Kirby Main Series

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Kirby

Premise: Do you know Kirby? Have you played any of the Kirby games? A lot of people might say "Well yeah, I played Kirby in Super Smash Brothers. He's the one that can fly around and suck people in to steal their power." If I had to make a response to that, I would have to say that is pretty much all the little pink fluff ball is about. But did you know that there has been a release of more than 30 Kirby games? If you counted every single game the lovable squish-ball was in, including the re-releases, you would come to around 75 games in total. I'm sad to say that many of the spin-off games are merely mini-games reskinned with a outer layer of Kirby merchandising. However, for all intents and purposes of this review, I only examined some of the major titles. I am also excluding any recent titles that have been released on the Nintendo Switch.

Kirby Format: The synopsis of every game remains pretty much the same throughout the whole series. Somewhere along the way Nintendo builds a new machine with tons of new gadgets and gizmos, and the developers will find a way to utilize some of those aspects inside the Kirby game. Kirby will have the ability to copy, transform, or use a consistent number of abilities while traversing the usual number of worlds present in Dreamland. The first boss will always be Whispy Woods, a giant tree that will shake loose his fruit in attempt to stop our beloved hero. Completing a level will provide you with a "goal game" where you press the button at just the right time for added bonuses. Contrary to how you might proceed through the whole game, there is a huge chance you will be doing something never-before-seen for the final boss. Once you complete a game, there is usually some alternate way of playing through the whole thing, preferably by using a different character with a whole new subset of abilities. There will be some form of arena, or gauntlet where you run through all the previous bosses. Mini-games will also be present to keep you preoccupied when the main game bores you. Let's not forget the large number of collectibles, secrets, and miscellaneous things to unlock. So without further ado, let's take a look at the series as a whole.

Rating System

1/5 - Skippable, not worth your time; 2/5 - Enjoyable but also annoying in some ways; 3/5 - Fun experience with very little trouble; 4/5 - Great time and quite memorable; 5/5 - Perfect in every way.

(>")> Main Games (11 Total, 2 Remakes) <("<)

  • Kirby's Dream Land: Game #1 - Game Boy. August 1, 1992. Rating (1/5). There is very little to this game. You can beat the whole thing in 20 minutes. But there is so much here that forms the basic template of the entire series. It was Nintendo's first attempt in building a new series. You have your core four levels, mid-bosses, bosses, and re-run of all bosses in a gauntlet fashion. Once you finish the game, you are presented with a combination button code that allows you to try again with a new array of enemies. Do that, and a third code will allow you to listen to the iconic soundtrack and modify your total health & starting lives. The game itself has been redone and remastered so many times through the series that it isn't worth troubling yourself in buying the old thing.

  • Kirby's Adventure: Game #2 - Nintendo. May 1, 1993. Rating (3/5). Nintendo decided to expand the series on their first full-running console. Unfortunately neither the US commercial or the JPN commercial really helped sell what Kirby was. By entering a number of different levels, Kirby would encounter various enemies he could inhale, swallow, and use their abilities to traverse a stage distinctly setup for that very specific thing - lasers would reflect off corners, fire would burn fuses, and a hammer would pound down wooden stakes. It only takes 4 hours to beat and completing the game by pressing all the secret buttons simply offers you a chance to replay the game with half your usual health. The music wasn't that great compared to the rest of the series, but did a satisfactory job at mixing things up with different melodies. Let's not forget using the Star Rod to fly around and shoot stars at The Nightmare.

    [Remake] Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land: Game #15 - Game Boy Advance. December 2, 2002. Rating (4/5). The remake made everything just a tad better - the commercial explained what you did, the music was a little more distinct, the graphics were more realistically drawn, you now gain a hat when Kirby absorbed a new ability that is reminiscent to the latest Kirby games at the time, and the story is better represented with more appropriately descriptive text and emotional responses from the characters. Extra Game now gives you the option to replay the game as Meta-Knight. The biggest difference is the added 4-player multiplayer. Because of this, the mini-games have been modified to support it (might mute before playing the link) from the original Crane Fever, Egg Catcher, and Quick Draw to Bomb Rally, Kirby's Air Grind, and Samurai Kirby.

