Reviews from

in the past


Apparently a bit of a divisive Kirby game? My introduction to the series, the combination powers are incredibly cool, even if there are like 2-3 that are objectively better than the rest. Generally a pretty easy game, except for one or two parts, including one boss, but 100% the game is a nice challenge.

Kirby 64 brought Kirby to the realm of 2.5D platforming. It has a bright and visually appealing aesthetic with a great soundtrack.

I’m sure a standard play, where you run through each level and do the bare minimum is a brisk and enjoyable. Playing with the different power combinations are fun and the levels themselves are varied visually where the gameplay may be lacking - a lot of it are basic left to right which is probably suited to the audience.

The true ending is frustrating, you need not just the specific power, but a combination of powers to collect every single crystal. At the very least you don’t need to finish the level for the crystal to be collected. I used a guide to cheese this, because it is really unreasonable and a waste of time and erroring which power up can destroy a block three quarters into a stage.

People say Kirby 64 is the downslope, but I sorta consider Kirby’s Dreamland 3 to be in the same general ballpark. Both are visually impressive games that don’t innovate on the 2D plat-former. Can be beaten quickly if you avoid all side content, but the moment you shift gears it’s difficult and unrewarding pulls from some crazy overarching plot.

Loved it as a kid, but now that i'm older it don't hit the same. Needless to same i'll cut straight to the point. Kirby is to slow and sluggish in this game. Most of the combine abilities suck ass. Worst off all, some crystals are just impossible to get first playthrough without prior knowledge because they're so outta the way or copy ability specific. Which is then made worse by the fact you need ALL CRYSTALS!! Just to get the true ending. This game had a lot of ambition and creative ideas, but It wasn't executed well.

Some might consider it jank, but i love this game so much. The copy ability combos are so fun, and the music is definitely a blast. 8/10! would play again.


Combining power-ups is a concept that I am shocked we haven't seen make a return, perhaps even be a staple of the series.

I always thought this game looked impressive. Its a fun time as well with combing abilities.

This was such a fun game to play. The graphics actually look good unlike most n64 games and the world's and levels are very fun to go through. The copy ability gimmick is what really shins here as you can combine any copy ability together which gives the game a lot more meat to experiment with. It did feel a bit slow but it was still fun the bosses were great especially the final one. Can't wait to 100% it

probably my favorite kirby game. i wish they would expand on either power-up combination or dynamic camera angles again but it is what it is. shoutout to darth maul

My favorite kirby game. I haven't played that much kirby though...

Un poco triste que seria hasta la switch que Kirby estrenaria un juego en 3d de verdad, pero este juego funciona muy bien como un plataformero 2.5d

I was really stressing out about my driving test yesterday, so I decided to boot up an old favorite to help take my mind off of it. It's been a few years since I've played Kirby 64, but I played it a TON when I was little, and I remember it very fondly~. Part of my love for it is certainly down to nostalgia, but I think it still holds up really well among the increasingly large pantheon of Kirby games. I got all the shards to get the real final boss, and it took me around 5 or 6 hours. I played through the Japanese version, but aside from some very small cosmetic differences, it's identical to its international counterparts.

An evil darkness has attacked a planet of fairies and shattered their giant crystal. One of the fairies, Ribbon, takes a larger crystal shard and is flung to the far off planet of Pop Star where she plummets onto Kirby's head. Kirby quickly agrees to help his new friend and they team up with Waddle Dee, Adeleine the painter, and King Dedede to save the solar system from these evil black blobs. As in the manner of Kirby games before it, the story is told with no words through brief cutscenes that play between worlds. Your friends largely play cosmetic roles, but they occasionally hop in to aid Kirby and add a special section to the gameplay. Waddle Dee provides vehicles for minecart sections (like DKC but nowhere near as brutal), you can hop on Dedede's back for hammer swinging action, and you'll sometimes pass Adeleine and she'll paint a powerup (health or a 1up) that will come to life to aid you.

The gameplay otherwise is fairly standard Kirby with some new twists. 22 stages across 6 worlds with 7 boss fights, it's not a super long game, but it's definitely longer if you're going to try and find all the crystal shards to fight the real final boss. There are 3 hidden within each non-boss stage, and they're either a reward for beating a mini-boss, a reward for completing a simple puzzle, hidden in the stage, or hidden behind a colored bit of level that you need a special power or power combo to break.

Kirby's animal friends may be gone from the Kirby's Dream Land games, but the main gimmick for this Kirby game is that you can combine powers. You have many mainstays of Kirby, cutter, rock, fire, but you can combine them with themselves or one another to make all new powers! Combining powers just to see what they'll be is still something that makes me smile all these years later. You can either combine a power with another of itself for an upgrade of that power (cutter + cutter = BIG cutter blade) or combine them with other powers for all new stuff (cutter + electric = double-bladed lightsaber, one of my personal favorites X3). This does however mean that most of the powers are just "press B to make power", and most powers have virtually no directional inputs to change how they work (like how powers worked in Kirby Super Star).

