Retro spotlight: Kirby's Block Ball

Remember when Kirby used to be the mascot in whatever kind of preexisting game Nintendo wanted to get in on?

This column is “Retro spotlight,” which exists mostly so I can write about whatever game I feel like even if it doesn’t fit into one of the other topics you find in this newsletter. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

Did you know that there have only been five years without a Kirby game released, since Kirby’s Dream Land first came out for the Game Boy in 1992? Between ‘92 and 1999, the first such Kirby-less year, there were 11 different Kirby games released. Now, this wasn’t a series saturation kind of thing, but more a product of how HAL Laboratory utilized their little pink puffball mascot. Kirby was in a number of platformers in those 11 games — three different Dream Land titles, one Adventure, one Super Star — but he also crossed into a number of other genres. Puzzle games (Star Stacker, Avalanche), a pinball game, a mini golf game that to this day stands as one of Kirby’s finest outings, and the focus of today, Kirby’s Block Ball, a paddle game like Breakout or Arkanoid.

Kirby’s Block Ball, released in North America on the Game Boy in 1996, wasn’t Nintendo’s first attempt at a Breakout-style game, but it is far more interesting than that handheld’s launch title Alleyway thanks to being developed in the same spirit as Kirby’s Dream Course. The idea wasn’t just to make a Breakout of Nintendo’s own that they could slap Kirby on — in fact, development was essentially restarted during the process of the game because it didn’t feel Kirby enough for HAL’s liking — but instead to make a Kirby game that used paddles a la Breakout.

So, instead of just another Breakout clone that happens to be cute because of Kirby, HAL and Nintendo R&D1 developed something that stands on its own, and helped to contribute to the paddle genre itself. Kirby’s Block Ball doesn’t feature just the one paddle, but can include up to four, one on each side of the screen. Instead of your ball going into the abyss when it misses the paddle, there are spikes: if the ball hits the spikes, you lose a life and have to try again.

Image credit: Nintendo.co.uk

How is this different than just having a hole for the ball to fall into? Well, it’s because you can transform the ball from a standard-sized one into Kirby by pressing the A button while deflecting the ball with the paddle. If you strike the spikes as Kirby, no life is lost, but any power Kirby is holding is. The spikes are an obstacle to be bounced off of in that case, but even if you don’t lose a life by doing so as Kirby, losing whatever power you picked up in the level can make it more tedious or difficult to play, or even keep you from being able to max out your score in that stage.

You use the B button to utilize those powers, and while you don’t acquire them by inhaling enemies, you do pick them up by defeating certain enemy types. Kirby can turn into a stone to fall through entire columns of blocks, or he can set off bursts of electricity, or burn with flames, or stick to the paddle with the needle power in order to reorient yourself, which can be huge for quickly plowing through rows of blocks. Even as the basic version of Kirby there are benefits, as transforming from the small default shape to the Kirby-sized is the only way to destroy certain blocks that even the stone form can’t power through, and it makes defeating the various enemies and bosses scattered throughout the game easier, too.

The game starts out very simply and doesn’t seem particularly noteworthy at that point, but once you (quickly) power through the initial levels you’ll see where it has its own flavor. Having to consider how the multiple paddles impacts gameplay keeps you on your toes, since you can redirect Kirby while he’s bouncing off the side of a screen as well as from the top, instead of just the bottom. And since the paddle does not equip items, but Kirby does, the way items are utilized is different from your standard Breakout setup, too.

You’ll want to collect the copy abilities and utilize them, since you can rack up score multipliers and quickly proceed through the stages that way, rather than hitting everything one block at a time in standard forms. There’s no timer here to contend with other than that of your own patience, but if you want to best the top scores and challenge your own past plays, then efficiency will be necessary all the same. And you can’t unlock the final 11th stage without crossing the “border line” score of each previous stage, either.

There is a sense of urgency in the bonus points setup, at least: one item converts all of the blocks on screen into a different kind that will vanish with a single hit, regardless of what it might have been beforehand. You have 30 seconds to clear all remaining blocks, and doing so will net you a hefty boost to your score. If you fail to clear all of the blocks in those 30 seconds, however, then you’ll be awarded nothing. That kind of performance will make it a lot harder to cross that aforementioned “border line” score for each stage, so if you accidentally trigger this bonus much earlier than intended, well, you’ve got some work to do, and fast.

You can also trigger the occasional warp star that will lift you out of the level you’re in and bring you to the inner circle of the game’s overworld map, where you will be able to select one of four mini-games for a chance for extra lives and points. There is a paddle-based match game that sees you awarded one, two, or three extra lives depending on what four images you match up during your ricocheting. There is an air hockey game that will award more lives depending on how many goals you scored vs. how many you allowed. There is another, “Star Catcher,” where you’re firing stars from the center of the screen, attempting to catch them with the various paddles, while also attempting to avoid striking a bomb falling from the top of the screen. And there is another where Kirby is attempting to push one of three clouds, via bouncing off a paddle, to the top of the screen first: each cloud is worth a different amount of extra lives, and Kirby only receives the lives on the first cloud to reach the top of the screen.

You get to choose which mini-game you want to play, so if you don’t like or just aren’t good at any of them, you don’t have to play them. Focus on the one you know you’ll nail to maximize points and extra lives!

If you like Kirby music like I do, especially its early sound on the Game Boy, then you’ll be pleased with the way Kirby’s Block Ball sounds:

Kirby’s Block Ball has a total of 55 levels and 11 stages, with each of the stages ending with a boss fight against a familiar foe from the Kirby-verse. While Block Ball is certainly not a difficult game to play, mastering it to get the top scores and unlock it all as well can be more work. It’s enjoyable, though, except for in those occasional moments where you lose a power you really needed in order to complete a stage in a timely fashion. Practice limits how often that sort of thing happens, however: if you are doing your job with the paddles, then Kirby isn’t losing his powers, you know?

It looks like a Kirby game, it sounds like a Kirby game, and it utilizes elements specific to Kirby games to ensure that the end result was a Kirby game in the Breakout style, instead of a Breakout game featuring Kirby. It’s not a massively popular game by any means, but it’s still a vital piece of evidence in the argument that Game Boy, more than with any other Nintendo mascot, belonged to Kirby. It’s also still pretty relatively available, considering it’s 25 years old and even the Video Game Sales wiki doesn’t have a North American sales total for the game. It’s around $20 on Ebay, which isn’t ideal, but if you have a Nintendo 3DS, it’s available on that system’s eShop for all of $2.99. If you like Breakout-style games, or just want to be something of a Kirby completionist, then it’s easily worth the three bucks and the time it’ll take you to get through it.

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