  • Kirby's Dream Land 2: Game #6 - Game Boy. May 1, 1995. Rating (2/5). The primary addition to this game are the three very distinct animal friends that can help you with your venture. Once in control, you gain a secondary full health bar and further modify any gained abilities. Although beatable within 4 Hours, the game is very challenging. Not only did they add weaknesses to using many of the abilities, but the level design can be quite tricky to traverse. There are more areas where you can fall to your doom, winds can push you into obstacles, moving walls can squish you to death, water flow can push you in the wrong direction, and collapsing floorboards can lead you to an early grave. Despite there being only 7 abilities - burning, cutter, ice, needle parasol, spark, stone - there are in reality 28 different attacks when considering what can happen with one of your animal friends (compared to the 25 copied abilities in the previous game). Of course, this is the game with the infamous stage shaped like a woman. Unfortunately, I was not able to fight the true boss on the final level. The challenge to collect the Rainbow Drops proved far too difficult as it involved recruiting an animal with the right ability outside the appropriate stage and keeping both intact until you reach the exact point in an unmarked stage where the shard is kept. Too much work if you ask me.
  • Kirby's Dream Land 3: Game #11 - Super Nintendo. November 27, 1997. Rating (2/5). Kirby has now stepped up to the Super Nintendo and what more can they do but provide a means to have another person join the fray. With a little bit of health and a press of a button, Kirby's "buddy" Gooey pops out of nowhere. The AI is a little weird where he acts like a typical defender who sucks in things and shoots them out at enemies. Though by checking out the manual, I learned that he does have the potential to copy abilities if used by a second player. Everything about the game is more colorful from its pencil artwork to its new soundtrack. You can still die from the screen forcing you into a dead-end. There is the added difficulty of locking certain areas behind marked blocks that require a certain ability to break through. There is one new unique ability, only ever seen in this version of Kirby, called Sweep that can be used in a lot of neat ways. However, there are now 6 animal friends - Rick the Hamster, Coo the Owl, and Kine the Sunfish from Kirby's Dream Land 2 and ChuChu the Octopus, Pitch the Bird, and Nago the Cat - to choose from with a total of 48 possible abilities. There are many opportunities where you will have a chance to choose between multiple animal friends contained in the same room. Like in the previous game, you gain a level once you collect 100 stars located all over the landscape. However, the game is much more challenging. The pace at which Kirby moves is slower than any other game, and animal friends do not have a separate health bar. To reach 100% completion and unlock the final boss fight, Kirby must complete a challenge, a puzzle, or a mind-game within every stage for a Heart Star. This can include not stepping on any of the flowers, picking up all the objects, or choosing the right answer to a quiz. Let's just say that I only had the patience to complete maybe 5 stage challenges in total. Although I do like the fact that the bosses become friendly once you purge the darkness in each level.

  • Kirby Super Star: Game #8 - Super Nintendo. September 20, 1996. Rating (3/5). Kirby's Fun Pak, as known in other regions, decides to change the formula up by giving you a bulletin board full of smaller mini-games. There are some changes made like how your health bar is now converted into an energy bar, enemies have their own energy bar as well, or how the overall view screen is smaller in scope. The music is more "cool" and up-beat. There are a total of 25 abilities with some having alternative maneuvers depending if you are walking, running, or jumping. I had to consult the move list in the start menu for each ability. Unlike Gooey in Kirby's Dream Land 3, you are now able to manipulate and control a direct copy of the enemy you absorb. So if you grabbed the sword ability, for example, then you can choose to summon a sword friend or "toss" the sword ability towards your buddy to transform him into one. The AI can be useful at times and has the ability to infinitely "float" if caught in certain pathing situations, but it is more helpful if a second player took direct control of him. As for the games, Spring Breeze is a colorful remake of Kirby's Dream Land from the Game Boy. Dyna Blade, Revenge of Meta Knight, and Milky Way Wishes are all separate adventures with their own tweaked rule sets. Gourmet Race, Megaton Punch, and Samurai Kirby are three mini-games. The Arena is your standard gauntlet of bosses and The Great Cave Offensive is an adventure where you seek out 60 different treasures underground.

    [Remake] Kirby Super Star Ultra: Game #21 - Nintendo DS. September 22, 2008. Rating (4/5). There are minor tweaks across the board - locking some content, different treasures to collect, adding or removing multiplayer options for certain games, music, graphics, and controls. A few minor bonuses include adding CG animations to story transitions, overhead maps, and completion checks for the treasure game. The biggest change is now having a total of 15 games instead of 9 (as seen here). Most of these are merely added challenges of the original games. Revenge of the King is Kirby's Dream Land "Extra Mode" with a couple of new surprises, Meta Knightmare Ultra let's you play the game as Meta Knight with his own set of special abilities (speed, ally, heal, or bomb), Helper to Hero makes you play as one of your helpers, and The True Arena contains harder boss encounters. Kirby Card Swipe, Kirby on the Draw, and Snack Tracks are the three new mini-games.

  • Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards: Game #13 - Nintendo 64. June 26, 2000. Rating (2/5). During the age of when polygon counts were still low and everyone fell in love with Mario 64, Nintendo took 4 years after the release of the console to come out with a Kirby game. They did some amazing things with this game. Although you are still moving from left to right, they developed a sort of camera 3D-motion where it slants further ahead or generates a sort-of focal point on a boss. There will come points in the campaign where one of your friends will come and help you out of certain situations. It is the only game where they allowed you to combine two abilities by swallowing up a second ability or merging two ability stars together into a new one. You can even meld two of the same ability for greater efficiency! This means that the core 7 abilities (needle instead of parasol when referring to basic ones established in Kirby Dream Land 2) can be used for 35 different possibilities, all of which are completely unique to the rest of the series and wickedly hilarious to see. Unfortunately, the gameplay isn't enough to mask over how much the graphics aged over the years. Multiplayer is only available to the three mini-games outside the main campaign. The worst part was collecting the items. I got 6 out of 81 enemy pages. I obtained 66% of all 74 shards. You need all of them to unlock the true boss ending.
  • Kirby & The Amazing Mirror: Game #18 - Game Boy Advance. October 18, 2004. Rating (2/5). What if, bear with me, we take Kirby's world and make it a Metrovania game. That's what Nintendo decided to do with this game. You can travel left-to-right or right-to-left depending on where you start. There are multiple passages that all lead you to a boss, a secret, or another area. Depending on how you progress, you can wind up defeating level 7 boss before even finding the one at the end of level 3. Oh, and let's make it so you can travel across different levels congruently with your friends in 4-player action. If anytime someone needs assistance, they can call everyone up on the Kirby phone and teleport them to their location. Unfortunately, the AI isn't really tuned to doing what you need done if you don't have any real life friends to help you out. Despite summoning all three of my clones to a boss fight, I sat there stunned when they clumsily ran into the boss over-and-over without even bothering to use their special abilities. They will also meander down random hallways like a teenager walking and texting, just waiting for their pal to give them a call. Although the game is rather brilliant with connecting all the levels together, the design of the overhead maps and music are very basic. I had to use an online source just to find the last remaining shards. Even then, I only managed to unlock 79% of the map in the 10 Hours I played. There are a series of big chests tucked away in portions of the world that will unlock the overhead maps, a different color to use for your gumball hero, or soundtracks. Considering the fact that you are forced down certain passageways without a way to turn back and sometimes wind-up fighting bosses all over again when heading down a wrong way, the game ended up being a major headache to traverse. Still, I admire it for revolutionizing multiplayer and trying something completely different in the Kirby universe.
  • Kirby: Squeak Squad: Game #20 - Nintendo DS. December 4, 2006. Rating (4/5). Kirby Mouse Attack, as it is called in PAL regions, returns to the roots of the series by playing it safe as a simple adventure game. They mix-up the abilities with things like an animal form that digs through dirt, cupid that allows you to fly and shoot arrows, a magic hat that shoots out things, and metal instead of stone. You have the added option of combining 5 unique abilities - fire sword, ice bomb, ice sword, thunder bomb, and thunder sword. If that wasn't enough, there is one super bonus ability that you can unlock through collecting fragments in the main campaign - Ghost - that allows you to take direct control of any NPC! A new feature, exclusive to this game, is the ability to see Kirby's stomach where you can stow away 5 items. These can include any of the treasure chests (up to three per stage), Kirby figures (combining three gives you a 1-Up), stored abilities that can be used when clicked on (or can be combined with other ones for a chance on making a new random ability), stars from normal enemies, and food that restores health (where small ones can be combined into greater ones). The treasure chests are easy to collect and reward some great things - Ability Scrolls that grant each copied ability a new maneuver, Ghost Medal pieces, different colors for your giant pillow with eyes, keys to unlock special stages, a map piece that leads to the room with all the copy abilities, soundtracks, jigsaw puzzle pieces that unlock pictures related to the Kirby universe, and a bunch of other things I can't recall right now. The game also adds new segments during a stage where you must race or even fight against a bunch of mice. As for the music, well, I guess I found it interesting enough. Although I did manage to collect all the chests, running through the whole game again with a timer in "Extra Mode" was not something I wanted to experience. The game also supports a Boss Endurance run and multiplayer options through its three mini-games - Smash Ride, Speedy Teatime, and Treasure Shot. I very much recommend this game.
