Finally, after all these years, I have now played and beaten every (non BS Satellite) Kirby game! I don't like emulating Kirby games I haven't played before, so I'm thankful this was put on NSO as I didn't have the $250 to shell out for a physical copy like I did with SFC Super Star Stacker.

Kirby's last ever 8-bit adventure sees him curling up into a ball for most of the game for the first time, with you tilting the wheel to move him around. He's a little slippery though, so you've got to be careful which can be a bit annoying when the game asks for you to be precise.

This is also the second game in the series where Kirby is voiced, and the last game where he would be until Return to Dream Land. Since it's on the GBC the audio is super crunched, but honestly there's a charm to that which I like and I admire when devs go that extra mile even if it isn't always perfect. It's just re-used samples from Kirby 64 and Smash 64 which is a little disappointing but I gotta admit I smiled at the KIRBY TILT N TUMBLE on the title. Just wish King Dedede was voiced too that would have been rad.

The levels feel like Kirby's traction was a bit better in development, as one touch of the wrong thing will send him to the other side of the earth. It's only really bad in a few levels which are scattered (the difficulty curve feels off for some reason). My only true complaint with the controls is that shaking the console to jump was not a well thought out idea, as it gets really hard to jump and control your direction at the same time. That really should have just been a button. It makes simple things like jumping on a static cloud tough.

The minigames are solid, I wish two of them didn't just use tilt functionality as a cursor but at least one's a shooting gallery and the other is Simon Says so they're different enough.

The levels themselves however are really creative and took full advantage of the control scheme in their design. No idea overstays its welcome (except the bosses, I do wish that the Watchers were used way less often and they had one or two more unique ones) and the level gimmicks all get their fair share of use. A few don't succeed, but most of them do.

The graphics are top notch and filled with cute animations, and the soundtrack's original songs are solid. As for remixes I wish they branched out of Kirby's Dream Land as I'd love to hear a GB arrange of Gourmet Race or at least the verse of King Dedede's theme that was added in Kirby Super Star in 8-bit, but these are the sacrifices you have to make for fitting Kirby's voice I guess. My only other audio complaint is that the Balloon song starts over every time you grab the power up rather than continuing to play it during the loop.

My journey with Kirby isn't over, as I still have some games I need to 100%, including this one which its requirements sound like a pain in the ass, but I know I'll eventually do it (but maybe with a no-gyro controls mod) and hey, maybe it'll be cheaper at some point and I can own it too!

You know, in hindsight, I should have known better. A game purely reliant on gyro controls for your movement of a ball around many narrow courses where you can (and DEFINITELY WILL) fall off the track. I get it, Nintendo has always loved experimenting with motion controls. As another review here suggested, maybe this would actually be better on the actual Gameboy with less responsive gyro capabilities so it would be easier to handle. As it stands however on the Switch, it is far too easy to send Kirby off a cliff or over a jump at ever so slightly the wrong angle.

Despite being a utterly frustrating experience, it does still get a couple of points for effort. It is still well made, and it looks pretty good. While most of the boss fights are reskins of each other, the final one was pretty enjoyable at least. As another virtue of being a GameBoy game, it also has some positively CRUNCHY audio (especially on Kirby's lines) so be prepared to hear some garbled screams or even drowning(!) sound effects that sound straight out of the GameBoy speakers.

Overall, I recommend you do not play this. But if you absolutely must (perhaps out of a love for Kirby), I recommend being prepared to abuse the NSO rewind features if that's how you're playing it.

Oh my god. This is a game that seems really cool and neat but I have absolutely no idea if this would have been better on like, a theoretical backlit game boy where it would feel less sensitive and therefore not quite as bad as it does. Maybe I should try and fix my gyro sensor but honestly it’s way too much of an ungodly nightmare to control for me that I just found myself getting frustrated and wanting to throw my Switch at the wall, which is absolutely not the feeling you want from a Kirby game.

Sorry Kirb. This is a miss from me buddy. I feel like rating it lower would be unfair considering I feel like it’s probably pretty competent if you do gel with this kinda game but boy I don’t.

