Kirby Blitz: Kirby’s Avalanche (SNES)

The Puyo Puyo puzzle game series has seen very few releases outside of Japan, with developer Compile seeming to think that it would not really appeal to gamers in the United States. Considering its cutesy graphics and plot about a teenage girl attracting the romantic interest of a handsome anime version of Satan though, there may be some merit to that suspicion. However, they did seem to think the puzzle gameplay had potential, so when porting it to the West, they decided to reskin their Puyo Puyo games. On the Sega Genesis, Sonic the Hedgehog’s antagonist Robotnik headlined the Puyo Puyo retooling, but on Super Nintendo, Compile decided to still keep cute visuals but rely on the brand recognition of the burgeoning Kirby series, and so, Kirby’s Avalanche, also known as Kirby’s Ghost Trap in Europe, was born.

For a series known for its accessibility, Kirby was a good fit for the Puyo Puyo matching formula, as it’s pretty easy to understand at a glance. Blobs will drop into the playfield two at a time, the player able to speed up their descent or rotate the pair to orient it however they feel works best. Once the blobs are placed, if one is dangling over a drop, it will fall down until it hits the next surface, meaning there will never be gaps in your blob arrangement. To make a match, the blobs must have four or more of the same color touching each other in a continuous chain, the blobs able to connect horizontally and vertically to allow for some odd matching shapes that can set up more matches as pieces fall to replace the disappearing ones. If your middle column gets too filled with blobs though, the current round will end with your loss. Like many puzzle games with block gravity, arranging larger matches and setting up combos where one match opens up the way for gravity to make more matches pays off in every mode of the game, whether it be with more points or by messing up your opponent in the competitive modes. Your success in Kirby’s Avalanche is heavily dependent on those combos, because even though its concept is accessible, Kirby’s Avalanche is not a game to hold back difficulty wise, especially in its main mode, Competition.

Competition Mode is Kirby’s Avalanche’s main single player mode, the loose premise being that the denizens of Dream Land love a game called Avalanche and a tournament has been organized to determine who is best at it. The player plays as Kirby, taking on harder and harder opponents as he works his way through the enemies and bosses he faced back in Kirby’s Adventure. Avalanche battles are structured as single round battles where both players will get the same sequence of incoming blobs to work with, the players trying to outlast their opponent and interfere with them by executing combos. The bigger your combos are, the more garbage blocks are thrown into your opponent’s play field, these grey blobs not able to match with each other and instead requiring the player to make matches adjacent to them to clear them. These 1 on 1 Avalanche battles start pretty tame, especially if you choose to begin with the introductory opponents instead of jumping into the later starting points the game labels as Normal mode and Hard mode. Proper difficulty settings are found in the options menu, but these names are pretty appropriate here, as once you hit seventh stage, the one the game calls the beginning of Hard, you will have to have a knack for setting up combos to stay in the game. Even on lower difficulties, Kirby’s Avalanche is not a puzzle game about just surviving. You have to interfere with your opponent properly to eliminate them, tossing over garbage blocks at opportune times to block the matches they’re working on and setting up huge matches to flood their board with too much waste they can’t really work with. If you end up being the one to lose though, you can hop back in and rematch the opponent quite easily, and that might hit on the issue with Competition mode.

While it is perhaps good that Competition mode won’t kick you out for losing, these all-or-nothing Avalanche duels don’t really feel set up as a proper gauge of your matching skill. This is mainly because a round of Avalanche can end incredibly quickly one way or the other, some of it just coming down to getting your matches in early rather than getting the best possible matches. You’ll still need to develop quick reflexes and a good eye to keep up, especially on the harder difficulty settings, but most of your opponents just play Avalanche marginally better than the previous ones, meaning that the best tactic to win is just to play well and send a large amount of garbage over to them before they can do it to you. If you lose, you just try again, hoping this time you’ll be the first one to do so rather than really having to develop your skill any further. These duels are still enjoyable and require puzzle solving acumen, but the speed of the matches and their make or break nature limits the potential for close and tense duels. Even if you are playing another human in the 2 player mode this can still be an issue, especially since your blocks drop in from above. If you send over the tide of grey blobs, they might not even have the room to make a match to survive.

Competition Mode is where the Kirby coat of paint is most apparent. While the blobs being little goo balls with eyes doesn’t relate to the Kirby series, Kirby will go up against familiar faces in places connected to his previous titles. Despite being a generally friendly puffball in most appearances, Kirby’s Avalanche not only has Kirby talk, but it has him be surprisingly rude at times. The characters in this Avalanche tournament must be really getting into the competitive spirit, as they have no issue trash-talking each other and getting a bit mean in their pre-battle banter. They do amount to schoolyard taunts rather than anything actually offensive, but they’ll talk about crushing dreams, insult each other’s appearance, or deliberately provoke each other prior to their Avalanche duel. This discrepancy between the adorable designs and the words they’re saying is actually a bit funny, making it more interesting to see how the characters talk when they meet up and the trash talk actually somewhat matching the ruthless nature of these puzzle game duels where slowing down even for a bit can prove your undoing.

If you’re not interested in the speedy and deadly duels of Competition Mode, regular play is found in the oddly named Practice Mode. While it is technically excellent for practicing your matching and chaining skills without the threat of garbage block incursions, it does serve as the the game’s effectively infinite matching mode where you can do a survival based single player challenge. You can set the speed of the falling blobs to make things more challenging if you wish, an option also found in 2-player battles. In fact, a second player can even practice with you here if they wish instead of you two competing to eliminate each other.  No matter what speed you pick though, all modes of Avalanche will have the blocks drop in at steadily increasing rates to speed the matches along, further pushing this game’s hectic energy and the need for fast reactions to stay in the game. Practice will at least let you focus on keeping in the game rather than taking someone else down though, so it can be a nice reprieve from how swiftly regular Avalanche matches end.

THE VERDICT: While seeing the cute characters of the Kirby series be uncharacteristically rude to each other does make reskinning Puyo Puyo into Kirby’s Avalanche an interesting visit, the Kirby series’s usual novice friendly nature might make the intensity of the matching puzzle duels a bit of a surprise. Kirby’s Avalanche offers some tough and speedy challenge for people looking to push their color-matching skills, but the simplicity and the speed means it has to rely solely on the quality of its core design, which is thankfully solidly designed and challenging. Matching colored blobs is enjoyable and can hook a player for the breadth of Competition mode, but the longevity is hurt by how quickly battles go by. The modes don’t really tinker with the puzzle formula in any huge way, but what it does in those modes is executed well enough to ensure its still a fun color-matching game.

And so, I give Kirby’s Avalanche for the Super Nintendo…

A GOOD rating. Your enjoyment of this game will likely be tied to how much you enjoy the Puyo Puyo formula in general, as it is pretty much plain Puyo Puyo at its core. There’s not much variety to extract extra enjoyment from the title, so the duel modes and Practice mode’s survival angle are what you have to work with. Thankfully, matching colored blobs works excellently, setting up combo chains is satisfying, and while duels can end a bit too quickly because of how much garbage fills the opponent’s screen with a decent sized combo, the core gameplay isn’t hurt by it, it just doesn’t have the room to shine as much because things are over a bit suddenly so often.

While perhaps not a game for fans of the accessible Kirby franchise, Kirby’s Avalanche did allow the United States another way of experiencing a series that seems averse to immersing itself in the waters of the Western market. Kirby’s Avalanche could do more to increase it’s staying power or prevent the battles from ending so early, but it does nail the genre-important thrill of making colored blocks disappear with rapid clever matches.