Throwback Thursday Kirby 64:The Crystal Shards

Throwback Thursday Kirby 64:The Crystal Shards

Robert Knuckles

Hey guys I’m back with another Throwback Thursday game. Today I’m going to talk about one of my favorite N-64 games and that’s Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards.

Kirby 64 was released in America on June 26, 2000 on the Nintendo 64. Now although Kirby is a playable character in Super Smash Bros which was released a year prior to Kirby 64, Crystal Shards is the only Kirby game on the N-64.

Kirby 64 is the sequel to Kirby’s Dream Land 3. The story starts off on a planet called Ripple Star, a planet that is populated by fairies. The planet is invaded and soon controlled by Dark Matter. One of the fairies named Ribbon runs away with the crystal but is soon chased by three Dark Matters and they soon shatter the crystal into pieces throughout the galaxy. Ribbon falls onto Pop Star where she meets Kirby. Kirby agrees to help Ribbon find the rest of the crystals. On their adventure they get the help of Waddle Dee who helps you with rides, Adeleine the painter that sometimes gives you health or a clue to get a crystal shard and King Dedede who Kirby rides on his back to destroy walls using his hammer. They are all at first controlled by Dark Matters and Kirby has to defeat them first in order to get their help.

Kirby 64 is a 2.5D platform game. The gameplay is similar to early Kirby games. Kirby still has the ability to copy enemies abilities but the interesting feature in Kirby 64 is that the player is able to merge enemies abilities. For Example Kirby can have a double fire and he shoots out almost like a phoenix. Another interesting thing is that players don’t need to have double of the same ability to merge. Players can merge cutter and fire and Kirby will have a flame sword. A funny merge is lighting and ice makes refrigerator Kirby. Refrigerator Kirby shoots out food which can really help when players run low on health. One of my favorite merges is cutter and lighting makes Kirby have a dual light-saber so players can go Star Wars on enemies.

Not only are these merges great but you need certain merges when trying to find crystals. Each level has three crystals. Some are easier to find than others. Some you can get after defeating a mini boss but some like I said before require different merge abilities. One thing that can help the player is looking at the colors of certain walls and cages. If there is a cage that is yellow and green means Kirby needs cutter and lighting in order to break it.

The player will travel to six worlds each containing it’s own boss one of my favorites is Aqua star. I really like the music and being able to go on a beach is pretty cool. Another favorite is Shiver Star. It contains a toy factory and an underground experiment lab.

Kirby 64 has three mini-games that are up to four players but it’s really nothing to brag about. Players can either choose hop racing where players hop to the finish line, bumper crop bump where players try to get the most fruit dropped in their basket or checker board chase where players try to make other players fall off the board by using their color blocks which is probably the best one out of the three mini-games.

In the end Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards is a really fun game. I don’t think it gets enough credit it deserves and this is actually the first Kirby game I played so it definitely plays a huge part of my childhood. If you’re a Kirby fan I would definitely give this game a shot or if you’re a Nintendo fan. Now it might be difficult to find this game on the N-64 but players can download this game on the Wii Virtual Console or Wii U Virtual Console.