Probably the worst Kirby game?
It controls really bad, I feel like the Wii would have had a great port of this game but Nintendo is stupid
I played the switch port and the original since it was my first Game Boy game but the gyro controls are leagues better than the GBC motion controls, only problem is making Kirby jump still feels weird and is very unpredictable
Honestly skip this one or play it for the Dedede and Kracko boss since it’s the best things in the game, also one of the best Dedede fights in the series its actually allot of fun

I'm very happy Nintendo has put this out officially. As a big emulation buff, getting their quirkier titles to run on a PC or Portable Emulation machine was always more trouble than its worth so I'm glad I have a way to play this game, for the most part, as it was intended and I hope this continues with Yoshi Topsy Turvy and especially WarioWare Twisted.

The game itself benefits greatly from coming with something I pay for anyway, because I wouldn't have bought this by itself. Its more a novelty albeit one I had a decent amount of fun with for the brief time I played it. The idea well runs pretty dry in the second half as a lot of the levels feel similar, and 5 of the 8 bosses are the same thing on different arenas.

Ok this rating may seem ridiculous, but I cannot stress enough just HOW MUCH FUN this game is on the Switch. The tilt controls work perfectly, and the level design takes full advantage of the game's main concept. It never gets stale, as so many fresh ideas are thrown in throughout to mix things up. It's so much more than just a gimmick. I hope this game's average rating improves in the future. I highly recommend this overlooked game. If you like the ball-rolling levels from Mario Galaxy, you'll like this game just the same.

As a kid I had Yoshi Topsy Turvy for the Gameboy Advance, which was a solidly mediocre game where the gyroscopic controls really felt like a gimmick. So I went into this with low expectations, but was pleasantly surprised to find a really solid game. It reminded me a lot of playing with those wooden marble labyrinths as a kid. The gameplay is simple but solid, with a handful of little optional challenging sections to get the collectables. This is probably way easier to play on the switch than it was on the Gameboy Color though, what with having to bend around to still be able to see the screen and all.

As a Kirby: Canvas Curse enjoyer, this was another hit for me! Like, if you can count on anything it’s the Kirby series utilizing a motherfuckin’ peripheral. I’m a sucker for cool cartridges, and I’ve always eyed this game on eBay in hopes my copy of WarioWare Twisted would have a buddy. Lucky for me this got added to the NSO Game Boy player pretty quickly, and it’s a great addition because it utilizes, 20+ years on, an under-utilized Nintendo peripheral: the freakin’ joy-cons!

Although the game definitely is clunkier on the Switch than I’d imagine it’d be on a Game Boy Color, shaking around the entire machine in handheld mode is a bit much, but with modern motion controls, the game was really smooth to play. It’s Kirby’s Super Monkey Ball, but instead of you moving around a board within a 3D space, the Game Boy is the board and real life is the 3D space. It’s a really interesting approach to handheld gaming; the way a console can be free floating, and the screen is not tied down by wires or weight.

The game is also very fair. It’s so easy to have a physics game like this be so frustrating, and this game can be, but it’s also fair. Levels are short because the playtime is lengthened by you replaying the same tough sections over and over. I often found that once I got over certain humps, my player instincts told me that there was going to be so much left, only for the goal to be within reach. One would also think ‘game over’s would be frequent, but this game gives out a lot of lives. It’s easy to get 1ups, but not too easy. At least for me, it felt like I was getting a very balance and proportional amount of extra lives based on how many times I needed to try a level. I only did get a ‘game over’ on a very, very tricky boss that I was not being patient enough to figure out.

To some, these games may seem like gimmicks, but also, when you look at the entire Kirby series, these games are kind of a big part of our favorite little pink sphere! This, Canvas Curse, Epic Yarn, Kirby games have a real knack for having fun with a console’s whole thing. This game has a lot of charm and works amazing for an early motion-control-cartridge game. Has a lot of really great Kirby sprite work, too!