Topic: RetroActive #24: Kirby & The Amazing Mirror

[ejamer]

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Does anyone know how to make the yellow platforms drop to open up new paths? I thought it was a weight thing using the Rock special ability... but that didn't work. I made one drop accidentally but have no idea how that happened.
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So dumb. Look closer, and the yellow platforms are being held up by a string (or something similar). Get a cutting power and you can drop them easily and at will. If anyone else was wondering, that's the answer.

[TheXenocide]

Just in case anybody else wants to cheat like me, antidark001 has some pretty decent guide videos on YouTube.

[Pandareus]

Grr, this is BS. There is this large star stone that can only be displaced by several Kirbys inhaling at the same time behind this wall of lava constantly spewed out of this small volcano. You OBVIOUSLY have to pull it on top of the volcano crater to block it, but the other Kirbys are utterly uncooperative. They stand there like morons, and sometimes just push me into the wall of lava. I've already lost a life.

I've managed to make the block move a couple inches, somehow, but haven't been able to move it the rest of the way for the past 10 minutes.

[ejamer]

Grr, this is BS. There is this large star stone that can only be displaced by several Kirbys inhaling at the same time behind this wall of lava constantly spewed out of this small volcano. You OBVIOUSLY have to pull it on top of the volcano crater to block it, but the other Kirbys are utterly uncooperative. They stand there like morons, and sometimes just push me into the wall of lava. I've already lost a life.

I've managed to make the block move a couple inches, somehow, but haven't been able to move it the rest of the way for the past 10 minutes.

Very interested if anyone else knows how to get past that section. I got stuck there over the weekend, and eventually just gave up and went somewhere else to explore.

[Pandareus]

Okay. I googled the question, and it turns out you don't CLEARLY need the suction power of 4 Kirbys, what you need it use the rock power a couple of times and each time, the star rock will inch closer to the crater.

:-|

I'm liking the game, but that's bad design on the scale of the Sonic 3 drum right there. The situation is perfectly analogous, actually. You try doing what you've been doing the whole game and it seems to work, but not really.

Turns out it's something you've never been asked to do before.

[Glad0s]

I noticed something last night. I was trying to beat the eyeball/cloud boss, and I realized something....I was actually being precise and careful in a Kirby platformer. I've played around 4, and every one of them is extremely easy. I just force my way through to the end. But the whole "keep your powers till when you need them" device makes the player be much more safe in his playing. I like it.

[pandaradox]

So I've had a great time with this game so far!  Yeah the map sucks, but I find wandering to be a rather effective way to handle this game.  Given that all losing your lives does is spit you back to the hub, there's not much punishment for this style of gameplay.  The wonderlust of this game comes from going through a good chunk of these areas with different abilities.  Being a Wheel can change that level significantly than if you're using Hammer.  I think that's only speaking great volumes to the level design. 


I think Guillaume pointed out the largest flaw, that this game shines with multiplayer and the ambassador games can't use it.  I've had to watch as an army of dummies wander into a pit instead of staying on the switch I called them there for.  They made Four Swords into a one-player experience, but I guess the anniversary of Kirby isn't as important to Nintendo.  *shrugs*


I'm really thankful for the red switch rooms.  It seems like these are the true reward to the game!  It's like finding an oasis in the chaos of this game's map. 

[Jonnyboy117]

A couple of notes to address comments in the thread:

- You can indeed move the large stone blocks with the suction power of four Kirbys. I just did it. However, it is a challenge in single-player mode. Keep in mind that your phoned-in buddies will usually arrive with powers, and you have to be normal or Throw to get the required suction. They should start to eject their stars when they see you inhaling, but they'll also be tempted to re-inhale those loose stars. It helps if you suck up whatever they eject and just blow it back out to get rid of it. Once all four of you are Normal, try to position everyone so that you're all close enough to the big block without anyone blocking its movement or standing on top of it.

