Anyone picked up The Legendary Starfy yet?  It's kind of humbling to finally get to play a Starfy title in English, and from my first few levels of play, there is some moderate enjoyment to be had.  The "marine platforming" can best be described as Kirby-esque in terms of basic gameplay, but with an aquatic spin.  You maneuver slower on land than you would in your natural habitat, save for the power-up suits you can attain.  It's been a breezy adventure so far, very lenient on the difficulty level (think Super Princess Peach's flow of ease), and boasting a user-friendly Save and Quick Save/Suspend feature.  There are, however, plenty of in-level diversions and side missions that pop up, which keeps thing fresh and interesting.

Starfy himself is simply adorable, and while there's clearly a history with these characters, the game does a good job at allowing you to get to know them WITHOUT having to play the older titles in the series.  Characterization is strong, almost to the point of being a fault; comparative to other games in the genre, there's a dearth of text and dialogue exchanges here.  And while the localization itself is excellent, the sheer amount of it can be a bit of a deterrent when all you really want to do is PLAY the damned game.

Verdict's still out as to whether or not this will have the longevity of previous Nintendo platforming classics, but there's no denying the unabashed charm on display here.  The graphics are bright and vibrant, the animation terrific, and the music, though nothing strikingly memorable, accompanies the easy-going pace perfectly.

I remember people fellating the GBA import way back on Gamefaqs and it was enough to make me take an interest, but the lack of a reliable importer around my parts stymied my efforts.

I'd like to try the DS one, but I am DS-less at the moment.

Most of what I've heard indicates that, whatever your opinion on the first three, four and five on DS (with the recent localization being the fifth) are the worst in the series.

I played through the fourth in Japanese, and I'm confident in saying it is not a good game, even taking into account that it's for kids. It also desperately suffered from the Super Princess Peach (which has a lot of the same development team, I'm pretty sure) phenomena of all of the music being way too short and only about 25% of it even being enjoyable to listen to.

I've played a bunch of the first Starfy and found it rather unmemorable... if this one is supposed to be worse than the GBA games I think I'll give it a pass.

I finished the first world, and I like it so far, but I'm hoping future worlds have greater variety as every level within the first world felt pretty much the same.  Starfy's charm, however, is great.

I'll be grabbing this one sooner or later.  My wife really wants to get it!