Kirby's Pinball Land (Game Boy, 1993)

 

This game is awesome, so I'm going to get it out there real quick before WW3 starts. Somehow I never covered this before, which is weird, could have sworn I did. It's so much funnukah! But also kinda tough.

The game begins with Dedede frog-splashing around like a maniac.

There are 3 levels in this game, and each one has 4 screens. 3 regular screens and one boss screen. So it's a very short game. If you luck out and head straight to the bosses, it can be beaten in like 20 minutes. It's fairly hard to do that though. All three stages are similar levels of difficulty from what I can tell, so one can start wherever.

Note that Poppy has been upgraded to boss status for this one.

IS KABOOLA CHOPPED LIVER TO YOU, NINTENDO?

Nintendo: "yeah"

As for the game itself...it's a pinball game. A moves the right paddle and D-Pad Left moves the left paddle. Get the ball to the top of the table, beat the boss, win. Poppy's stage is full of bombs, of course.

If Kirby falls all the way off the board, you get an opportunity to save yourself from losing a life. Press A at the right time and you bounce back up. It's difficult to get the timing right, and the success window is very short. At least it's giving you a chance.

At the top of each stage (which is...3 screens up) there's a sort of mini version of the stage boss that you have to defeat to get to the boss. Here it's a trio of... mini-poppies, guarded by a very strong chicken.

The actual boss is the Poppy Bros, both of them. Basically you knock the ball into them until you win. Bosses retaliate by launching attacks that can disable one of your paddles for about a full second, which is a long time in a game like this. If the ball falls back down, you have to beat the mini version of the boss again to get back here.

Lots of minigames abound in this, like a slot machine. There's never really a dull moment here. The big goal of the game seems to be to do everything on each screen and get all the points and extra lives.

I mentioned how short this game is, but it's also difficult if things don't go well, so farming all those extra lives is key on a first playthrough.

Lots of enemies from Kirby's Dream Land show up in this game, which makes it a bit of a joy to play. Fun Fact: They later reused this game engine for Pokemon Pinball, something else I should probably check out some time. Turns out I love pinball video games...if they're based on some other property I'm into.

Here's Whispy Woods, who I referred to previously as possibly the best-looking first boss in video game history. Here, we finally get to see him in 3D: The Wave of Tomorrow.

Last level. Cool thing about this place is that it has the cloud stage music from Kirby's Dream Land. They just ported it right over.

Kracko's stage is the one I expected to be the hardest. It just kinda flew by though. The sub-boss here is the Sun & Moon duo. Interesting to see a non Kirby's Dream Land foe make it into this game. Far as I can tell, these guys were the only contribution from Kirby's Adventure.

Kracko himself is a bit of a beast, and unleashes lightning strikes to disable your paddles. He's a pretty big target though. Funnily enough, it's easier to hit moving bosses in this game than it is to hit the stationary Whispy Woods.

Next is King Dedede. No stage for this guy, not even a quick boss rush. Kind of surprising. Maybe they ran out of time? In any case, the game would probably be much harder if he did have a stage, so I'll take it.

This fight basically consists of both of you bouncing around a ring.

Dedede frequently attacks with SITH LIGHTNING. Are we sure he isn't possessed yet?

Win and you get... 500000 PTS? Holy shit!

Looks like everybody's happy, all of the bad guys are running around with Kirby now. Not sure what the... well, plot of this game was, but I'm glad they're all having fun.

And so am I, this "Kirby Anniversary Week" has been good. Or really, "30th anniversary of me having games week" if you weel. Next up, some spinoffs. One of them quite literally full of spin.