Stone

"Look cool, be invincible, and slide down slopes! You can turn into various things and pound down pegs. You can even do some curling with water or ice or float above your friends and then drop on them! Who knows what sort of stone sculptures you'll see?"

- Flavor Text

Stone is one of Kirby's Copy Abilities, debuting in Kirby's Adventure.

General Information
Stone is almost entirely a defensive ability—unless Kirby happens to use it above a foe's head. However, in Kirby's Return to Dream Land, Stone gets a move called Stone Uppercut, which gives another way to use the power for offense. Stone is an easy way to beat bosses with minimal damage by simply dropping over the boss's head and staying in stone form until the boss moves away. It can also avoid devastating full-screen attacks, like Marx's black hole. The hat looks somewhat like a samurai helmet with a red plume on the top and a guard on the back, with a star on the forehead piece.

The Stone hat originally had the same design as the Ninja hat with different colors, but Kirby wears a different one as of Kirby's Return to Dream Land. It has a rocky appearance similar to Ice's. A similar brown hat was also intended for the unreleased Kirby GCN.

Stone is a Mode for Robobot Armor in Kirby: Planet Robobot.

Super Smash Bros. series
In the Super Smash Bros series, Stone is Kirby's down special attack. He can only turn into his distinct rock form in Super Smash Bros., but in Super Smash Bros. Melee, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, the ability acts more like its Kirby Super Star variant, turning Kirby into a variety of heavy objects. These include his normal Stone form, a 100t Weight, a garbage block from Panel de Pon (in the floral style associated with the character Lip), a spiked ball, and a Thwomp from the Super Mario series.

In Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, Kirby can change his stone using custom moves. He can now also use Grounding Stone or Meteor Stone. Grounding Stone allows Kirby to bury opponents that he lands on, but it takes longer for him to transform. Meteor Stone gives a meteor effect to opponents hit by the attack, but it takes longer to transform out of.

Like in Kirby's own games, he's still invulnerable to attacks (except grapples and throws) regardless of what he turns into. The ability can be used to attack foes from above, which is the most frequently used form of this attack. The Stone also slides down slopes, so care needs to be taken when using the move near slopes. Also in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the attack can be broken, as anything damaging enough to do at least 30% damage, despite inflicting no damage, can force him out of stone form with full knockback.

Kirby's Dream Course
With the ability to instantly halt Kirby's movement on the ground or in the air, Stone is an extremely useful Copy Ability in Kirby's Dream Course.If the player activates it with good timing, it can be used to set up an ideal shot from any spot, rescue Kirby from rolling off the course or into a hazard, or even to drop straight down into a hole from above (which makes a unique "clunk" sound). However, it is typically not kept for long, since defeating an enemy with a different Copy Ability will always immediately replace it. Unlike with Needle, Kirby will not hang onto inclines in Stone form; rather, he will slowly slide down them without any sideways movement. A few holes are designed around this behavior.

Kirby: Right Back at Ya!
In the anime, Kirby keeps the traditional Stone hat from Kirby Super Star, but his skin turns stone-gray instead of brown. Surprisingly, the ability works more like the one from Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, specifically the Double Stone mix, allowing Kirby to turn into a giant, pink stone statue of himself which can walk and jump, albeit very slowly.

Stone Kirby relies on his sheer bulk to crush enemies. In the transformation sequence, Kirby's skin changes to gray. A flash of light forms his hat and he puts it on.

Related Quotes
"Release your rage with rocky punches! Earth-shaking Rock Crusher!"

- In-game description for the Stone Mode of Robobot Armor

"Turn into a stone and become invincible!"

- Kirby Battle Royale - Kirby's 25th Anniversary Copy Ability Poll

"The Stone ability can access Friend Abilities from a friend's ice or water effects."

- Friend Abilities for Stone:

In Other Languages
The Stone ability's name is largely consistent throughout all other languages, with only the French name having a different meaning. Its Japanese name is ストーン (Sutōn), meaning Stone. Its German name, Stein, also means Stone, and so does its Spanish name, Piedra. However, instead of meaning Stone, the French name, Rocher, means Rock. The Italian name, Pietra, means Stone, and the Chinese name, 石块 (Shí kuài), also means Stone.

Trivia

 * In Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land, this ability still turned Kirby brown, even in multiplayer. This was removed in later games to prevent confusion, eliminating Kirby's color-changing feature.
 * Oddly, in Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land, the icon was a Waddle Dee sitting on Transformed Stone Kirby. In Kirby & The Amazing Mirror, it was Stone Kirby landing on a Waddle Dee. It was probably changed because the function of the ability went from a plain block to the round stone of most games.
 * This also makes it the only ability in Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land to get a different icon in Kirby & The Amazing Mirror.
 * In the credits of Revenge of the King and the original Kirby Super Star’s Milky Way Wishes credits, the Mario statue is seen just before the credits finish. A real, 'flesh' Mario is seen at the end of Kirby Super Star's credits, however.
 * In Kirby Super Star Ultra, if Kirby happens to morph into his Macho Statue form and he's on a slope, the statue will appear to actually be posing. When sliding, this form automatically changes to include different poses (two in Kirby Super Star) depending on how steep the hill is.
 * In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Kirby's down 1 move is the stone transform. Some of the original transformations make a reappearance in this form.
 * Until Kirby's Return to Dream Land, Stone Kirby's hat was the same as Ninja Kirby's hat, just a different color. This was likely intended to evoke many other pop-cultural depictions of ninja that are able to instantly substitute themselves with common objects, such as rocks or logs, to conceal themselves and avoid attacks. (An example of this trope from a Nintendo game is Greninja's Substitute special attack in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U.) The ability's appearance may have been changed out of concern that this connection was confusing or unclear to non-Japanese audiences, and/or to give the Stone ability a thematically wider variety of attacks.
 * The Thwomp that Kirby can transform into in Super Smash Bros. Melee is based on Thwomp's design from Super Mario 64. The Stone's design was not updated for Super Smash Bros. Brawl, despite the fact that Thwomp's design had drastically changed several years before the game's release. The Stone's design was later updated in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U to reflect Thwomp's appearance in New Super Mario Bros. U.
 * Stone is one of three abilities that has a voluntary form that makes the player invulnerable from nearly all damage; the other two are Leaf, with its guard, and Archer, with its crouch.
 * In the 2.0.0 update for Kirby Star Allies, Stone was given three new transformations based on the first wave of downloadable Dream Friends.