Kirby's Star Stacker is a 1997 puzzle video game developed by HAL Laboratory for the Game Boy. This game is Kirby's first puzzle game that is not a clone of an existing title.

It received a remake for the Super Famicom in Japan under the name Kirby no Kirakira Kizzu (roughly translated to Kirby's Sparkling Kids). The English version of the Game Boy Kirby's Star Stacker is also known by the same name.

Kirby Star Stacker is similar in many respects to other puzzle games that were around at the time of its release, most notably, Dr. Mario and Tetris The goal of the game is to earn as many stars possible by matching pairs blocks, (also referred to as friends in-game) that fall from the top of the play area. There are three types of blocks, all based on Kirby's friends from Kirby's Dream Land 2: Rick the hamster, Coo the owl, and Kine the fish. Stars are scored by sandwiching the stars between two matching blocks. When stars are scored, they disappear from the play area along with the pair of blocks enclosing them. The game is lost when the falling blocks reach the top of the play area, so it is critical to eliminate as many blocks as possible by scoring stars.

Gameplay modes

There are four game modes in Star Stacker.

• Round Clear - this is the main game, split into five difficulty modes (Normal, Hard, Very Hard, Super Hard, and Insane), each with a certain number of rounds. Rounds are cleared by eliminating a set number of stars. Each stage takes on a theme, such as forests or the galaxy. When each round is cleared, the player is rewarded with special artwork using the themes of each stage.

• VS - the Multiplayer mode.

• Challenge - an endless mode. The object is to eliminate as many stars as possible before the stack of blocks reaches the top of the screen; a hand raises up the set of blocks, introducing a new row. Like Round Clear, in game artwork is awarded depending on the amount of stars collected, often encouraging the player to try harder next time (until the final picture is received).

• Time Attack - eliminate as many stars as possible in 3 minutes.

There is a high score table for the Challenge and Time Attack modes, showing the top three scores for each mode.