Kirby's Adventure (NES)

Here you go, I'm finally taking a look at one of the Kirby games for you and... whoa, this came out in 1993? That's incredibly late for a NES game, especially when it's the console début of one of Nintendo's star characters. I thought they stopped inventing new IPs in 1986.

Kirby's Adventure is really the second game in the series though, as he first showed up a year earlier in Kirby's Dream Land on the Game Boy. Like the Incredible Hulk, Kirby started out grey and switched to his iconic hue in his second appearance. I was asked to skip the handheld original and play the NES game specifically, as it introduces the power stealing gimmick that became Kirby's signature skill. Makes sense to me, plus it doesn't hurt that it'll be in colour so I'll get prettier screenshots out of it.

The game starts with a guide on how to draw Kirby! That's awesome. Sure they kind of get bored after the drawing the mouth and end up skipping over most of the details, but you can only keep a player from their platforming for so long before they lose their patience.

This is supposed to look like a true circle by the way. The NES video output is stretched wider on TVs, but I prefer to keep my pixels sharp so my screenshots are all slightly too thin. Blame Nintendo not me, it's their weird system!

So life was shattered... because people slept one night without having a dream? Well I suppose they do live in Dream Land, so who even knows what a lack of REM sleep could do to them. It'd explain why Kirby can't stop eating things at least.

The King was swimming around in their magical dream water? Ewwwww. I hope that stuff's got chlorine in.

Plus if that wasn't bad enough, he's also stolen the Star Rod that fuels the Dream Spring, snapped it into pieces, and then given the pieces to his friends. Kirby really needs to tighten up security here in future. Or at least put a sign up saying "This Star Rod fuels the dreams of everyone here. Please do not steal or destroy."

Though it won't matter much unless we can get all of the pieces back here. Plus we should probably buy some duct tape while we're out.

Oh, well that explains the power stealing mechanic pretty clearly. Suck 'em up and then swallow them alive and you'll absorb their powers. In this case that power is 'having a sword'.

See, you don't need long detailed tutorials when you can demonstrate game mechanics with cleverness and good level design! Though the designers had the sense to throw an optional tutorial in anyway.

So this is Level 1 then. Kind of small isn't it? It's only got the one stage in it.

I miss all those NES games with dessert themed levels. I want to go to cake mountain, not vegetable valley! Though it seems like it's door #1 or nothing.


LEVEL 1-1.

Whoa, there's not many platformers that let you fly indefinitely. Mostly because it tends to take all of the platforming out of them, but I'll see how this works out. I've already hit my maximum altitude, but that's fine as it puts me in a good place to spy on the first enemy in the game and his energy attack.

He doesn't really just stand there in game by the way. He did one attack, took a few steps forward, tried again, and then slowly walked away off screen. But when I came back to this spot he had reappeared right back where he started again. Seems that the enemies respawn in this, but only when I'm not looking. Suits me though: this means I've been given a second chance to breathe him in and steal his power.

Pressing Start brings up a little bit of useless info for the power I just acquired. The energy beam is an easy weapon to use apparently, which is nice I guess.

I like how they've thrown in a picture of big Kirby teaching his little Kirblings how to draw a Kirby. Or I suppose it could be a flashback to Kirby's school days, when the other students would sleep through art class. Joke's on Kirby though, as sleeping gets you A grades in Dream World.

Why is this game so obsessed with trying to get players drawing the guy anyway? This info screen just keeps raising further questions!

Hey this IS an easy weapon to use! I simply depress the attack button and everything in front of me within range of my cutting beam dies in an instant with just a single hit. And this is a cute game for young kids? I don't even know why everyone here's trying to kill poor Kirby, he's only trying to get them their dreams back!

Using an stolen ability does have one pretty big drawback though: it takes over my attack button so I can't suck enemies in any more. But I can always drop the power it if that becomes an issue.

Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land (GBA)

Here's an interesting fact: in 2002 the game got a remake for the GBA called Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land (not to be confused with Kirby: Nightmare on Elm's Street), and it looks like this! They took his awesome BEAM card art away and stuck a pair of pants on his head instead!

I'm kind of torn on the updated visuals. On the one hand the sprites look excellent and the background art isn't technically bad, but it doesn't have nearly as much charm as the original game's abstract setting. Kirby's Adventure is a bloody good looking NES game.

Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land (GBA)

Also the ability hint screens on the GBA game look like this now. BEAM IT!

I will mate, I'll beam everything. I'm basically unstoppable now.

Ow. Didn't see that coming.

HEY! He just knocked my beam ability right out of me with a single hit! I've got five hitpoints left (and a second or so of post traumatic invulnerability), but my stolen skill is bouncing away in the form of a star!

I tried to chase it down, but every time I stopped to suck it back in it evaded me and finally popped. So I went back to the guy that toasted me and ate him to steal his fire power instead. Didn't give me any health back though sadly.

Yay, I made it to the 7th floor and got my no-prize! In my defence I totally wasn't ready for it. Plus I don't even know what I'm meant to be doing here. I guess I have to press 'A' when the platform is at its lowest to get the most height.

Okay I've got to remember that from now on: sparkly star doors lead to springboard bonus stage.

And springboard bonus stage leads back to the world map.

This door now belongs to Kirby! Staking my territory has blasted away the surrounding blocks, revealing two more doors, which means now I have a couple of options. Though I'm obviously going to check out the bonus door first, obviously.


BONUS STAGE: CRANE FEVER.

Oh cool, a crane minigame.

I wasted my first credit trying to figure out the controls (it turns out that I have to hold 'A' to move the crane across to the toy I want, not just tap it), but I managed to pick up the bigger Kirby with my final go. Then the damn crane went and dropped him again on the way back. Bonus denied.

They wouldn't let me back in the door after that.

Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land (GBA)

Meanwhile, on the Game Boy Advance remake, I found that the door led to a game of 'smack the bomb with a frying pan' with some of Kirby's friends. The ball on the left is standing in for a yellow Kirby who got caught holding the bomb when it blew and was disqualified. Also destroyed.

These are truly uncivilised times in Dream Land.


LEVEL 1-2.

Uh, don't mind me guys, seems like I'm just passing through. Man the maps are crazy short in this and I'm not just talking about that interlude just then. Seems like stages are going to be built from connected areas just a few screens across each, so I'm jumping somewhere new every 30 seconds or so.

And this time I've jumped into the Weird Wobbling Cloud Zone.

Hey, it's a bit early for a boss fight isn't it? This clown keeps hopping around and throwing bombs at me, which is something I really wish clowns wouldn't do, and the screen doesn't want to scroll any further until he's dead.

I tried hitting him with my fire power, but that was knocked out of me almost immediately so now I'm using a new trick. Kirby hovers around by sucking up air you see, and that air can be expelled as a close range projectile attack capable of killing enemies in a single hit!

It's not working on him at all though, so I'll need a new plan.

Kirby's Dream Land (Game Boy)

Oh of course, I can just suck his bombs up and spit them back at him. This also has the helpful side effect of getting rid of the bombs before they hit me!

WAIT, this is Kirby's Dream Land!

I mean this boss fight is entirely ripped straight from the start of Kirby's Dream Land, even down to the sprites. Kirby's Adventure may have introduced skill copying, but even in his first appearance Kirby was capable of 'pulling a Yoshi', sucking up items and enemies to spit out as a projectile (or to leave them to dissolve in his powerful digestive acids).

Well the bomb clown wasn't all that much of a threat after I stopped being bad at games, but then I went and ran straight into a micro-clown on the first stretch of the next part of the stage and threw away my final hit point. My first failure.

I was worried that I'd have to fight the mid-boss all over again, but nope I just respawned back at the start of this area with all my health back. I've still lost 10 whole seconds of progress though.

Oh c'mon, my fire attack is clearly hitting that star block! Seems that if I want to get the Maxim Tomato up there I'll have to drop my fire attack, suck up the star block, then quickly rush over suck my fire power back up again. The trouble with this is that I'll likely do something dumb like accidentally float for a second, and then when I go to open my mouth to suck it back up I'll spit out air instead and destroy it.

Agh crap I was too slow and I lost it! I knew this would happen. The really dumb thing is... the Maxim Tomato is just a full health pick up and I already have max hit points. I just couldn't bear to leave it there.


LEVEL 1-3.

Well that was plainly bullshit. I pop my head out of a doorway and immediately get incinerated by an enemy, while his monkey laughs at me! It's hard to get annoyed though, as it feels more like an accident rather than a deliberate level design choice (even though it seems to happen every time I leave that door).

