I guarantee even if you haven’t played a Kirby game you’ve most likely heard a version of this track somewhere on the internet at least once. we started off with a melancholic track and now we finish the game with another one. everything in Dream Land 2 and 3 has all led to this very battle. this is a battle that you can’t back away from, all you can do is “tough it out” and see it through to the end, or die trying. there’s something about facing this final boss for the first time that feels so special, it’s as if you’re witnessing a huge historical moment in front of your eyes, at least that’s how I felt when I fought it. actually it may as well be a historical moment since this is the last time we ever see traditional Dark Matter as the antagonist of a Kirby game. this track signifies the end of Dark Matter. it’s their last hurrah as the leader desperately attempts one final time to destroy Kirby for good. of course, we all know who made it out in the end….

wow what a wacky kids game amirite?! I may have been a bit critical when it came to the item collecting but it’s no surprise I love everything else. the story’s great, the music’s excellent, the world building is interesting, yeah I’m thinking good game. real quick I want to bring up something that not much people talk about, and that’s some of the scrapped ideas that were meant to be included. there were some cool levels that never made it into the actual game like a laboratory, a meteor shower, and even a giant whale! not only that, but Waddle Dee, Adeleine, and King Dedede were all meant to be playable, there’s even early screenshots of them in action that you can find online! basically what I’m saying is that this game could have been even more based. even if all this stuff got scrapped, what we ended up getting was still amazing, and it doesn’t surprise me that there are people who’d like to see a Kirby game in this style again. maybe one day we’ll see it happen, Kirby 64’s old enough to the point that it can be considered nostalgic, so maybe HAL will bless us one day and bestow us a spiritual successor when we least suspect it. someday….

I can beat N-Z in a fight

NOTA: 6,75

Sendo o primeiro game com visuais 3D e uma gameplay 2.5D Kirby 64 é um game bem divertido, com uma proposta um pouco fora do habitual, o game introduz a mistura dos powerups. Com os designs dos levels bem feitos e diferentes cenários, gostei também de como o jogo esconde alguns dos seus coletaveis pelas fases e achei as boss fights um tanto quanto criativas e desafiadoras.

Se por um lado me surpreendi com os mix de power ups ( achei muito legal principalmente os misseis e a espada de choque ou fogo) por outro lado não pareceu que essa mecânica agradou de maneira geral, já que se não estou enganado, ela jamais foi mantida.

Sem dúvidas o principal ponto para se criticar aqui tambem acaba sendo a jogabilidade, para hoje é um pouco datada, a movimentação do Kirby é bem pesada, além disso o jogo não varia tanto os inimigos e nem as soundtracks das fases, os boss de meio de fase também não brilham e acho que o game poderia ter levels com mais eventos repentinos e trechos em conjunto com o restante do grupo.

Finalmente, o verdadeiro boss final definitivo apesar de variar a gameplay, é bem simples em relação ao outro boss final caso não se pegue todos os cristais.

Concluindo, Kirby 64 de fato tem o carisma da franquia, embora não tão detalhado e nem incrível como um mario 64 ou zelda OOT, achei bem divertido e desafiador pela jogabilidade mais pausada, para fãs da franquia, recomendo dar uma chance ainda mais pela surpresa ao se deparar com diferentes power ups misturados do Kirby.

Kirby 64 é perfeito e é impossível não se divertir com ele!

Aqui o rosinha brilhou demais, gráficos bonito jogabilidade fluída e em um ritmo calmo porém um tanto melhor que o Dream land 3, sem ser aquela lentidão toda, sem contar que aqui eles adicionaram a combinação de poderes que.. nossa senhora, esse negócio é muito apelão, papo de tu acabar com a maioria dos bosses só spammando ataque de tão forte que é!

Eu achei o level design desse jogo MUITO bem trabalhado, Linear e satisfatório de ir passando e eu diria que ele até tem um certo fator replay. Uma coisa que eu tenho muito a elogiar ao Kirby 64 é o jogo de câmera dele, que obviamente me lembrou muito Klonoa só que eu achei bem mais trabalhado aqui porque a gente não se perde aonde pisar, fica claro nos level onde a gente vai se dar bem e onde vamos se dar mal se pisar, o que é algo realmente agradável principalmente pra época do N64 onde tinham jogos que trabalhavam bem mal essa perspectiva do 3D

Po, já mamei o saco desse jogo ta esperando o que pra jogar? ENTRA AI NO KIRBY 64 vale muito a pena, ele envelheceu muito bem e é um dos meus favoritos agora, diversão do início ao fim sem NENHUMA fase entediante!

When I first played this game in the mid-2000s, I thought it was really boring. But somehow after beating The Forgotten Land, I think I get Kirby now.

This was fun! I'm most impressed by the ability combinations, it was a blast trying them all out and seeing which ones were awesome (DOUBLE BLADED LIGHTSABER) and which ones were duds (I guess rubbing his head to build up static electricity looks cute). The two final bosses were way harder than I expected, and I definitely used a guide to plan ahead for which shards would need a specific ability combo, because having to backtrack with different abilities until you get it right sounds AWFUL.

I don't feel like I missed out on a classic when I was younger or anything like that, but I managed to see the appeal long enough to get every shard.

