Listen to the Rain

Happy 25th anniversary, Kirby!

I ordered a bon voyage Kirby plush since they were available for the anniversary, and schoolpsychnerd and I started watching the Kirby anime, but of course, Kirby started out as a video game character. What better way to celebrate his existence than by playing the games that birthed him? I originally thought about playing Kirby's Adventure, the first Kirby game I ever played and the one that cemented my love for the series, but that's a several-hour commitment if I want to find all the secrets and unlock every part of the map. Kirby's Dream Land is bite-sized. I finished it in an hour and a half and it was fantastic.

Strange, coming primarily from later games, but fantastic.


The most surprising part of Kirby's Dream Land for me is that Kirby's signature ability, the power to eat enemies and absorb their powers, isn't in this game. Kirby can fly and shoot puffs of air at enemies, and he can eat enemies and spit them out as star bullets, but otherwise one enemy is the same as another. No wonder that Kirby's Adventure was such a milestone Kirby game, since it's the game that introduced copy. Kirby's Dream Land still has Waddle Doo and Sir Kibble, plus enemies like Cappy that don't have copy abilities even in other Kirby games, but there are also a ton of enemies that I've never seen before. Silly ghosts and weird oysters, which never show up again. Maybe when they introduced the copy ability, they got rid of most of the enemies that didn't have any obvious characteristics that could be used for copying?

The lack of copy means that the game play is pretty simplistic. Since Kirby's toolset is comprised of Eat, Shoot Air/Star Bullets At, or Fly Over, the enemies don't have any kind of complex conditions necessary for their demise. Scarfy, the dog that gets angry if Kirby tries to eat it, shows up, but it can easily be killed by shooting air at it and I didn't even realize that they were more dangerous until I deliberately stopped and tried to eat one. There's no way to manipulate the environment, so the level design in Kirby's Adventure, where some levels require certain powerups to find exits, simply doesn't exist. Kirby goes forward, eats everything in his way, and then fights the boss and moves on to the next level. It was a bit jarring, but once I stopped trying to eat enemies to see what powers they contained, it was a meditative experience in the way that simple games often are. Just run, jump, and fight, with no mind to get in the way. Much like Kirby, really.


It's pretty well-known now that Kirby resulted from a placeholder put into the game when the main character hadn't been finalized yet, but eventually the placeholder became the final appearance. Maybe that's why Kirby seems more serious and hardcore in this game. I mean, by now the fact that Kirby Is Angry In America is an established fact, but there's just not that much lightness to him here other than being a pink puff. Even in the end-of-level dances, Kirby never smiles. He always has the same determined expression as he fights his way through the four levels and on to the end to fight King DeDeDe.

Then again, maybe it's just because it's a Game Boy game. I also noticed that Kirby doesn't have a swimming animation, he just kind of runs through the water.

Other than the animation strangeness, the game looks quite good. I need to realize that most Game Boy games are not Super Mario Land, and that this kind of detail is the default, but right now I don't and I still find it impressive. The third stage, Float Islands, was my favorite with its palm trees and dark cave systems, but the fluffy Bubbly Clouds was quite memorable too. Kirby may be more serious here, but the levels are still calming and cute, filled with blobby enemies that mostly seem to be doing their own thing and not attacking Kirby at all. I can see where impressions of Kirby as a whirling engine of destruction come from. Those Broom Hatters just wanted to keep things clean.


The Kirby games are generally pretty easy, but usually there's a new game plus mode that make the games harder for people who want more of a challenge. That started with Kirby's Adventure, but Kirby's Dream Land has the best implementation of that gameplay mode--all it takes is a code. Pressing Up + Select + A on the title screen enables EXTRA GAME, where all enemies do double damage so Kirby can only take three hits, not six. I beat the game easily without ever dying, but as my health in the above picture shows, if I had taken double damage there are a couple boss fights that I probably wouldn't have beaten.

I didn't play, though. I don't come to Kirby games for a hardcore platforming challenge. I come to Kirby games for the cuteness, and so there's nothing that a harder game adds for me.


Just recently, I was listening to an old episode of Nintendo Voice Chat, where Peer Schneider, one of the yonkoma gaijin, mentioned that he wasn't the biggest fan of Kirby games because they were too easy. And while I wouldn't include the superlative, I agree. Kirby games are really easy, and that's why I like them.

There's a comic panel from the Powerpuff Girls that schoolpsychnerd likes, about how Bubbles just wants to like nice things and be happy and that's not worthy of ridicule. And she's right. I can appreciate difficulty as a design paradigm, like with Super Meat Boy or Dark Souls, but "git gûd" isn't a useful philosophy. There's nothing inherently more moral in a game that requires hours of practice to master. Dark Souls is a great game, but if you want to be morally enriched through mastery, go learn a new language. Sometimes I play games to have fun and be happy, and there's not much better than the Kirby games for that.