Game:

Kirby's Avalanche (1995)

Duration: 2:16

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12

It occurs to me that if anybody at such an impressionable age came into contact with an instance of Puyo Puyo rebranded... it would depend entirely upon which console of the time you got your fix from. On the SNES we have Kirby's Avalanche, and the Sega Genesis had itself a good time with Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine. Both popular platformer mascots tied to a licensed port of an otherwise unlikely to succeed otherwise puzzle game... and unfortunately, as a result, not a puzzle game that was able to stand out besides being "that Sonic/Kirby game with the falling blobs" instead and relegated to the realm of idle curiosity or maybe even nostalgia, but not really because of its merits as a game.

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Competition, Lesson 3: Waddle Doo

Wait a second, I don't really see how playing a game by its rules constitutes failing to treat someone with respect... if anything, the way to treat Waddle Dee without respect is to ignore him and just move along as though he didn't exist at all. It's probably also for the best that Kirby didn't... y'know... just eat him or something.

But anyway, I guess none of that matt-- whoa, whoa... Waddle Doo, man... are you all right? What's going on with your eye when you're moonwalking like right now... how are you even doing that? Are you all right? That looks serious! It's getting all deformed in ways I can't even say as I knew could be possible for a creature composed principally of an eyeball and a body built around it...

Oh... oh no... look at the in-game portraiture and how it moves in its idle animation... I hope I haven't hurt his feelings! Or... is he about to sneez-- uh... I mean... is that somehow related to how he shoots crazy beams arcing beams from his eye? I'm scared. Never have I considered the particulars and workings of the (apparently not-so) humble Waddle Doo, and now I kinda wish I hadn't.

Anyway, if you hadn't heeded my generalized warnings or seen for yourself before now, this game moves quickly... perhaps even unreasonably quickly considering all that we're doing now, so you might imagine how things might get even more unreasonable rather quickly if it wasn't just me picking on unsuspecting victims unable to fend for themselves...

I'm going to lay down a quick generalization that I want you to just let percolate in the back of your mind as we move along... the most important chain reaction you can build is the 3x... anything before that will be fairly inconsequential... one clear is just one nuisance Puyo, a 2x chain is a whole line (that's a pretty big jump, though!), and a 3x chain is three lines... plus whatever change on top you can scare up if you have links of more than the minimum required clear size.

One nuisance Puyo is barely anything to worry about unless it hits the right column with some ridiculously bad timing and an insane vengeance... although it would be a good idea not to make yourself particularly vulnerable to such things, it happens. A whole line is a little more to worry about, but as long as you don't have an unrealistically flat and level stack that's probably not going to be easy to chain with, you should still be fine. But three whole rows... that's only going to fail to upset you if you have at LEAST the tallest possible clear at the top of your stack, and even if that's "all" you suffer for it, you'll still have a really tall play field that just got at least three rows taller.

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For being a fast learner, you win... the right to be taunted by the king himself! What an honor! You also get to stop playing, because you really should move on to a "real" tier of opponents now... or something. I don't know why we couldn't just leave from here and join up with the first "real" stage, since Hard is nothing but starting on Stage 4 right off the bat... I don't know.

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