- The map becomes far more useful if you find the map treasure for a given area. Then you can see a very detailed diagram of how each room connects to the others. Unfortunately, these map items are hidden in the large treasure chests and are usually very difficult to find. After activating big pink switches, finding every large treasure chest should be your next priority.

- Some very important doors are guarded by the shy yellow mirror creatures. Attack them quickly with a power like Burning to kill them and free the door. If the enemy hides before you can kill it, leave the room and come back to reset it.

- Some small pink switches are only active for a very short time. You may need to activate them from afar -- try aiming a Cutter blade or throwing a Bomb.

[ejamer]

A couple of notes to address comments in the thread:

- You can indeed move the large stone blocks with the suction power of four Kirbys. I just did it. However, it is a challenge in single-player mode. Keep in mind that your phoned-in buddies will usually arrive with powers, and you have to be normal or Throw to get the required suction. They should start to eject their stars when they see you inhaling, but they'll also be tempted to re-inhale those loose stars. It helps if you suck up whatever they eject and just blow it back out to get rid of it. Once all four of you are Normal, try to position everyone so that you're all close enough to the big block without anyone blocking its movement or standing on top of it.


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- Some small pink switches are only active for a very short time. You may need to activate them from afar -- try aiming a Cutter blade or throwing a Bomb.

Normally you can move big blocks easy enough by calling your fellow Kirbys to the same screen, but I don't think it works at the one place where Pandareus mentioned because there isn't enough room for all of the Kirbys to stand without pushing each other into the lava.


The Bomb power is quite nice for switches. If you hold down and press attack, Kirby will drop a bomb on the ground that blows up after a short delay. (Just be sure it isn't touching anything when you set it down.)

[Glad0s]

Another good way to kill the yellow door thingys is to press the up button, suck up some air, and then land a decent ways away from the door. Then, press B, and Kirby will spit out the air, thus killing the yellow thing.

[ClexYoshi]

Well! this is it; the Retro-active that convinced me to finally stop lurking around here. For a brief and quick history, I had only stumbled upon NWR a short bit after Craig Harris left IGN, so that's how long I've been quietly listening in, enjoying me some Radio Free Nintendo and to that extent, the opinions of others doing this whole Retro-active thing!

Fair warning, I miiiiight get a bit spoiler-y in the upcoming ramble, as I'm crazy tired and generally run my mouth on subjects like these without really thinking about what I'm saying first, which is really a silly statement considering I'm typing all this.

Kirby and the Amazing Mirror! This game is pretty sweet, and I was super jazzed when back in the day I heard it was going to be The Great Cave Offensive (THe treasure hunting open world section of Kirby Super Star and my second favorite game in that collection next to Milky Way Wishes) fleshed out into a full game, complete with 4 player exploration  independent of one another AND the return of some Irby's Adventure Powers that had been absent from the series like UFO and the terribly, TERRIBLY broken Tornado! I did convince my friends to get this beast back in the day, but I think I was probably the only one who was super enthusiastic about this one though; they were all busy with their Four Swords. : <

Regardless, I liked this game quite a lot and it spent many a hour in my GBA before it got ripped off by petty thugs at my high school! ... yyyyeah. oh well, I played it to 100% completion and even did some fun things like mono-copy ability boss rushes and such. I was more than excited when I heard this was going to be one of the ambassador games and I actually ended up knocking this and Wario Land 4 out before moving on to the GBA Port of my favorite game of all time and Fire Emblem 8.

The complaints about the map are VERY valid, especially when you start getting into some of the more complex levels like Peppermint Palace and Carrot Castle. The folks at Hal and Flagship [who I can't remember, but I THINK they MIGHT have been a shell company between Hal and DiMPS of the Sonic Advance/Sonic the Hedgehog 4 fame] tend to in some areas purposefully set it up so you pass through a big room on two separate routes that aren't interconnected at all, and when there's multiple one-way doors to take, this can get hyper confusing at times. When I played through the first time and didn't know about the map, I actually relied a lot on the system of the doors having that glow above them and the little star doors meaning that that route happens to be a one-way.

