Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble is a unique and charming twist on the usual Kirby formula. Instead of platforming, you guide Kirby, who's transformed into a pink ball, by tilting the Game Boy Color itself. The motion controls are surprisingly responsive, and the levels offer clever puzzles and challenges. While the concept is simple, the game's short length and occasional frustration with tilt controls hold it back from greatness - but it's still a fun little experiment worth checking out for Kirby fans.

It's a cute idea to tilt entire Game Boy Color™ to move your little Kirby on small screen. Honestly, level design is a delight, game gives you a ton of lives (since you are going to lose about the same amount), obstacles interesting to overcome, secrets are really cute, minigames are fun. It's a genuinely good cute Kirby game.
But holy shit, controlling it with undocked Nintendo Switch™ is a nightmare. I was genuinely concerned if I ether will smack my head over Switch screen or accidentally undock my Joycons and drop console into pieces. I probably should have played this with unattached Joycon to save myself some nerves but what's done is done. Ether way, game sometimes requires you to be way too precise, especially for some secrets. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for this kind of re-releases, its a unique game and it must be preserved to experience.

I personally didn't end up having a good time, but it's not a bad game. It's actually a really creative exploration of tilt mechanics, quickly switching from one high-concept level to the next Donkey Kong Country-style without giving any one mechanic time to grow stale. Given how much of a novelty this type of game design was, such that the cartridge would have used a custom gyroscope, I have a lot of respect for what they were going for.

Where it fell apart for me was with the port to Switch. Ironically, it's because of how much technology has improved; the Switch port leverages the Joy Cons' built-in gyroscopes, which are worlds ahead of what Hal Labs was able to stuff into the GameBoy Color carts. Because it's so sensitive, you have to have much more precise control over your movements than you ever needed in the original. Plus, if you're playing the game docked (which I was, since I was streaming my playthrough), there's an additional degree of abstraction and separation from your play that just makes it that much harder to wrap your head around. This is absolutely not a fault of the game itself, and I have in fact played a good chunk of the Japanese cart on original hardware for comparison; the base game is hard, but not quite as hard as it is the way I played it. My recommendation to you is to absolutely play it in portable mode, if you're trying out the Switch port.

Still, I do think some of those levels are designed to be annoying time sucks, and I'm not keen on that. Several levels are "walls" that will halt your forward momentum until you can solve them. Some of these I think are okay - 3-1 is a huge time sink, but it's very forgiving and specifically designed so the player can recover and try again while they learn. But other levels are endurance runs, and those really wear on me. I hold particular distain for 3-4, 5-2, 7-3, 7-4, and 8-4. I'm generally not a fan of any sequence where you're waiting for something to happen, whether that's the dumb bridge-building robots, the dumb conveyor belts bringing you back to the room's entrance, or anytime you're bouncing off a single bumper and trying to turn all sparkly. I know these are just how the challenge is designed and represent normal difficulty progression and scaling; maybe it's be better to say that I didn't enjoy the process of getting good enough to master the particular challenge this game had to offer.

For that matter, while all the sub-games are cute, there's a persistent issue that you MUST leave a high score in order to gain 1ups from them. Not a big deal at first, but it's quite easy to screw yourself over in, say, Kirby's Chicken Race by scoring really well the first time, then being unable to surpass that as the game difficulty scales. And Do The Kirby is another example of the game wasting time to get to a certain point. I like Simon-type games well enough, but a 3up is not a strong enough incentive to spend ten minutes per attempt trying for a new high score.

This is one of the earliest games to give Kirby voice acting, after Super Smash Bros. and Kirby 64. This is Makiko Ohmoto, who would become his regular voice actress, but you can kinda tell that everyone was still figuring out what the little guy should sound like. There are all sorts of early bits of weirdness, like Kirby cheering "Yatta!" when he collects a red/blue star, or his horrifying anguished groan when he drowns. All things that would be ironed out, but funny to run into here.