  • Kirby's Return to Dream Land: Game #24 - Nintendo Wii. October 24, 2011. Rating (3/5). Now we can't have a game on the Wii without 4-player action. While the main character takes control of Kirby, friends can join in and use Meta Knight with the sword and wing abilities, King Dedede with the hammer ability, Bandana Waddle Dee with the spear ability, or simply clone another different colored Kirby. The story is as developed as any other Kirby game, except this time the plot device plays out as the central hub for all auxiliary activity. You can unlock chambers that provide you with a set number of abilities, the Ninja Dojo and Scope Shot mini-games, and 7 challenge rooms that test your usefulness with a certain ability (or items for the final room). Unlike how previous editions required 100% completion to unlock "Extra Mode" at the end of the game, Kirby's Return to Dream Land allows you to unlock the mode with at least 70% completion (or 55 out of 120 energy spheres). This time the challenge is a lot flashier by not just cutting half your health bar but also modifying boss fights, timings in dimensional rifts, and adding more enemies. Exclusive to this version of the game, there are five super abilities that greatly enhance your typical abilities to the extent of automatically destroying everything on the screen: Flare Beam, Grand Hammer, Monster Flame, Snow Bowl, and Ultra Sword. There are also the introduction of several new items: Stomper Boot that steps over spikes, Invisibility Stone for passing through glass surfaces, Crackler that shoots out bombs, Prism Shield that creates a barrier out the top of a French Horn, candle for lighting up dark stages, Balloon Bomb that explodes after being held for so long, and Keys.
  • Kirby: Triple Deluxe: Game #26 - Nintendo 3DS. May 2, 2014. Rating (3/5). Since the Nintendo DS spin-off games have already tested what it is like to play Kirby with only the stylus, Nintendo decided to go the route of throwing in a bunch of gimmicks that "fly at you" with the new 3-Dimensional Engine with their latest machine. So you will have various things being thrown at the screen, including our lovable beanbag chair. This works extremely well with how you phase between each layer between the foreground and the background. They also incorporated a ton of interesting mechanics like watching a mirror placed behind your character for any hidden objects. Every now and then you will have a chance to receive a Miracle Fruit that provides you with Hypernova - an ability that allows you to suck everything on the screen with no time limit other than losing it at the end of the stage. There are also some... interesting additions to your ability roster like circus and bell. There will be occasions Bandana Waddle Dee will toss you a saveable health item (that can be upgraded if you receive a StreetPass from another owner of the game). "Extra Mode" simply allows you to replay the whole game as DeDeDe. Mini-games include multiplayer action in a Super Smash Brothers style Kirby Fighters, DeDeDe Drum Dash, and both Arena & True Arena. The one gimmick that didn't stand out so well for me was the number of things that required you to tilt your handheld device. These included riding a gondola, pouring a giant bowl of water onto plants, or aiming a giant cannon at the distance. As for collecting items, there are a total of 256 really neat keychains you can grab of various things from past Kirby games (as well as current). Sadly, I only managed to get a 50% completion rate, probably because they allowed you to get duplicates of the keychains with the option to buy more in the store using Play Coins. Though I must say that the final boss fight was perhaps the most intriguing fight I ever came across in a Kirby game. It is a good thing the developers let you resume your boss fight after a certain phase whenever you die.
  • Kirby: Planet Robobot: Game #30 - Nintendo 3DS. June 10, 2016. Rating (3/5). A part of me wants to say that this is a carbon copy of Kirby: Triple Deluxe, but there is so much more hidden below the surface. All of the elements of the previous game are in this one, including the fact that the keychains are now replaced with 200 stickers. However, the thing that makes it distinct to any other game in the series is how they added technology to the world. There are cars, machines, cogs, robots, and lasers. You use batteries to start-up the teleportation device. Even the music has a more electronic/mechanical vibe to it. The big thing about this game is the giant robot you jump in. On top of its basic punching form, you can launch mini-robot grenades in bomb mode, fly high in the air with parasol mode, or start up devices with spark mode. Some modes dominate a course like how wheel mode allows you to jump between layers and jet mode allows you to fly through the air. They nearly removed all the things that required you to tilt your device and instead incorporated a new "screwing" technique by rotating your analog stick. The biggest surprise is the transformation during the final boss fight. Don't forget to add your new collected stickers to the side of your giant robot! On top of the 15 robot modes, there are a total of 27 copy abilities, 4 of which that are exclusive to the game: poison, archer, doctor, and ESP. The mini-games include Team Kirby Clash, Meta Knightmare Returns, and Kirby 3D Rumble (as well as Arena and True Arena). I'd also take a second glance at what the amiibos do in this particular game if you happen to own any. The only drawback of the game that I could find, outside of what was listed in the previous game, was that the stage designs (and even the boss designs) tended to repeat themselves in every level with slight adjustments to how you would move about from beginning to end.

 

 

7-16-2021