Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (N64, 2000)

Underwhelming 2.5D debut for Kirby on the N64.

Nostalgia Factor: High. I’m a massive Kirby dweeb.
Difficulty: Very easy, minus a few cheap insta-kill obstacles late in the game.

I distinctly remember the first time I played Kirby 64. After playing a lot of Kirby Super Star (KSS) with my grade school friends, we were all now die hard Kirby fans. So, someone rented Kirby 64, and we tried it out. I was so unbelievably excited. Kirby Super Star was my favorite game, and I had never played another Kirby game before. The opening cutscene had me hyped.

Within minutes, before even finishing the first level, I felt so much disappointment. Pain. My 7th grade brain struggled to process how I was feeling. Something wasn’t right. This wasn’t Kirby. I was expecting more KSS, just re-skinned with “glorious” 3D graphics on the N64. The well developed copy abilities with full move sets from KSS that I had nearly memorized were all gone, replaced with weird, slow, and clunky new abilities. Kirby moved so slowly. The pacing of the game was torture. It was like someone kidnapped the Kirby I had come to love and replaced him with a shoddy off-brand replica.

It wasn’t until much later that I learned where the Kirby magic went. Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of Kirby and the genius game director behind KSS and the Smash Bros. series, had moved on from the Kirby franchise. Kirby Super Star was Sakurai’s final mainline Kirby game. HAL tapped Shinichi Shimomura to carry the franchise forward, and unfortunately, his games departed significantly from what made KSS so great.

Kirby 64 is the final installment of Shimomura’s “Dark Matter Trilogy”, featuring Dark Matter as the main antagonist. Ultimately, I’m glad I revisited and finished Kirby 64. I tried to keep an open mind in spite of the bad taste this game left in my mouth from childhood. I do see improvement from Kirby’s Dream Land 3 (also directed by Shimomura), but Kirby 64 still suffers from a lot of the same issues.

I did enjoy the animated cutscenes. They were cute and fun, and I do remember the thrill of seeing Kirby come alive in 3D on the N64 back in the day. Cutscenes aside, the visuals were just OK for an N64 era game. A few of the levels had some nice eye candy in the background. The colors were bright and cheery, reminiscent of DL3. A few of the levels had some very flat sky boxes that didn’t blend right, which I found distracting.

I remember being disappointed by the limited 2.5D gameplay. After playing Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, I expected Kirby 64 to be fully 3D as well. But, Kirby fans wouldn’t see a fully 3D Kirby game until The Forgotten Land released in 2022.

Jun Ishikawa has a delivered another great soundtrack, with some solid new tunes. Even though, on the whole, Shimomura’s copy abilities will always pale in comparison to KSS, I can appreciate some of the creativity in the ability combinations. It was fun to explore the different combinations available, even though several of them were awkward and just not fun to use.

Also, the ability combos are not balanced well. A few abilities are very strong (fireworks, double electricity) and some are nearly useless (dynamite even hurts you if you don't figure out that you have to duck when it explodes). Like most Kirby games, Kirby 64 lacks any notable challenge except for a few levels with cheap insta-kill obstacles (that feel terrible because Kirby moves SO SLOW in this game).

I found that the real final boss battle (unlocked by collecting all the shards) is repetitive and not very fun. Similar to DL3, some of the level designs are very flat, repetitive, and boring. For many levels, you can simply fly above everything without engaging with the enemies. The game is short, as is sadly the standard for the series. Even after collecting all of the shards, it only took me about 4-5 hrs to roll credits.

Overall, I can’t recommend Kirby 64 unless you are a die hard Kirby fan wanting to experience all the mainline entries in the series.