Oh, that's another thing I've noticed: I can backtrack through the doors to return to previous areas. There doesn't seem to be much point to it (this is way more Mario than it is Metroid), but it's nice to have the option.


LATER, BACK ON THE LEVEL MAP.

This new door on the level map brings me to a sword museum huh? Seems that I can return here and collect the sword power as often as I like now, which is good because I'm not great at holding onto powers. Making progress hasn't been all that challenging so far, but it only takes a single hit to lose something useful along the way.


LEVEL 1-4.

Another mid-boss? I haven't even made it past the first world yet!

Well I could go over there and hit him with the sword, but it seems like that'd just be making it harder on myself. Powers are great, but when every boss fight comes down to them throwing stuff at me, I might as well give up my skill and throw their crap right back at them instead.


SOON.

Hey that's not a number. Seems like I'll have a proper boss fight on my hands if I go through this door, but it's not like I have a choice as that other door marked with a star up there is all boarded up; its secrets concealed from me.


LEVEL 1 BOSS FIGHT - WHISPY WOODS.

Oh I'm fighting a creepy tree with a face on it? I figured I'd be fighting King Dedede himself seeing as that it was his head above the door. I guess the tree is one of his those close friends of his mentioned in the intro who took the Star Rod pieces, though how Kirby knows this is currently unclear. Perhaps he's beating up all of Dedede's known associates in turn, or maybe the King ratted the tree out during his swim in the intro, you know what villains are like.

'You'll never stop me Kirby, I've broken up the Star Rod and split the pieces between my closest allies! Here, let me give you their names and addresses.'

Aha, my strategy of sucking up his falling apples and spitting them back in his face eventually worked!

Wait, Kirby had the power to summon two duplicates at any time, but saved it until after the life or death boss fight so that he'd have some backup for his dance routine? That's Kirby all over really: 'I have brought with me the power to turn into a living fireball of incredible destructive power... so give me a second to throw that away so I can beat with your own apples until you cry'.

Also I don't know why but this Snoop Dogg track suddenly jumped into my head and made itself at home: youtube link. Holy shit, that video's from 2006? Really? How can it be eight years old, that makes no sense.

Speaking of things that make no sense, here's the prologue for level 2 showing Kirby taking time out to dream about all the food he could be eating... until some of the food wakes him up with a imaginary mallet to the head. How does that even work?

I mean, the Star Rod has been taken from the Dream Spring, so people can't have dreams any more. That's the whole point of the game! Am I somehow expected to believe that just holding a fragment of Star Rod he took from a tree is enough to let him dream again? This interlude is ruining my immersion!

But I think I'll keep playing just a little longer. I'll stick with the game until the end of level 2, or until I run out of lives, whatever happens sooner.


BONUS STAGE: EGG CATCHER.

Anyway I have travelled to a new level map on Ice Cream Island, with a new set of doors, and a brand new bonus stage.

The rules are simple: I open his mouth when eggs are falling into it, I close it when bombs are falling. Eggs good, bombs bad. King Dedede himself has volunteered to be the egg-thrower and the minigame takes place in Dream Land's premier boxing venue.

Sadly I only made it to 12 eggs before exploding, and crawled away with just 1000 points to add to my score. Huh, I have a score in this game? But... why?


LEVEL 2-3.

It won't let me pull the camera down by ducking, so this is pretty much a blind jump. Kirby can survive a fall just fine and the game hasn't bothered with spikes so far, but if I land on an enemy it's going to hurt me just as much as it hurts them. I think Kirby should find out where the Mario Bros get their stomping boots from and see if he can get himself a pair, because I keep forgetting that I can't jump on enemies.

And Kirby falls right off the screen and dies. One life down. Turns out that I can't scroll the screen down because there's nothing down there; this is the bottom of the map. You can tell how rare bottomless pits are so far though, as the thought didn't even cross my mind.

When Kirby's arch-rival Meta Knight showed up on this stage I figured that this would be another 'catch the thing and throw it back' boss fight, but then he sent his army after me instead! Now I'm trapped on this tiny screen dodging spiky balls and forks arcing down from the top of the screen. The enemy boss life bar is still on screen though, so it seems like I've just got to keep killing them until they stop coming back.

