Fished a dirty old cartridge with this game on it from the 50¥ bin when visiting the Osaka branch of Super Potato many years ago. The guy behind the counter, in typically super-helpful Japanese fashion, kept crossing his arms and shouting "NO!" to emphasise that the game would probably not work in a Game Boy - I didn't care, of course, as it was just cool and nice to have a 50p trinket with Kirby's face on it. When I got back from Japan, the trinket went into the back of my cupboard and was forgotten about.

... Until yesterday! I was digging through my storage to find my old GameCube copy of Killer7 (my Suda51 run continues apace!!) and ended up stumbling across this little rusty gem instead. And it works! I shouldn't have underestimated a games console that survived Operation Desert Storm.

It's really fun! Just super solid, simple pinball action that doesn't drown the player in a thousand gimmicks and storylines and all that shit that plagues more sophisticated pinball sims. Hit the ball and watch it bounce off stuff - that's what pinball's all about! Are the other Nintendo pinball games like this...?

Now I wanna go back to that shop and tell the guy that the cartridge worked... 😔

Reviewed on Aug 04, 2021


3 Comments


2 years ago

This comment was deleted

2 years ago

This is such a charming story! ❤️

2 years ago

I absolutely love this game, picked up a copy from Forgotten Worlds the other day for £5, which is far behind your 50p, but only required me to go to Ayrshire.

2 years ago

more game reviews need to be fun anecdotes about our personal experiences with games

i like the nintendo pinball games a lot. the pokémon pinball games are pretty similar, especially the GBC one - and kirby's brawlball on mass attack for DS is a whole lot of fun in its own right (and the flippers can be controlled using the shoulder buttons)