The game was developed by HAL Laboratory and released in 1993. It was the first spin off Kirby game and is still considered to be one of the better pinball games to be seen on any system. The game features three very different tables with the objective being simple. Defeat the boss on each stage and then defeat King Dedede. I'll take a dive into how this all works.
This is the Wispy Woods table. When you start you will wind up in the center section. From there you can either drop down to the section below or reach the section above. If you fall through the bottom of the last section, you will possibly loose the ball. The ball can be saved however by pressing A at the right moment. As with most pinball games you only have 3 balls to work with, but extras can be earned by defeating bosses. If you reach the top section and find a warp star (in this case by defeating the enemies under the mushrooms and then shooting the ball around and to the top center of the screen) that will lead you to a boss battle.
Here Kirby takes a more traditional look as he battles against either Wispy Woods, Kracko, or Poppy Bros. Sr.. Each battle works differently, but since I'm focusing on Wispy I'll explain his boss battle here. You have to shoot Kirby into Wispy while avoiding falling apples and air blasts from Wispy that will send you hurling towards the warp star and back to the main table. In addition a Gordo will occasionally drop freezing one of your flippers for a short time. Defeat Wispy and you'll return to the table select screen where you can choose another table to play on.
That is essentially the whole gameplay. There is a lot of stuff to find and figure out as you go and since this is not a walk through, I am not going to go any more into the gameplay than I already have. Graphically however, the game looks very nice on the Game Boy. There are a bunch of involved little things visually that brings a lot more fun into the game. For example...
The Kirby on the left appears to be thinking about what he had eaten. Also notice that Kirby apparently eats out of what looks like a dog bowl. Fun little things like that can be found throughout the game that just make it more visually fun and appealing. The sounds of the game are pretty much those that you would expect from a pinball game. Lots of bell like sounds, but also a large amount of sounds from previous Kirby games as well. In fact two of the three tables feature music from the original Kirby's Dream Land. Some call that lazy. I call that smart given the tables are modeled after the levels from the original Game Boy game.
Perhaps the biggest draw to this game though is the fact that the high scores are actually saved. So that means you and your friends can compete in this game for high scores. Unlike the previous two installments of Kirby games, there is nothing to unlock, but no playthrough will in theory ever be the same. That gives this game (and other pinball games) a ton of replayability as the fun never truly comes to an end. I still find myself sticking this game into my Game Boy Advance SP or Super Game Boy and giving it a whirl. It is probably one of the hardest Kirby games as well to boot. I've only defeated King Dedede a few times and doing so was never an easy task.
My final thoughts on Kirby's Pinball Land is that it is a game that really got overshadowed by Pokemon Pinball. Once that game came out, a lot of people were obviously drawn to it and Kirby's Pinball Land kind of fell to the wayside. Personally I think the two games are both very good, but I prefer Kirby. This is really a fun game that doesn't really get a lot of talk as the popularity of pinball is not what it was years ago. Still, if you have not given this game a spin I'd highly recommend it. It plays extremely smoothly for being a Game Boy game and is really a blast to play.
Final Verdict: 8 out of 10. Kirby's Pinball Land is a great spinoff of at the time, a great young franchise, that any fan of any pinball game will thoroughly enjoy!
As always, thanks for reading! Stay tuned for my next blog coming soon as well as the next installment of the Kirby Series: Kirby's Dream Course for the Super Nintendo!
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