Games Bought Thread 3

[A Black Falcon]

First the new stuff I got, then comments on your above post. :)

GB
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The Incredible Crash Test Dummies - $1, cart only - it's sort of a minigame-esque thing, where each level has entirely different gameplay. The game's short but fun and varied, in my opinion. I'd actually been hoping to find a copy of this for a while, so it's kind of cool I did.

Cosmo Tank - $2, cart only. Topdown/first person tank action game. Part of the game is topdown exploration, but occasionally you go into first person dungeons. The dungeons have no map, only a compass, so they quickly get confusing. Fortunately the first few aren't too hard, but still... that could get difficult. The gameplay's okay though. Unfortunately it has no saving. Oh, this was an early Atlus release.

SNES
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Cannondale Cup - $3.50, cart only. This is a bike racing game, one of the few...

NES
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Shooting Range - $4 - Bandai lightgun game. I only had six Zapper games for the NES, so sure, it's nice to have another one. This game seems to sell for slightly more than that online. As the title suggests, it's a fairly simple shooting game.

Sega CD
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Cobra Command - $1, disc and manual in generic Sega CD case (ie, case with no back/side insert). I already have a disc only copy of this game, but thought it'd be worth spending a dollar for a copy with the manual and a case. I doubt this is its original case -- I think the game was one of those cardboard box Sega CD titles -- but still, it's nice to have. As for the game, it's a Dragon's Lair-esque title, except you're a helicopter in a city, not a guy walking around. It's all drawn stuff, not live action video. Not exactly one of the best games though.



To Kirby. I will post this here, but I'm thinking that maybe it should be its own thread, given everything... what do you think?

Ah the GB Kirby games, some of my favorites for sure... Kirby was one of my favorite series on the Game Boy back in the '90s, and I got Dream Land 1, Dream Land 2, Pinball, and Block Ball for the GB, as well as the N64 game and Tilt n Tumble for GBC, before not buying Kirby games for years.

So yeah, Star Stacker was the only one of the GB or GBC Kirby games I passed on then, mostly because I didn't think I liked puzzle games as much as those other genres. I have since gotten it too though, and it is a great game for sure... it's nice it has battery save, so many NES/SNES/GB-era puzzle games don't have it. Sure, it was a 1997 release, but 1996's Tetris Attack was passwords only...

The first Kirby (1992) is indeed easy its first time around, and EXTREMELY short, but if you waited through the credits and got the password for Extra Mode (or looked it up online) and played it in THAT mode... well, let's just say that Kirby 1 is actually considered one of the hardest platformers in the series for a reason. Of course, Kirby platformers are generally pretty easy, but still, Kirby 1 in the hard mode is a genuine challenge. And for an even greater challenge, beat that mode and you unlock a code for a secret options menu with a sound/music test and options to set your starting lives and maximum health level. Of course you can find extra lives to increase your lives, but if you set your max health to below the default, and max, of six, that will be both your starting, and maximum, health. So yeah... good luck in hard mode with one hit point. You'll need quite a bit of it. :) ... Now, those options are not a full replacement for a longer game, it still is very short, but still, they are great to have and definitely add some life to the game.

Kirby Pinball (1993) is one of my favorite videogame pinball games ever. It's right in the top tier of video/computer pinball games, in my opinion... absolutely LOVED it back in 1994 when we first got it (though to my frustration at the time my sister's high score is better than I've ever gotten), and I still do. I don't quite understand how the same people went on to make Pokemon Pinball, both tables in that game are so unbelievably boring... Kirby Pinball is a vastly, vastly superior game. Just exceptional. Oh, and the battery isn't just for that useful interrupt save option -- it also saves your four high scores, which, in my opinion, is the more important function. Saving scores in a game like this is essential. (For other GB or GBC pinball games, Nintendo's early GB title Revenge of the Gator is good, though it only has one table and no saving, and I like the GBC-only rumble cart title 3D Ultra Thrillride quite a bit, one table or no.)

After Kirby Pinball came the NES game, which is pretty great for sure, and then Kirby 2 for the GB (1995), which was my favorite Kirby game in the 1990s, and is still certainly among the best in the entire franchise in my opinion. Kirby 2's such an outstanding game... it's kind of too bad that, like Metroid 2, its GBC color remake was never released, but at least it does have some fantastic SGB support -- it's really a sight to see. From that post it's clear that you like SGB titles, so make sure to get Kirby 2! Also, if you haven't played it in SGB mode, Wario Land 2 (B&W or dual-mode releases) is a must-play. Sure, it's also got a full color mode, but they really went all out with that one on the SGB. It's even got separate borders for each world! The only negative is that with the dual-mode release, the two saves are incompatible so to play it on GB/SGB you need to delete your GBC save (or get another copy). Annoying, but... well, even as annoying as I find the game, I didn't regret coming back to it years later on the SGB and seeing that version of it too, it was good stuff. But yeah, back to the subject, Kirby 2 does a similarly outstanding job, though it has only one border. I love how they use a separate color area just for Kirby's current power box, so that part is colored appropriately no matter where you are. :)

Then of course game the SNES games, first Dream Course (which is a fantastic and quite difficult game, not sure offhand if you've played it), then the puzzle game (Puyo Puyo with Kirby skin, like Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine on Genesis), then Super Star (one of the most popular games in the franchise, and it is very good, but I don't like it more than KDL2 or Adventure, I think.).