This would be Kirby's very last 8-bit outing, notwithstanding throwbacks like NES Remix and 3D Classics Kirby's Adventure. The game almost feels like a back-to-basics title, trimming its ensemble most of the way back to its Dream Land cast (with some exceptions, like Mr. Frosty and Starman), taking out Copy Abilities, and reintroducing a Mint Leaf-equivalent. A consequence of all this is that the game feels a bit sentimental, like it's an accidental send-off to Classic Kirby. By coincidence, this would be the last title before Kirby's rough patch, where progress on a mainline GameCube title stalled out and Kirby mostly got by on its anime and handheld outings - not unilaterally bad things, but inconsequential enough in the broad gaming market that Kirby fell from its B-list status among Nintendo properties to C or D-list. On a personal level, this would have been the last Kirby game to come out before I got into the series with Nightmare in Dream Land - so finally getting to play it really felt like I was putting a bow on my full series playthrough.

I have pretty mixed thoughts on the game, as you can see, but I'm willing to accept that that's largely a me-problem. Still, do try to play it in handheld mode, if you're playing it on Switch.

this game is so funny

many people credit nintendo for making kirby games, yet this is the only one they actually developed in-house

and I'm just here like "yeah I can tell"

One of the rare cases where the obvious tech demo for the accelerometer try actually to build a game instead of being a mere showcase. The idea of doing each level with a unique concept like Mario (and funnily enough, unlike Kirby platformers) is neat! But their choice of going for the most frustrating and punishing level design they could think make the game a chore (what is really like 90s Kirby games!). Sometimes the game also prefer the weird tech instead of the better design options. Particularly the jump, which is not functionable at all.

I'm glad that this exist but is a very passable game

In this game Kirby can't float on his own so he dies when falling on the edges of the map.

I played this on my phone to try to come close to the original experience with the motion controls. Man this game gets frustrating quick, but it's so cute and it's really polished.

I won't finish it as I can't take a whole game with these controls.

I’m going to be honest here, this review isn’t legitimate. I normally don’t like to review games as I played it with a hack that improves the experience because I feel like it makes the review invalid in my mind. It’s fine if others do it but for me, it just makes me feel bad. I made an exception with this game. If you don’t know, there’s a hack that lets you play with the d-pad and buttons for the whole game. It’s not perfect but thanks to this, I got to enjoy a game I probably would have never done before.

This game has some fun level design but I do feel like it does repeat some ideas a little too much along with repetitive themes. For a game with 32 stages, it could be a bit better. What is here though is pretty fun and probably due to the hack, it was a pretty easy adventure. There’s even some fun minigames here like the one where you can make Kirby drive off a cliff and die, that’s hilarious. Once you 100% the game, you have to play the whole game again but it’s a little harder and those red stars you need for 100% are in the exact same areas which feels a bit lazy. I was surprised at how well thought out the level design was and how it never really felt dull and even at times feels kind of smart with the placement of obstacles. I do wish the bosses were better though with how it’s normally supposed to be controlled, I get why they’re the way they are.

I don’t really have too much to say about my playthrough but I enjoyed what was there even with the issues and I do wish 100% did more than just be like “wow you did perfect” because that took like 5 hours. Just try not to do it in one sitting and you'll be fine. The game is on NSO if you wanna try it with the Gyro controls but I probably will just stick to this hack even if it’s not the intended way to play the game.

I had an Atomic Purple Game Boy Color back in the before times and I loved this game. I never beat it because it's a difficult one. And my Game Boy eventually melted on the dashboard of a car in the desert Sun. Tilt 'n' Tumble would remain a fond, uncompleted, memory for nearly two decades.

While browsing one day, I (s)tumbled over a ROMhack for the game that gave it d-pad controls. While it definitely isn't the true Tilt 'n' Tumble experience, it was a way to revisit this long lost memory. And one of my Chinese retro game handhelds is Atomic Purple. I just had to.

D-pad definitely takes a bulk of the challenge away, yet also removes some of the finest finesse. It's a massive net gain towards easy, but it changes the feel too. It's hard to explain unless you've played both.

But the game is still Kirby. It's still full of charming sprites and ideas. And yeah, it's fun. I played it through and got to see all of the game I never got to before. It's cool to read that it is available on the Switch these days too. While it's a difficult one, it really was something special. It deserves to be played.

My higher rating admittedly reflects me scratching a personal nostalgia itch. Plus I'm a huge sucker for novelty features in general. I will still definitely have to experience that gyro novelty again some time and play it again "right". Always itchy..

[Emulated/played on Anbernic RG35XX]