Back when I was a kid, there was a company called LodgeNet. LodgeNet provided a very unique and very strange gaming service; sometimes, when you checked into a hotel room, right below that big, bulky CRT nestled into a shitty wooden cabinet, there would be a controller hardwired into the TV. In its earliest days, it would have been a Super Nintendo controller. But that was before my time, and before LodgeNet really started to take off as a company. When I was around, it was a Nintendo 64 controller. These controllers were modified to have a little LodgeNet button pak fixed into the top middle part of the controller, letting you flick through menus to order games to play, which would then be streamed from a modified Nintendo 64 somewhere in the hotel directly to your TV. Much like the premium, pay-per-view hotel channels, these were premium, pay-per-hour Nintendo ROMs. $6.95 got you one hour of playtime, which meant that I was expressly forbidden from so much as ever touching the controller by my parents. They were completely right to do so; my folks didn't have a lot of money, and we only ever went to a hotel twice in my entire childhood. Both times, though, the LodgeNet Nintendo 64 controller would always be there. Sitting under the TV. Coaxing me in. Begging me to try it out, all for the low, low price of $6.95. I wanted to play it so badly. I'd wait until my parents left me in the room by myself to hurriedly open up the menu and browse the games on display, amazed at how many titles there were.

One of those games was Kirby 64.

I don't know what it was about it that drew me to it, at first. I have to guess that it was just because I hadn't seen a 3D Kirby game before. I'd played games like Pokemon Stadium and Super Smash Bros. at friends' houses before, so those weren't novel. But I'd never seen or heard anything about Kirby 64. I hadn't even realized it existed. Time went on, and I eventually forgot about it. Later in life, I found out that most people thought it was kind of middling. A lot of professional critics gave out 7s at the time (which to this day remains one of the lowest scores any publication is willing to give to a giant like Nintendo), and friends that I made as an adult weren't too hot on it. As far as I'd been told, Kirby 64 was fine, at best.

Nobody told me this was the best Kirby game.

I'm stunned. Seriously, all of these years, and I never once bothered to check it out because nobody ever seemed that excited by it. As far as I'm concerned, this is the best Kirby has ever been, just ahead of Super Star Ultra.

There's so much personality on display here. Everything looks like it was pulled together into a little diorama. Underwater caves block the camera with rocky walls, leaving only the gaps between them visible. A portion of the mall level has Kirby wandering through department stores as you view him through the glass windows outside, in a section that looks remarkably like he's strutting through someone's dollhouse. There's a toy box feel to the aesthetic of this game that really helps to sell a lot of these light, funny cutscenes. Kirby's got the greatest little fat boy waddle I've ever seen. The faces he makes are unparalleled. Watching him cry when I fuck up the picnic minigame and leave him with nothing to eat while everyone around him chows down is both incredibly funny and incredibly sad.

It also gets bizarre. O2 is a notorious example, but that fight tends to overshadow a lot of the smaller, stranger subtleties that are here. Whenever Kirby gets the Cutter ability, he peels his face off and flings it like a boomerang, making his body turn into this weird little egg shape that can only hop around while you wait for your head to come back. The clamping spike arms he gets look like The Thing meeting Yoshi's Story. Everything that's adorable is matched by everything that's weird, and it creates this wonderfully dream-like tone where you're making Kirby constantly drift from place to place, shifting and morphing through all of these different ability combos just to see what pink amalgamation he ends up turning into this time.

The power combos are an inspired evolution of the copy ability, and one that I'm amazed hasn't ever come back to the series in the twenty years since. They're definitely marred by the movement system — Kirby is a bit too sluggish for his own good — but it's still more than interesting conceptually, and the execution here feels like they nailed the idea on their first attempt. Everyone is going to come away from this with one power combo that they loved more than any other, and they're all going to be different answers. I was especially fond of the drill and the fridge, but there's a lot to experiment with, and the game gives you ample opportunity to try just about everything out in the very short time it takes to beat it. Locking the true final boss behind collecting all of the crystal shards was more than a little annoying and feels like something made to pad out game time, which is something that really wasn't needed.

This is the most "Kirby" that Kirby has ever been. I'm surprised that Sakurai had almost nothing to do with this, because the rest of the team at HAL seem to have understood Kirby better than any of the other games in the series have. He's a little pink man who goes on adventures with his friends, mows through enemies with overpowered attacks he stole from them, and then he kills God. It rules.

Miracle Matter was harder than college.

lindo, maravilhoso e tudo de bom.

genuinamente um dos jogos mais bonitos do Nintendo 64, com modelos muito expressivos e bem animadinhos. o Kirby em si controla melhor do q em Dream Land 3, voltando a ter mais mobilidade e velocidade. apesar disso, é meio q bem mais difícil do q a maioria dos jogos anteriores, com pequenas mudanças de gameplay q tornam o platforming mais desafiador. no geral gostei dessa mudança, apesar de alguns chefes serem meio frustrantes. a combinação de habilidades é uma novidade até q interessante, mas meio q esqueci q isso isso era uma coisa pela maior parte do jogo.

um dos melhores trabalhos de Jun Ishikawa e Hirokazu Ando na série tbm. acho q é a minha trilha sonora favorita do Kirby até o momento. e um dos meus jogos favoritos do Kirby até o momento. curtinho e muito doce.

There were a fair amount of obnoxious sections where you specifically needed an ability not found in your current area and needed to go into the autumn forest level (which has all the abilities), and it's kind of a slow paced game, but Kirby 64 is a game that's more than the sum of it's parts. Finding a good synergy ability to use for a section and messing around with it is a blast, the ost and atmosphere are bright and charming (punctuated by darker sections like the post-nuclear war factory and the true final boss, Zero Two), and the low poly count on these simple designs and areas make the visuals hold up more than you'd expect.

Lots of fun colourful levels. The ability mixing is a really great idea and keeps things interesting. Boss fights are creative.

My only real complaint is that the physics feel just a bit sluggish.

If I played this as a kid I probably would have loved it.