Kirby's Avalanche (Virtual Console) Review

Kirby's Avalanche

The call has gone out throughout Dream Land – the First Annual Ghost Trap Competition has begun!

In this fast-paced puzzler it's up to you to battle Kirby's adversaries by strategically stacking colour-coded Blobs and blending them together to form massive chain reactions.

Each colossal explosion you create will cause a bombardment of Ghosts to rain down upon your opponent. Through 16 levels of furious action you’ll face famous enemies from the Kirby universe as you make your way towards a landslide victory!

By Drake

This is basically Puyo Puyo given a lick of paint, but... wait a minute, isn't that exactly what Damo typed for Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine? Well, it holds true for this game as well. Only this time, instead of Dr. Robotnik and various robots from the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon, it's Kirby and various classic Kirby enemies.

If you've played Puyo Puyo or Mean Bean Machine you know what to expect here - coloured blobs (Beans in Mean Bean, ghosts here) fall down and you have to connect 4 or more of the same colour. Stack them in various ways to create combos, which will make garbage or "refugee" beans drop down in your opponent's playing field. Whoever goes over the top of the screen first loses.

Unlike Mean Bean Machine, you can choose what level to start the main game on. If you pick "Hard", for example, you will skip stage 1-3 and start at the 4th one. Kirby's main game is slightly longer than Robotnik's - It's 16 stages long instead of 13. Of course, the last opponent is King Dedede. You can modify the difficulty of the enemies in the options section, much like Mean Bean Machine.

The music is very nice - Loads of remixed Kirby songs. They're all fast-paced and fit the frantic fun of Puyo Puyo well.

Unfortunately, unlike Mean Bean Machine, the game does not feature passwords. This means you cannot skip directly to King Dedede to practice your skills, you have to fight your way to him every time. Also, the game's "Endless mode" (Practice Mode here) does not feature certain extras that the Mean Bean Machine version has.

Puyo Puyo or Kirby fans should check this game out. If you're only a casual player with no preference for Kirby or Sonic, though, I would suggest Mean Bean Machine, as it has a slight edge over this game. Also, despite Mean Bean Machine being playable with the Wii remote, this game isn't! What a ripoff!

3/5

Average reader rating: 3.60 (20 ratings)

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1. Sockapal 17 Jun 2007, 23:19 GMT

Which is better, beans or dreams?

2. Pocketim 18 Jun 2007, 07:14 GMT

SOOOO DREAMS!!! there are more kirby fans then dr eggman fans after all eggmans fat! but i've never played kirby's ghost trap, is its gameplay compleatly the same or are there different things in ghost trap?

3. Drake 18 Jun 2007, 12:28 GMT

Mean Bean Machine is better, man. It's got an extra mode.

4. Yoshi175 18 Jun 2007, 20:46 GMT

This is better than mean bean machine by far

5. Pocketim 18 Jun 2007, 21:01 GMT

What is the extra mode in mean bean machine?

6. Ruben 19 Jun 2007, 20:55 GMT

this game > than mean bean machine, no doubt!

Drake, nice review

Greetings, Ruben

7. SKTTR 22 Jun 2007, 00:22 GMT

Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine = Kirby's Ghost Trap
Sega fans buy Robotnik. Nintendo fans buy Kirby.
It's that easy.

8. PowerLegend 22 Jun 2007, 09:51 GMT

this game is hard as hell anyway. so i don't really care how long we have to wait for it

9. Bass X0 25 Jun 2007, 11:17 GMT

I did wonder as to whether this game would appear on virtual console or not becauses its practically the same as the Robotnik game. Avalance/Ghost Trap is more fun though, I love the music.

10. Mendez 26 Jun 2007, 18:03 GMT

I've always preferred this to Mean Bean Machine. I suppose it's just becasue I'm a Kirby fan.
Me and my Mum spent hours and hours on this game!

11. David 27 Jul 2007, 13:54 GMT

played this before it's a nice game but not worth 800points

12. J-Fin 27 Jul 2007, 14:40 GMT

If this game similar to MBM, then it's a big bummer that it doesn't support the wiimote setup. It is so silly to use classic controller or the wavebird for a game like this.

Mean Bean Machine is becoming the most played vc game on my wii but without the cute and simple wii remote controller, I'd think that starting to play this would be too much a hassle. I recommend MBM to everybody unless they fix this.

13. George 27 Jul 2007, 17:09 GMT

wow it even has the same sprites as MBM. wounder how they pulled that off? looks fun. i like MBM so i'm sre I'll like this too

14. morphballer 27 Jul 2007, 17:32 GMT

Another Kirby game?! How many Kirby games are there on the SNES?

15. Mendez 27 Jul 2007, 18:16 GMT

Why do we need all these spin off titles first? Dreamland 3 and Fun Pak are the real ones we need on VC!

16. BJ 27 Jul 2007, 18:37 GMT

First Kirby's Dream Course, now Kirby's Avalanche. My brother is going to be so siked!

17. BJ 30 Jul 2007, 16:46 GMT

Rats! We didn't get the game today!

18. Pocketim 11 Aug 2007, 05:17 GMT

Practice Mode IS the same as Exercise Mode, Buyed this game today and its much better then MBM!

19. Tim 24 Sep 2007, 18:55 GMT

Kirby's Avalanche has better music then MBM but MBM has the big advantage of a password system and the ability to use a wii mote. The only possible reason why this game won't support the wii mote and mean bean does is because Nintendo is taking the lazy way out.

20. Steve 26 Sep 2007, 21:20 GMT

Guys, guys, guys, calm down.

The reason this doesn't support the Wiimote is because it's a Super Nintendo game, and they haven't had a reason to make an exception for a single game before -- I'll bet it's just running the game through an emulator which just assumes it'll need a classic controller so all the buttons are present.

This isn't Nintendo trying to "pull a fast one" or anything by making you HAVE to buy a classic controller... and seriously, if you don't have one by now... WHY NOT?

21. l.e. 26 Sep 2007, 23:25 GMT

Both MBM and this game were originally outside of Japan only. They were both based on the multi-platform Puyo Puyo 2. That's why they're so alike!

22. alvieao 28 Sep 2007, 22:51 GMT

I must agree that Kirby's Avalanche and Mean Bean are based on the same game. Sega published both Mean Bean Machine (Genesis) and the arcade version because they partially owned the rights to Puyo Puyo until Sonic Team took over in 2002. The SNES version was co-developed by Banpresto (who usually makes Japan-only games), HAL Laboratory, and Compile (Puyo Puyo's original developer). The majority of Kirby fans will play a great puzzle game, but not so much for Puyo Puyo gamers...

23. Lost Heaven 04 Oct 2007, 03:42 GMT

In my honest and impartial opinion, the Kirby version is slightly better than the Robotnick one. The music on Robotnick is kind of... outdated. And the graphics are not as good, as the game suffered from that "grainy" sindrome late Genesis/ Mega Drive games had.

Only downside, indeed, is the fact you can't play it with the Wiimote. But those who try to blame it on some malefic conspiracy to get your money need to pull their act together. How many SNES games can you play with the Wiimote? Enough said -.-

24. Mendez 16 Feb 2008, 17:38 GMT

I think I'll download this now, I'm just desperate for something Kirby, even if it isn't a proper Kirby game =[

25. pdrydia 04 Apr 2008, 23:09 GMT

Not a horrible time waster. The music is great, but the entire experience is almost ruined by giving Kirby awful dialogue.

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