Man I think they're actually going to make me work for this for once. The game's easier than the average NES game for sure, but it's not always a cakewalk.


LATER, IN THE ARENA.

I've unlocked an arena! Now I can go bother the ice-block miniboss again and steal his freeze power (plus a free Maxim Tomato) whenever I'm hanging around on the level map.

Oh also it turns out that I was wrong earlier when I said that powers were crap against bosses. Laser is awesome, I'm destroying this poor guy from across the screen here. Though I have to admit that this is one thing that the GBA game does objectively better than the NES original...

Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land (GBA)

...because the GBA game gives him a lil' visor he pulls over his eyes to fire off each shot! Oh also, the laser is handy for ricochet shots off diagonal floor tiles. I just sent a laser bolt rebounding into those bomb tiles on the ceiling so that it blows up the weak block and drops a health bottle onto my head. I don't actually need the health, I have full hit points, it's just... I like collecting pick ups alright?

Laser might be my favourite skill, but it's not quite my favourite skill card. Not when there's cards like this to find:

Lungs powerful enough to suck Donkey Kong right into his mouth combined with a complete lack of singing talent make Kirby the last person you ever want to see anywhere near a microphone.	They could have easily shown Kirby draining the heat out of someone or shattering a frozen foe, but nope they decided to draw him chilling out on an iceberg with a penguin. And that's why this card is awesome.	Uh...?

Oh damn, I finally made it up to the top of the bonus room this time! I've failed to fling myself up on that platform so many times now, at the end of so many stages, that I'd pretty much given up hope. And the pink bloke in the UFO drops down a 1UP.


LEVEL 2 BOSS FIGHT - PAINT ROLLER.

Now it's down to just me and this roller skating painter in front of the world's worst jigsaw puzzle. He has the power to manifest any object he can possibly imagine into reality as a weapon against me and I have the power to suck, so it's been a bit of a struggle so far. Actually I can suck up and spit back anything he can illustrate, so the biggest problem I'm having here is that they've barely given me any space to get out of his way when he charges toward his next canvas. I'm genuinely struggling to avoid getting hit here.

I'm starting to wish that I'd gone back to the museum and picked up a laser before the fight. I can backtrack to any level and stage I've visited at any time (aside from the boss fights), so it's very possible for me to choose my weapon.


EVENTUALLY.

Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land (GBA)

Victory! There, you can have the GBA dance this time for the sake of variety.

I'm still not a fan of those backgrounds, though I have to admit that the sprites do read really well against this one.

Damn those bomb clowns!

Well that's it, I've played my two levels. I'm done with it now. I'm turning it off. It's all over. Finished with.


CONCLUSION

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Kirby's Adventure is a tiny, tightly packed container full of joy. I didn't find it to be the most addictive or interesting NES platformer I've ever played, but there's a good chance it was the least frustrating.

It's very much a post Super Mario World game, more interested in keeping the player involved until the end than kicking them out after a few failures, and it even autosaves after every level! Though it's also a bit on the easy side, as it throws out lives like crazy in the bonus rounds and gives you checkpoints at the start of each tiny area, so I expect that a halfway skilled player could blast through the whole game in about two hours or so on their first try.

But on the other hand it encourages returning to earlier levels to look for secrets, so finishing the story doesn't necessarily mean you're done with the game. By the end you'd have a whole seven worlds worth of levels unlocked that you could replay as much as you like with any power you can hold onto long enough to bring in with you, and you may even want to!

It says a lot about how good some programmers were getting with the Game Boy hardware by 1992 that HAL Laboratory were able to basically port the same gameplay (and boss fights by the look of it) from Kirby's Dream World straight over to the decade old NES the following year and end up with a game with better gameplay and graphics than 90% of the console's massive library. It's also very easy to believe that it's by the same designer who'd later create the Super Smash Bros. series, as there's a kind of a similar feel to them. Masahiro Sakurai apparently knows his shit.

At the least I'm absolutely certain that Kirby's Adventure isn't crap.

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You there, the poor fool who came here expecting a few words about a Kirby game and ended up scrolling past a whole essay, what do YOU feel about Kirby's Adventure, or Super Adventures for that matter? I invite you to select some of your more carefully considered opinions, add a sprinkling of wit, and then shove them into the comment box below.