The presentation is colorful, happy, and very Kirby. Cute enemies, cute powers, cute allies, it's nothing out of the ordinary for Kirby of this era. The music is fantastic though. This is easily one of the best soundtracks on the N64 in my book.

The only real negatives I can say about it, other than that the solutions and locations for some of the shards can be a bit obtuse at times, is the lack of any co-op. The co-op in Kirby Super Star is one of the reasons I adore that game as much as I do, and the lack of it here is very unfortunate. There are some multiplayer competitive mini-games you can play from the game's main screen, which are all games I've had good fun with friends with in the past, but it's hardly a replacement for Super Star-style co-op play. The game is also harder than I remembered it was. Newer Kirby games are certainly quite easy, but a lack of tons of healing items in later stages as well as the use of the Kirby's Dream Land 6-hit health bar system means you can't just barrel through a level and probably be okay. You do have to try at least a little XP

Verdict: Highly Recommended. One of my favorite Kirby games and always will be. The power combo gimmick is a really strong one that I really wish newer Kirby games had at least tried to experiment with a bit more. Given that this is on the Wii Kirby Anniversary Collection, I'm not sure the game is worth hunting down on its own if you're gonna pay a big bundle for it, but if you're fixin' for Kirby and want a good one, it's hard to find much better Kirby than this UwU

The shift from 2D to 3D games was the biggest change the video games industry has ever seen (and possibly will ever see). Decades of established design needed to be rethought. It's not surprising this era brought with it major changes to the players in the industry: The birth of Sony and the death of Sega can at least partially be attributed to the PS1's strong lineup of early 3D classics, and Sega's haphazard translation of Sonic to 3D.

The point is, a huge part of why Nintendo maintained their presence in the industry is because of just how good Nintendo's early 3D titles were. Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time are more than just great games--they are so good, they made the transition to 3D look effortless.

This is why Kirby 64 is so fascinating. Kirby 64 is the only example of Nintendo seriously dropping the ball on the shift to 3D. Kirby 64 is more than just a mediocre game for the Nintendo 64. It gives us a view into an alternate timeline, one where Nintendo fumbled the transition to 3D games, and maybe even went the way of Sega.

It's especially surprising Kirby 64 is such a flop because... well... the game is hardly 3D. Kirby 64 is a 2.5D platformer. The game is rendered in full 3D, but the player's movement is restricted to a 2D axis. This ends up being the worst of both worlds. Kirby 64 gains almost nothing by presenting the player a 3D view. But, since rendering 3D environments is so graphically intensive, the dense levels of Kirby Superstar are not technically possible. The result is that Kirby 64's levels are barren wastelands compared to older Kirby games.

The combo transformations are actually a great concept. Kirby 64 has 35 different copy abilities, still the largest pool of any Kirby game to date. These are really fun to discover and experiment with: the resulting combination is always surprising, yet still makes perfect sense considering the reagents. Spark + Ice turning Kirby into a fridge is particularly memorable. Honestly, its amazing the execution of this concept is so strong, considering the rest of the game is such a slog.

This said, the level design seriously drops the ball on this concept. A great example of emergent design is the lightbulb power (bomb + spark) which can light up dark rooms. This is how Kirby 64's puzzles should have worked. Instead, most of the actual use of these copy abilities stems from colored blocks that require specific abilities to break. Not only is this a glorified lock-and-key, but it is completely impossible to know what power will be needed until the player reaches the block and it is already too late. This means that, if you want to actually collect the titular Crystal Shards, you're forced to play every stage twice. The stages usually aren't even fun the first time.

Anyway, Kirby 64 isn't all bad, but it seems to misunderstand what makes a 3D game great, and what makes a Kirby game great. In short, Kirby 64 isn't a horrible game, but it is no surprise Nintendo would wait another 20 odd years before attempting another 3D Kirby.

If you think of a game that completely streams infinite charm, Kirby 64 should be one of the first names that will come to mind.

This title is absolutely adorable, featuring some of the most expressive world and characters of its time, and an adventure that doesn't just screams personality in its writing, cutscenes, memorable characters and really enjoyable multiplayer modes, but also in its gameplay.

The main mechanic of this title, unique even compared to the rest of the srries, is the ability to combine abilities together to create a surprisingly amount of different trasformations, each of them with their own gimmick. Some of them are sick and really effective, while others are useless or straight up a joke.... but that is the charm of discovering and using them.

You feel like living a goofy Hanna-Barbera skit for the amount of funny absurdity and cute moments you will witness, while having fun with the always solid Kirby formula.

Personally I feel compared to other games from the series, it has some flaws: it can feel to slow for most of the runtime, the requirements to achieve the "True Ending" (WHICH YOU SHOULD TRY TO GET) can be tedious and lead to replay levels over and over again, and the lack of a higher difficulty can turn it into a less enjoyable titles, especially compared to the difficulty options of later Kirby titles.

