Kirby's Star Stacker (Game Boy - 1997)

Kirby's Star Stacker is a unique little puzzle game. It's sort of like Tetris Attack meets Yoshi. (I had to look the last one up for a name, it's not Yoshi's Cookie.)

There's four main pieces. The first three are the helper characters from Kirby's Dreamland 2 + 3 (the hamster, fish and owl). The fourth is the star block. Now anytime you match 2 of the same animal blocks, they disappear, but you only get points for getting rid of the star blocks. Basically you've got to sandwich the star blocks between two similar animals.

Because the amount of matched blocks needed is smaller than most games (usually needing at least 3, or a row, etc), the chain reaction combos get insane and unpredictable. Each combo gives kirby (who's just chilling in the corner) more star blocks to drop into the play area, which can trigger off MORE combos, giving Kirby MORE star blocks to drop, etc.

Baiscally a simple little puzzle game, really easy to pick up and put down. I think there's 4 or 5 different modes to play. It's got a really endearing soundtrack (as if there's any other kind from Kirby games), they throw out confetti every 100 star blocks you remove, and there's cute little messages when you lose. It's on Wii Virtual Console, but only in Japan. I think? I dunno nothing bout Wii Virtual Console, really. But it's definitely right here. You can't deny that.