If you REALLY want a good way to go about getting treasure sand finding the nooks and crannies, there's a special copy ability that you can get that will let you butter through any puzzle with ease, although the Smash ability is also good for that [as well as a hilarious little nod to Kirby's SSBM move set!] Other abilities I suggest are Tornado because it  may be a little hard to control, but it gives you craaaaaaaaazy amounts of invincibility frames and cheeses all the bosses so super hard [it even cheeses the final boss harder than the aforementioned super secret copy ability does!], Bomb for being able to deal with timed switch puzzles without relying on the AI being complete dummies, Throw because it does damage like spitting out a cluster of enemies does, and Sword because for no reason at all, they made Sword stupid versatile in this game compared to other games.

I'd also like to address those few situations where they put the giant stone blocks in the way, because I believe those are examples of very bad use of iterative game design. in the opening tutorial path, the game purposefully shows you one of those blocks and shows you that the 4 kirbies can inhale these, but then when these blocks are presented later, they're in REALLY frustrating spots to try and perform this technique. however, repeatedly spamming stone will shake the ground and nudge the block over ever so slightly until it falls through a crack or something.

Anyhow, I could yammer on and on and ON AND ON about how cool I like the Kirby's adventure forest remix that they use for Cabbage Caverns, or the Boss from Candy Constellation  or the fun little mini-games and such, but the feature I kinda strangely liked even if it is a cosmetic one were the sprays you could find to change Kirby's color before you'd jump into the game. I'd always be excited to play as a different color every time I'd boot up the game!

That being said... I still want my Full-featured Milky Way Wishes style game. ;_; Seriously, it'd be awesome! Like Mega Man... but with Kirby abilities!~

[Pixelated Pixies]

@ClexYoshi
 
This was designed as a fleshed out The Great Cave Offensive? That explains alot about my feelings towards this game. Which is to say my ambivalence.
 
Still, I always find it gratifying to hear people describe their love of a game even if it's one I'm not particularly interested in. That for me is what retroactive is all about.
 
Also, to any other lurkers out there please feel free to come forward. The more you throw your thoughts out there the more interesting the discussion of these games will be.

[ClexYoshi]

@ClexYoshi
 
This was designed as a fleshed out The Great Cave Offensive? That explains alot about my feelings towards this game. Which is to say my ambivalence.

Well, think about it... Great Cave Offensive was a connected and persistent super area  where you used certain copy abilities to open up paths to get useless bits of McGuffin. Kirby and the Amazing Mirror was a connected and persistent super area where you hit annoying dead-ends  that eject you to the beginning of the maze while sometimes giving you a chest with slightly more functional McGuffin. That being said, that isn't nearly as infuriating of a design because of your abilities to open up all those shortcut branches to the beginning of the maze that makes it easier to backtrack then in Great Cave offensive, where if you miss a treasure you're hiking all the way through half of the game to go into a nook you might have missed your first time through that's on a completely off-beat path.

P.S.  I know it's sorta kinda premature to be asking, but here's hoping for some La Mulana in the next Retro-active poll Because I'm kinda sadistic like that and I kinda giggled in glee hearing about Johnny's epic struggle with the first 10 minutes of the game... that, and the original Freeware verison of the game came out in 2006 and it's been out for a while in Japan! C'mon, you -KNOW- you wanna!

[Pixelated Pixies]

@ClexYoshi
 
Yeah, I had noted that there were similar themes and ideas between GCO and AM, but I didn't know how strong it was as an influence or that it was actually their intent to expand upon those ideas. It totally makes sense though.
 
A La Mulana retroactive would definitely be interesting. I created a thread about my first few hours with the game and intend to update my impressions as I make it further into the game. It's been a wild ride so far.

[pandaradox]

Excellent post, Clex! 


Does anyone else find themselves caring less and less about 1-ups and Food?  I find this game more enjoyable when I free-run.

