Kirby's Star Stacker SNES: Story - Pro Mode (No Continues/Retries)
7This was a fun one to do.
Having grown up with the Gameboy version thanks to a local yard sale across the street, I've moved onto playing this game once I've learned about it during my early online years. I'm used to it being called Kirby no Kirakira Kizzu. The NSO release localized it as Kirby's Star Stacker. I wonder why they didn't do Super Star Stacker, but oh well. Back when I first played it all those years ago, I didn't even know there was a harder difficulty option so I was kind of excited to get this run done.
Story Mode in the SNES version is the single player arcade VS. play with a small twist. You can stop at anytime and "retry" if you want by exiting via the menu and going back to Story Mode (kind of like Pokemon Puzzle League). This will not count as a continue, and you need to do a "no continue" run to unlock the hidden 8th stage after the credits. We don't do this in this run to satisfy the tradition of an arcade 1cc.
Mechanics of the original single player campaign on the Gameboy involved clearing a set amount of stars to progress to the next stage on a 6x12 grid. Stars can be cleared by putting them between friend blocks of the same type. Friend blocks come in the form of Coo the Owl, Rick the Hamster, and Kine the Fish. You can only sandwich these stars vertically or horizontally to clear them. Blocks above the cleared line can land into a chain reaction.
The unique mechanic about chains is that depending on your chain, bonus stars will fall on your side of the field. If these bonus stars land and become sandwiched between two similar animal blocks, then this will register as an additional chain. The particular formula for bonus stars is:
2 chain = 2 bonus stars
3 chain = 4 bonus stars
4 chain = 5 bonus stars
5 chain = 6 bonus stars (1 full row)
6 chain = 12 bonus stars (2 full rows, max)
Additional block types you may encounter are:
Bomb blocks: Clears the entire row when cleared like a star block.
Hard blocks: When cleared like a star block, it becomes a normal star block. (ie: you have to clear it twice to remove it.).
That concludes the main single player mechanics of the original Gameboy release.
Extending these mechanics to VS. play that is featured in this video: An attack will raise your opponent's stack up by a # of rows depending on its strength. Attack strength is determined by the chains you create AND the limit set by the difficulty level. To send an attack, you must have done at least a three chain, which will send 2 rows of damage. Here's a list of the difficulty levels, their damage limits, and which stages in the campaign involve them:
Normal Difficulty - 3 Attack Level Limit (4 Chain): Stages 1-2 in Pro Mode.
Hard Difficulty - 5 Attack Level Limit (6 Chain): Stages 3-4 in Pro Mode.
Very Hard Difficulty - 7 Attack Level Limit (8 Chain): Stages 5-6 in Pro Mode.
Super Hard Difficulty - 9 Attack Level Limit (10 Chain): Stages 7-8 in Pro Mode.
You unlock Pro Mode after completing the Normal Story Mode (Amateur mode according to the game) on a save file. You access this mode by starting a new game with the save file and selecting Pro mode (bottom option). The difference between Amateur and Pro I find are the difficulty levels spread throughout the stages (Not too much the AI for each character I think).
Amateur Mode's difficulties are:
Normal Difficulty: Stages 1-3
Hard Difficulty: Stages 4-6
Very Hard Difficulty: Stages 7-8
*Super Hard doesn't appear in Amateur Mode.
Regarding the overall gameplay of this VS. wise? It's kind of silly. At times it feels more like a survival game where you stumble upon chains if you've survived long enough. Stage 7 in the video is a prime example of this mindset. Maybe if there was some offsetting, it might improve the mechanics a bit? Still, I have some nostalgia for this game and thought I'd do this on the puzzle game bucket list.
Kind of at a loss for what game I should 1cc next outside of the Puyo series. Inside the Puyo series, I still have yon to 1cc. ... That game's campaign is longggggg and a bit frustrating to 1cc.