N64 Review: Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards

Review by: wiifan001

A darkness sweeps the land of planet Ripple Star, home to a bunch of fairies. One fairy named Ribbon goes to try and run from this Dark Matter. With her she carries a large crystal, which is a treasure to the fairies. In her attempt to escape, however, the Dark Matter hits her and the crystal statters into a bunch of shards, 100 to be exact, and scatters across 5 other planets other than Ripple Star. She bumps into Kirby, who is looking at the night sky, and Kirby agrees to join her quest for search for all the shards. Along the way, you'll get from Waddle Dee, Adeleine who is an artist and can make paintings come to life, and even King Dedede, Kirby's rival.

What makes this game cool is the powers you can gain. A lot of enemies Kirby can just suck in his mouth and then either spit out or swallow. Some enemies that are swallowed can give Kirby a copy ability. Even better, Kirby can throw that power onto another person who has a power to get a double power. There are over 30 different powers you can get. There are over 70 different creatures in the game, most of them have only one hit point. Kirby has six hit points. In the end you'll being dealing with all kinds of transformations- from light bulb to a refrigerator, fireworks, missiles, snowman, rolling snowball, spikes, giant walking stone man, dynamite, and lots more.

Some crystals will require a specific double power. Generally, the crystals will be just out in the open. Kirby can fly briefly in the air. At the end of each world comes a boss battle. These are generally easy. They're pretty fun to go up against. This is a 2d side-scrolling game. It's all 2-d. Sometimes the camera angle will move to make it sort of look 3-d.

Every once in a while, this game does put on a clever puzzle. They make the ones inside of wall obvious in terms of showing that the crystal is right there. You just have to match up the colors on the wall with the power colors you have. Example: a wall that is black and brown indicates that you need a rock and bomb move because on the game the rock power is shown brown and the bomb is the color black. I have to complain that this game is a little too easy with the exception of a couple of puzzles.

In terms of graphics, they are one of the most interesting I have ever seen. They look a drawings kids between ages 6-12 made on the backgrounds. Crayons and markers took a part of animating it. It's really neat. However, in a lot, I mean of lot a areas, the backgrounds just don't feel incomplete, they are incomplete. Constantly you'll see a lot of black areas with no background detail whatsoever. There are over 300 different sound effects and 70+ music tracks to listen to. Some are forgettable while others are really fun to listen to. Many of them are kind of... cutesie-ish.

This game can be beaten in a few short hours. Three files are available. There's even three minigames in which you and three other people can play against. There are 4 levels of difficulty for the CP's- Easy, Normal, Hard, and Intense. The stage randomizes in background and color depending how hard you put your CP's on.

Overall, all Kirby fans should own this game. It's largest downfalls are that it's too short and it's missing some graphic and gameplay details.