usually on weekday nights my gf and i will settle down after dinner and put on a tv show that takes little attention to follow while we do other stuff, like she does embroidery and i play video games etc etc. So last night Gossip Girl season five is going and it's like, things are pretty good right now, Blair's about to get married to Prince Louis of Monaco even though she's clearly in love with Chuck still but she can't admit that to herself because of her PTSD and the audience can tell that Louis sucks shit even though nobody else can, meanwhile DAN has also realized that he's in love with Blair which is something I've been saying should happen for the ENTIRE SHOW but they've barely interacted before this season and suddenly became fast friends after years of animosity once the writers realized their character commonalities and insane chemistry, BUT he's gonna just be supportive of her decisions in whatever capacity she needs him because he's acting unselfishly for the first time maybe ever? It's literally the first time I've liked Dan, it's a fucking miracle. EVEN the storyline that is tangentially related to Serena is pretty good right now, even if Serena herself remains an irritating charisma black hole.

All of this is to say that Gossip Girl has never been more riveting, so I was planning to just pop in something breezy to occupy my restless fingers while I enjoyed the soap's rapidly approaching midseason climax, so imagine my surprise when my girlfriend tapped me on the shoulder to say "what's this what's going on," making me realize that i had been sitting at the Kirby's Dream Land Title Screen, bobbing my head back and forth to the music, watching kirby jump around with a smile on my face like a cartoon idiot, enjoying the music coming into my single earbud, for at least a long enough time to miss the fact that Nate's cousin was conspiring to have him assassinated.

This is Kirby's power. It has been here all along. They're so fucking cute dude, and FUN, just a joy to embody and to play at all times. It's infectious. For forty-five minutes I was transported. There's very little like it out there, and possibly nothing better.

Also Lolo's in this game! I had that game for the NES. Played it with my older brother all the time. Love that guy.

It is so weird that Kirby's copy ability wasn't something in the franchise from day 1. I mean, it came into existence pretty soon after Kirby's Dream Land, but the fact that it wasn't something they had in mind from day 1 would feel as surreal as if Mega Man's first game didn't have weapon stealing or you couldn't catch Pokemon in Pokemon Red. The actual game kinda suffers for this in certain respects but also holds up and plays way better than I'd expected as well considering my usual experience with Game Boy games has been less than ideal. Everything here feels very cohesive and understated, a lot of well designed elements at play, all wrapped up with some genuinely fantastic art for the era and system. Despite not having copy abilities yet, it's still pretty fun to control Kirby thanks to his uniquely floaty control scheme and the ability to fly, with a lot of neat little ways to optimise your movement speed and the like, as to never feel sluggish.

I was quite surprised about how easy and short this game was, where in an era where games usually were designed with difficulty conventions from arcade machines, this one was just a quick, comfy and easy completion, only taking about 40 minutes or so. While I definitely think that's on the short side it's kinda made up for by the way that the game is absolutely brimming with personality and creativity, with each individual stage bringing something unique to the table and really pushing the envelope, especially notable for the way that this even goes that extra step and changes genres for a bit, with a section playing out more like a 2D shoot 'em up rather than a platformer. The visuals are also lovely, painting a beautiful, vibrant and quirky world where even these messes of pixels have such distinct personality, making each stage have its own appeal for this alone.

The encounter design is also pretty awesome in a lot of respects, with the variety of enemies making the most of Kirby's limited moveset and requiring a lot of different approaches to actually take out, which is neat. The boss fights are also a ton of fun for the most part and definitely the highlight of the game, going and testing some simple pattern recognition very effectively and always feeling satisfying once you've got it all down and can then flawlessly take them down. The final boss, King Dedede is especially great in this regard and the way he forces you to play more dangerously and aggressively to take him down, always putting you in range of being hit without ever feeling too punishing or unfair, and is just in general, a really neat little boss. The way the hard mode not only makes things do more damage, but alters patterns of certain enemies and bosses also changes up the content enough to warrant that extra playthrough to experience some genuinely nasty moments that still never feel anywhere near as brutal or annoying as you'd expect either.

My main complaint with this is that the level design itself really does nothing for the most part, level often consisting of flat areas with a bunch of enemies and sometimes some more vertical obstacles. It's perfectly serviceable but it feels so lacklustre and makes each stage feel more akin to being a leadup to a boss rather than having much appeal in its own right. Even so, Kirby's Dream Land is a neat little game that manages to get a lot right even without the most iconic part of Kirby, with solid enemies, great bosses and admittedly lame level design that all culminates in a fun time that sets the stage for how cool some of these games would get in the future. Definitely worth a play