[Glad0s]

Hrm....I now have all but two of the shards, and to tell you the truth, I really feel no motivation to go back and finish the game. I spent about 40 minutes last night just looking around, and while it wasn't un-enjoyable, I still don't feel the need to track down the last two parts at this point. There are lots of other games I want to play, and I really don't feel like I get much out of just blindly exploring the game for long stretches of time. So yeah, I've enjoyed it, but I don't really love it. I certainly don't regret spending the hours that I spent with it, though. Anyone else feel a lack of motivation to finish?

[Pixelated Pixies]

Hrm....I now have all but two of the shards, and to tell you the truth, I really feel no motivation to go back and finish the game. I spent about 40 minutes last night just looking around, and while it wasn't un-enjoyable, I still don't feel the need to track down the last two parts at this point. There are lots of other games I want to play, and I really don't feel like I get much out of just blindly exploring the game for long stretches of time. So yeah, I've enjoyed it, but I don't really love it. I certainly don't regret spending the hours that I spent with it, though. Anyone else feel a lack of motivation to finish?

That's pretty much how I feel.

[ClexYoshi]

Hrm....I now have all but two of the shards, and to tell you the truth, I really feel no motivation to go back and finish the game. I spent about 40 minutes last night just looking around, and while it wasn't un-enjoyable, I still don't feel the need to track down the last two parts at this point. There are lots of other games I want to play, and I really don't feel like I get much out of just blindly exploring the game for long stretches of time. So yeah, I've enjoyed it, but I don't really love it. I certainly don't regret spending the hours that I spent with it, though. Anyone else feel a lack of motivation to finish?

I hear you. it can kinda be draggy trying to find a couple of the bosses, particularly the Olive Ocean  and Cabbage Caverns ones. Olive Ocean is especially outrageous in this regard because It's a very long and drawn out water level with lots one one-ways. outside of hammer, Sword, and Parasol, it's VERY hard to retain copy abilities for extended periods of time when you're constantly under water, and indeed, you need to bring abilities to get to certain treasures.they also enjoy VERY annoying placement of Mr. Blipper AI variants that behave like Super Mario World's Rip Van Fish.  there also happens to be very annoyingly placed Glunks  in ares where there's lots of spikes to put you right in the line of fire.  Losing your copy ability you need to open a path doesn't make it hard, it makes it kinda tedious.

I also feel like dumping spoiler text, so uh... that's what this next paragraph or two is going to be, kids!



There's a couple of really, REALLY interesting bits about this game that intrigue me quite a bit! I believe that Kirby and the amazing Mirror was the first kirby game not to have King Dedede show up in some way, shape or form! I could be wrong about this because maybe the baseball game doesn't have Dedede, but It's just kinda odd. what's cool though and I really wish they would have ran with more was things like King Golem, who is obviously an alternate universe version of Wispy Woods with how he's pretty much a reskin of that boss. They didn't do this with Kracko, and I'm not really counting evil greyscale Meta Knight because he's a pallete swap of Meta Knight. Speaking of Meta Knight, I really like that they let you drag his Galaxia Sword around wherever once you've beaten the game and use it as a way to solve almost any puzzle in the game. it even has what would become Meta Knight's side+B move going on there to butter through the opposition! Another really weird thing is the whole Smash Bros. Tie-in by having Master Hand as a sub-boss and Crazy hand as an actual boss. if you go back to my babbling about alternate universe enmies in the mirror world, I suppose you can look at Master Hand and Crazy hand being alternate universe versions of Wham Bam Rock? I'unno.

I still like this game and think it's cool for incentivizing copy ability retention and thus careful play, and I like having a Kirby game that isn't just a straight shot to the goal. with false sorts of goals ready to hinder you in a very misleading way.

Still want a Milky Way Wishes full featured game where you have to either regain the right to copy certain enemies, or that you have a certain energy bar to the copy aiblity that after you take X number of hits, it gets locked off until you find an energy restoring item? I dunno, I just really liked being able to reach in and use Kirby Super Star copy abilities in a toolbox style fashion, even if I didn't like being able to spawn infinite partners.

[ejamer]

How are people progressing through the game?

