Welcome to VC Weekly, N-Europe’s guide to the wonderful world of Nintendo’s download service. Written by Sam C Gittins

Fans of a certain pink blob will be either delighted or disgusted at this latest release as it's a spin-off title that often divides opinion. Anyway enough from me and on with the game!
 
Available for download this week we have...     

Kirby's Pinball Land


 
Price: GB £2.70, EU €3
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: HAL Laboratory
Released: 1993
System: GameBoy

It may be true that the Kirby games have been primarily platform based but there have been a fair few spin-off titles over the years featuring various cross-overs like Kirby's Block Ball released a few weeks back on the eShop featuring a new take on the classic Breakout but with Kirby influences, it played reasonably well but it's still nothing amazing. Yet here we have Kirby's Pinball Land which attempts to blend everyone's favourite pink blob with Pinball by making him the ball and placing enemies along with obstacles based on the platforming games around a pinball table... the results are mixed to say the least.

Decently designed pinball games tend to have many different areas to explore across the table(s) which are often triggered by either meeting certain conditions or completing specific objectives, this usually opens up mini-games or challenges that allow you to boost your score even higher offering a rewarding feeling of accomplishment. Here though you are set a series of challenges that don't really reflect how well you're doing but rather they restrict your progress having you complete various tasks including destroying a certain number of objects or making something change on the table display; it really doesn't feel much like a pinball game at all instead it's more of an odd experiment.

Upon beating the three tables that the game has to offer you'll be greeted by a relatively easy boss battle with King Dedede which isn't even all that memorable, after completing this the game just loops so that you can play the game all over again in order to boost your score... that is of course if you can bear to play through all the same painfully scripted puzzles once more which would seem a tad masochistic even if you happened to enjoy the experience on your first playthrough. Quite simply there aren't many reasons that you'd want to keep playing which is in direct contrast to other Kirby spin-offs such as Kirby's Block Ball which actually had a decent amount of thought put into it; this however is a pretty poor Pinball game whichever way you choose to look at it.

For an original GameBoy game the visuals are reasonably decent but it's all very functional overall, you'll have no trouble recognising all of the various inhabitants of Dreamland but beyond that there's very little to speak of as the tables are pretty bare-bones in their presentation. So long as you love Kirby then you'll probably enjoy the music as it's in the same vein as the platformers though it can get a bit repetitive if you've been stuck on the same table for a while; the sound effects are all ripped rom earlier games too so no real complaints in that department.

As a Pinball title I'd be hard-pushed to truly recommend this as aside from looking like one in presentation it really doesn't feel like one... indeed it's more like a Pinball-based puzzler more than anything, which isn't to say that it's a total letdown just don't go into it expecting an amazing Pinball experience because if you want that then you should consider one of the Zen Pnball titles instead. If however you're looking for your fix of Kirby then there's nothing wrong with picking this up just so long as you know what you're getting into, if you've played this in the past and loved it then the chances are you will still get your money's worth even today.     

Verdict : A playable pinball puzzler with 'kirb' appeal.

That's it for another installment of VC Weekly which will return again soon. So until then, enjoy the rest of the week and Game On!