But aside from these flaws, Kirby 64 is an absolute charm! A must-have for the time, and a title able to stand out even today!

dude why did i like kirby so much. i fucking beat like every kirby game as a kid and i swear i haven't thought about the fucker in like half a decade

Kirby games are just different, man.

Is it kind of ass to play? Sure. I'm not really gonna write home about this one in any capacity. Maybe within the grand picture of Kirby I can at least say this one is "different", but that's as far as my praise really extends.

All you're really gonna find here are some cute visuals, good music, and a gameplay loop that's tired out as soon as you discover there's really only, like, 4 abilities worth having.

With that being said, I can't be mad at this guy. I mean, look at him. Whenever he sets off on a mission he looks so happy. Who am I to try to take that from him? I'll probably keep playing games starring him just to keep seeing him be happy.

Maybe I’m a victim to marketing, who knows.

I love combining random elements to make a flaming sword.

It's aight, never could give it the time to finish though

The first game that made me fall in love with Kirby.

This game is incredibly easy even by Kirby standards but overall was a lot of fun. Really sad they didn’t continue cooking with the ability fusion system in later games.

a good game on it's own but fuck getting 100% ribbon doesn't deserve to be in another kirby game after the amount of shit she put me thru i'll take the heart stars any day of the week over this shit, the true final boss you get for 100% isn't even a good fight either. i'd genuinely rather 100% DL2 and 3 back to back than ever 100% this game again

you don't really play this game, so much as you... experience it

the original killer7 fr fr


The Dark Matter trilogy is finished! I'm happy to have revisited them after all these years, even if I'm not quite as in love with them as I was back in the day. There's still some really cool ideas and vibes in these games, and Kirby 64 is probably the peak of the slower, more puzzle-y flavor of Kirby that characterized the Dark Matter trilogy in opposition to the faster, more beat-em-up flavored Sakurai games.

The Crystal Shards' central copy ability gimmick is probably the most memorable aspect of it, and it is REALLY fun to experiment with combos to see what you get. Some abilities are more practical and/or fun than others, which I feel is sort of an inevitability when you implement this many options... but it is kind of weird when you end up seeing an ability that got so much more love than anything else. It's definitely wild how crazy they went with Cutter/Rock! Like, they put in all the animal buddies from 3 as statues, even if they don't show up in person! That's sick. I love it.

There's also a weird... well, I don't know if it's a hidden mechanic or not, but it's kind of a weird bonus that doesn't really have much practical use outside of being Kind of Neat. You can hold an enemy above your head instead of swallowing them once you've got them in your mouth, and some of them have weird effects that you can use if you do that. Like, holding one of the little pterodactyl guys over your head will let you glide pretty quickly, while when you're holding one of the anemone guys it will shoot projectiles the whole time. Maybe they're used in some crazy speedrun strats, but I think they're mostly just a neat thing to mess around with.

I think I'm not as fond of the stage design as I am of the actual concepts here, though. 64 kicks it up a notch from 3 by hiding three collectibles in each level, and more often than not they involve babysitting a combo ability through a stage. I think the abilities aren't too difficult to use for the most part, but some of them can be a real pain in the ass to use (lookin at you, rock+bomb). It doesn't help that the abilities you'd need for the combo might not always actually be in the stage they're needed for. I don't think 3 was quite as bad about this? I know there was a level or two where you'd need to bring in an animal buddy from another level, but they usually had some sort of hint in the level select suggesting which animal you might need. 64 doesn't have anything like that, unfortunately, so a lot of it is trial and error. I also feel like while there's different dev DNA involved, 64 could've benefited from a "stage" like Superstar had with all the copy abilities that you could combine at your leisure.

Anyway, the cutscenes and story are extremely cute. Waddle Dee and Dedede are perfect, and I wish Ribbon and Adeline had more appearances outside of, like, this game and Star Allies... and of course, you get things going absolutely insane and bizarre at the end. Admittedly, Shiver Star has its own wild vibe to it, with a sort of proto-Forgotten Land feeling. The factory level is a pain in the ass but damn, the music and that one segment with the critters floating in the vats, though. I love that shit. I marked out extremely hard when the music showed up again in Canvas Curse.

Also, you really gotta pour one out to 02, because what in the fuck. I love it. I'm so glad Kirby goes so hard on having nightmarish horrors for its secret final bosses.

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!


Played on Kirby's Dream Collection, and did the following: achieved 100% completion on my save file, got 1st place on each minigame on the hardest difficulty, and collected every Enemy Info Card. I did not finish Boss Endurance.

you take one power, combine it with another, now you got a combo power. incredible settings and level design, cute little art style and soundtrack. one of the more challenging Kirby games if you wanna call it that (still not hard). very underrated game