I'm sitting at about 80% complete, with only one shard missing. Unlike the people above, I'm kind of excited to find the last piece of mirror and see what happens. There are two key areas left to explore: levels 7 and 8. Haven't found the maps for either, so that's kind of my sticking point right now. I think that level 8 should be easy enough since I know how to get into the level easy enough... but getting to level 7 isn't as clear to me yet.

I've just completed the game, but only have an 87% rating. Too many treasure chests missed I guess, including the map for level 7.  Pretty satisfied with the game overall, and like the fact you get a bonus to make further play interesting after the game is "finished". Not sure if there is anything for reaching 100%... not sure I care enough to find out at this point in time. Probably my favorite Kirby game though. The large, interconnected world that had to be explored is really what pushed it over the top for me. Usually Kirby games are so direct and easy, even if they are somewhat charming it's not enough to hold my interest.

Also wanted to chime in that I also found the Smash Bros tie-in to be very interesting, and I'm not even a Smash Bros fan. Probably my favorite boss so far, with maybe the four-fisted Iron Knight being my second favorite.

[ClexYoshi]

How are people progressing through the game?


I'm sitting at about 80% complete, with only one shard missing. Unlike the people above, I'm kind of excited to find the last piece of mirror and see what happens. There are two key areas left to explore: levels 7 and 8. Haven't found the maps for either, so that's kind of my sticking point right now. I think that level 8 should be easy enough since I know how to get into the level easy enough... but getting to level 7 isn't as clear to me yet.


Just wanted to chime in that I also found the Smash Bros tie-in to be very interesting, and I'm not even a Smash Bros fan. Probably my favorite boss so far, with maybe the four-fisted Iron Knight being my second favorite.

The path to the boss of Radish ruins is pretty much a straight shot to the left for the most part until you come toa  room with a bunch of cannons to shoot out of. you want to go for the lower path through this route and it'll lead you to the boss.

As for the route to the Peppermint Palace boss,  it's also quite far to the left of the path. if you're just entering Peppermint Palace from the leftmost of the two entrances that are in Carrot Castle, you'll stumble upon the shortcut switch that leads back to the mirror hub room, and beyond that if you just keep going left, until you'll eventually hit a room with a platform with some rope you can cut. you dont' want to go to the path that cutting the rope will lead you on, but rather the path that leads you up into a big open room with the giant rockys and such. there's a one-way door in the upper left that will take you to the room with the boss.

[Pandareus]

@ejamer - I completed with around that, 88%. I'm still missing a map for world 5 I believe, haha.

I'm not sure if I'm gonna go for 100% completion. In this type of game, I usually don't find trying to find every nook and cranny I missed to be that enjoyable. I'd rather quit this game on a high note.

I watched a 100% completion ending video on youtube just to see if there was anything extra, and all that happens is you unlock a Boss Endurance mode.

[ejamer]

@ejamer - I completed with around that, 88%. I'm still missing a map for world 5 I believe, haha.

I'm not sure if I'm gonna go for 100% completion. In this type of game, I usually don't find trying to find every nook and cranny I missed to be that enjoyable. I'd rather quit this game on a high note.

I watched a 100% completion ending video on youtube just to see if there was anything extra, and all that happens is you unlock a Boss Endurance mode.

If that's the only bonus for getting 100% then I'm done. The extra mode is a nice touch, but nothing I care about, so "quit [...] on a high note" is exactly how I feel.


Kirby & The Amazing Mirror has been enjoyable despite some rough patches, and I'm glad this retroactive helped give me the incentive to push through.

[Evan_B]

Yeah, honestly, having played only Kirby 64, Epic Yarn, and Sqeak Squad but always having a soft spot for the pink fluff ball, I downloaded this game as an Ambassador for 3DS, started playing it, and had no effin' clue what I was doing. After hearing such wondrous praise and a really good explanation of what the game is like, I'm looking forward to picking it up again. Thanks for the incentive guys, this gives me a reason to not-buy a new game and instead focus on one I already have, which is nice.