Remembering Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards

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I am continuing my series on talking about games from my childhood, and one memorable game that I had on the Nintendo 64 when I was a child was Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. I previously mentioned in my review of Kirby and the Forgotten Land that I played a few Kirby games in my childhood. Most Kirby games are not worth talking about in a blog post because they are all the same sort of 2D platformer. However, Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards is just different enough that I need to talk about it.

So, Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards is technically the first 3D Kirby game, but this game does not play like a 3D platformer (need to wait another 20+ years for that one). Kirby 64 uses a "2.5D" perspective, where the game still functions as a 2D platformer, but with 3D environments and objects. Playing this game now, the environments still look nice for an N64 game. With each level, the environments are varied and have nice colour and style. The soundtrack is also very good as is typical of Kirby games.

Kirby 64 has an evolution of one of the core mechanics of Kirby games. You can swallow enemies and copy their ability, but things get absurd when you can take your existing ability and combine it with another enemy to get a combo ability you can use. This mechanic was lots of fun to explore and use. It was awesome to see all the combo abilities you can use on your enemies, and some combos were much better than others. For example, you can combine an electric power with a cutter power to summon a lightsaber and have Kirby turn into Darth Maul from Star Wars Episode I. It was up to you to find the right combo for each level to defeat your enemies and find all the shards.

There are three major criticisms of Kirby 64, and they are all common criticisms of Kirby games. With all the combos and health/1-ups you can get in the levels, Kirby 64 is very easy to complete the main game. Kirby also moves rather slowly so the pacing of this game is sluggish. Finally, to beat the main game took me about 3 hours, and to achieve 100% completion took me around 5 hours, so this game is painfully short.

Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards is not a standout game in the Nintendo 64 library like a Super Mario 64 or Ocarina of Time. However, Kirby 64 is still an enjoyable platformer with the trademark Kirby charm and the memorable game mechanic of combining copy abilities. It is a good N64 game worth revisiting, and it has aged better than other popular N64 titles at the time such as Donkey Kong 64.