Agh! I fell asleep after finishing up that last installment of Judgment's description, so here is your randomly delayed serving of cutesy monochromatic gluttony, and boy is it a doozy!

You might have noticed that the incredible straightforwardness of Float Islands actually led it to have a (slightly) shorter running time, despite having far more legwork for Kirby to do in the meantime.

To be fair, a more than decent part of that legwork was spent flying (or sent flying) and another part of it has Kirby's insides literally on fire, so I suppose he probably wasn't enjoying his tropical vacation very much anyway.

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Stage 4: Bubbly Clouds

This bizarre stage-opening sketch I find to be one of the most memorable and interesting in the entire series, but... it makes no sense, really. It was also altered for Spring Breeze to be essentially more what Castle Lololo's introduction looked like. Wow, Spring Breeze is pretty complicated in its decisions as to how it would be updated and abridged compared to what you might initially think.

So... what the heck is this place, anyway? I always like to imagine it's basically Kracko's crazy upper-atmosphere palace, riddled with clouds both soft and hard, a literal physical palace (somehow), and a LOT of scenic views of the sky over Dream Land. Truly, it would be a paradise to rival the Overthere... if not for its owner being really picky about guest admission.

I do want to point out that I do some brief exploration and deliberate backtracking as if to show off "hey, this room is pretty big and neat!" when it comes to the rather large maze-like cloud room. It's really more of a spiral on an endlessly-wrapping screen, which I'd actually never noticed myself until I actually decided to show it off. I was just concerned that there was a whole half a room that you wouldn't get to see if I went straight for the secret door hidden in a very suspicious location...

I want to point out, of course, that Kracko's initial sub-boss encounter ends not with him exploding into nothingness, but rather being blown offscreen. I don't know why I like to make a big deal about it, but it's an important detail that's pretty easy to overlook. Now if only I could explain why Lololo explodes and is fine later. Maybe those two have bad tempers about when they lose, but are otherwise no worse for wear.

So, is it that we're going higher and higher to suggest we're going deep into the ether and closer to the endless expanse of space, or is it just a passage of time thing that it's gradually revealing the splendor of the night sky as the stage proceeds? It IS the longest stage in the game, after all. Maybe it took Kirby a whole afternoon to traverse it?

The secret door in front of the moon that I never knew existed until Kirby's Adventure forced me to know it was there and thus need to revisit it in every game. It IS a fair bit more interesting in this game, because the powerups are falling alongside Kirby. Fun fact, if you're not actually falling, you won't see any of this, because obviously they're falling way ahead of you... although they're actually spawned as you near their "starting locations" on your way down... presumably just below the bottom edge, but at a slower terminal velocity than Kirby's... somehow. If you actually take the trouble to fly back up to the top and descend again, you can try your luck at collecting the goodies you missed. All in all, it's a pretty neat set piece.

In general, Kracko's thing seems to be all about putting on a good show... but not necessarily always a good fight, since he's got the razzle, dazzle, shock, and awe all going for him... except he always seems to leave some parts of the screen he just can't reach. You can see here that I was trying to bait him into using his charge attack, which can feel the most alarming and dangerous until you realize that he just won't do it if he doesn't stand a chance of hitting you, making for a really awkwardly standoffish and simplistic battle.

Oh well, we know that he's always adding more stuff to his repertoire, and he'll always be one of those goofy cool crazy things that almost no Kirby game would be complete without. I salute you, freaky inexplicable eyeball spiked cloud thing!

Besides, even if he's not really perfectly capable of controlling the space around him (most of the time), he's still a fairly advanced boss and WILL chew you up like nobody's business in any of his appearances if you're not already wise to his act.

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I have a license to use Nintendo’s content in this video through the Nintendo Creators Program. This video is not sponsored or endorsed by Nintendo, but any advertising revenue from this video will be shared with Nintendo.

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