Kirby Block Ball was the next one released, releasing in 1996. As I said above I got Block Ball back in late 1996, and thought it was a pretty good game. I've always liked Breakout-style games. I was slightly disappointed by it, because I didn't think that it was quite as brilliant a spinoff as Kirby Pinball was, and even now I would say it is maybe the weakest of the GB Kirby games. As far as Kirby non-platformers go overall it's a solid one though better than some and worse than others. I wasn't in love like I had been with Kirby Pinball or Kirby 2, but it' s a very good, and innovative, blockbreaker game. I can't say that I've seen that "four paddles on the four sides of the screen" concept anywhere else, and it was nice to see the powers in a Kirby spinoff title too. I played this one enough back in the '90s to completely beat it, getting scores above the borderlines on all levels.

Star Stacker - This early 1997 release is one I only got within the last year or so, as I said, but it is indeed a great game, and after playing it I kind of regretted never getting it back then; it's a great puzzle game. I actually picked up a second copy more recently, for it I ever have a chance to play it two player. :) The gameplay, where you use the matching pieces to destroy the things in between, reminds me slightly of Yoshi now that I think about it (and Yoshi I know because that was the only puzzle game we owned for the GB back in the '90s), but looking at both of them now, Star Stacker is a far better than than Yoshi no question, both in gameplay and in options. It's not the hardest puzzle game ever, sure, but the concept is well thought through and all of the modes are fun. And yeah, as I said above, battery save is great. That was one of the last genres Nintendo started having saving in, you know, only phasing it into their puzzle games gradually from 1994 on. Oh, as you probably know, there is also a Japan-only SNES version of Star Stacker (Kirby no Kirakira Kids, I believe), released in 1998. It's really too bad that we didn't get it, or alternately that they didn't release a basic N64 port too -- that'd have been nice. Apart from graphics, obviously two player modes are important in puzzle games, and that's much easier to do on the SNES than with link cables. (Star Stacker does have a great SGB mode, as you say, but that doesn't give you two player play on one system... apart from Hexcite, which is its own thing, none of the GB/GBC puzzle games have that, unlike fighting games which frequently did.)

After Star Stacker for GB, but before that Japan-only SNES release, came the second SNES platformer, Dream Land 3. YOu say it's one of the most popular ones, but i think you must be confusing it with Super Star... Super Star is considered one of the best Kirby games by many of its fans (though my favorite is probably Kirby 2, as I said above, and I wouldn't put Super Star above Pinball either, if we count the spinoffs, or Adventure, among the platformers; not sure about the rest of them though.), but KDL3 is considered ... just okay, I'd say. That's what I think too, really -- it is a good but not as good as it could have been Kirby platformer. Like Kirby 64 would after it, it has a very slow pace that I find frustrating in both titles. I found Kirby 64 disappointing compared to the Game Boy games, back when I got it in 2000. KDL3 is good, but gameplay-wise too much like Kirby 64, and not enough like the GB or NES gamess, for me to love it. I do like that the friend helpers from Kirby 2 return, though, and like Super Star (but, not counting minigames, unlike any other Kirby game until the Wii games), it does have a two player simultaneous mode.

After that was Tilt n Tumble, the tilt-controlled GBC game. It's fun but somewhat gimmicky as an early example of a console game with tilt controls. I liked it at the time, but found it kind of easy -- only the worse control you get with tilt versus buttons made it challenging mostly. And of course, now tilt is a lot less unique than it was back in 2000. I don't know how it holds up now, haven't replayed it. After that, and the cancellation of the color remake of KDL2, the series kind of went away for a while; the GBA only saw those two Kirby games of course, one a remake and the other the somewhat odd (but not bad) Metroidlike one, and the GC only the quite disappointing Air Ride.

Fortunately that changed after that and the DS and Wii have been great for Kirby, but there was a down period before that for sure, at least in my opinion. I didn't buy either GBA Kirby game during its life (though I have them now), and didn't buy the DS games initially either at their release (I now have two of the four; I have Canvass Curse and Super Star Ultra, but not the newest one or Squeek Squad.), and only have one of the Wii games too (Epic Yarn, which I just got a few months ago; I do very much want Dream Land Returns, though), so I have been somewhat getting back into Kirby over the past year or two, which was kind of nice. Kirby 1, Pinball, 2, and to a slightly lesser extent Block Ball and Tilt n Tumble are games I have a lot of good memories of, as the length of this post might suggest, so it's great to see new good Kirby games come out again. :)