I may be a bit biased considering this was one of the first Kirby games I ever played (it was either this or Super Star Ultra), but I love this game.

It's longer than the first game, which I feel ended a bit too soon, and it introduces the copy abilities the series is known for. It's also visually impressive for being an NES game. However, this does come at the cost of performance. I was probably too young to notice when I first played it, but the game tends to chug quite a bit. I heard the lag is fixed in the 3D Classics version, but I haven't played that version myself.

Kirby's Adventure surprised me with how it was able to run this massive colorful and vibrant game onto an NES. It is one hell of a showcase when it comes to the system itself, and what it delivered was a fun and engaging experience at the cost of a smooth frame rate. This is the obvious downside of Kirby's Adventure as the frame rate chugs on certain occasions due to how huge the game is. It's manageable as it doesn't interfere with my enjoyment of the game, but it’s heavily noticeable.

Copy abilities made their debut here as they laid the foundation for future installments. Not all of these abilities are winners, I mean the Light ability exists with its only purpose being to light up dark rooms (exciting I know), but the rest are fun to utilize. Kirby's Adventure remains consequential in the franchise's history and is easily a Top 5 for me when it comes to the NES' library. Check this one out if you haven't.

(This is the 84th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

Less than a year after the Game Boy and overall debut of Kirby with Kirby's Dream Land, Nintendo released Kirby's Adventure on the SNES on March 23, 1993. Oh wait, what? It's an NES game? 2 1/2 years into the SNES' existence? Interesting.

What started as a request to simply port over Kirby's Dream Land to the system turned into something much grander when director Masahiro Sakurai chose to take advantage of the increased storage capacity available on the NES. Why it released on the NES instead of the SNES, I don't know. Some suggest that more people having the NES played a big role, and that it makes the game more accessible to children that way, though I can't comment on that.

They did do it however, and did take over some features of the Game Boy game while adding plenty more. Kirby, just like in Kirby's Dream Land, can inhale enemies and spit them back out, and Kirby can inhale air to fly. The game also remains on the easier side, though criticism about the game's lack of difficulty has been heard by making the game a bit tougher, which I can attest to, having played Kirby's Dream Land just a month or so ago before this. What has changed is that Kirby is now, for the first time, presented in color, and I think it's a fun fact that Shigeru Miyamoto initially thought Kirby would be yellow when Kirby still was only known to people in his monochrome form. What has also changed is that this game is significantly longer than Kirby's debut showing. A first-time playthrough will easily take an average player close to 6-8 hours, if not 10+, if you're on the less skilled side. That's partly because some sections can be a bit more difficult, partly because of a few annoyances with the game's controls we will get to in a bit and partly because the game is pretty long, with 41 levels over 7 worlds. Kirby's Dream Land sported only 5 levels.

The most notable other addition in this game is the "copy abilities" feature. To put it plainly, Kirby has two ways to kill enemies, when he inhales them. Either spit them back out or swallow them. Having come off a recent playthrough of Shin Megami Tensei 1, I can't say I've seen such brutality in that game and Kirby scares me ever since.

In all seriousness though, what swallowing enemies does is give Kirby the enemy's ability, which is a really fun feature. This allows Kirby to, for example, spit fire, wield a sword, roll up into a ball and roll through the map, take an icey form to produce ice cubes or even swallow lethargic enemies to take up their power of ... taking a nap and not doing anything for a couple seconds. I can imagine how limitless the possibilites are with such a feature and having not played any other Kirby game besides the first two, I'm excited to find out. In this game in particular, there appear to be 25 abilites Kirby can copy, though I found that most of the time you have access to about 10 of these in particular. There are multiple enemies carrying these abilities spread through each level, with them getting more and more diverse as you progress through stages, and usually you can pick and choose the ability you like best and progress through almost all areas using those. Sometimes, certain enemies are specifically placed in certain locations where their ability would prove to be most useful, like a wheel enemy near a slide. I found two locations that I don't think I could have progressed without using the enemy's ability placed nearby, but I think otherwise it's optional which one's you choose.

Apart from this feature, what is most impressive about Kirby's Adventure is that they were able to cram it all on the NES. Visually and in terms of gameplay it is one of the most impressive games on the system for sure (and the last NES game I will play as part of this challenge I'm doing, so it's nice to end the NES era on a very positive note). However, this does come with one caveat, which is performance. As retro gamers are well aware, whenever there are too many sprites or too many effects on the screen, the game experiences slowdown, and it happens often enough in this game to become annoying. There is a workaround though, which is playing the Nintendo 3DS version, which fixed all these performance issues. One other possible side-effect is the issues you will experience with the controls. I am not sure if this happened because of the slowdown or not, though I'm pretty sure it's part of the game's design that once you inhale, you are locked from turning Kirby around for a good second, which is an eternity, especially during boss fights. Input seems to also not respond immediately at times, so a lot of boss fights would just become way harder than they should have been because I would fight the controls for most of them. Similarly, whenever you jump down too far, an animation of Kirby falling on his face plays and you once again can't control him for a second, which allows enemies to easily get a hit in while you recover. For a game such as this, this was an odd thing to include, and I can't say I see that sort of jumping penalty a lot, perhaps ever, in these types of platforming games.

The boss fights are enjoyable enough apart from this. Some boss fights one will remember, if you've played Kirby's Dream Land, such as the tree called "Whispy" and, of course, King Dedede, who both use the same attack patterns pretty much. Boss fights happen at the end of each world, but there are several mini bosses in the 5 or 6 levels per world that you have to go through. End of world boss fights definitely feel like a bigger deal though, and are significantly tougher. I wouldn't call them hard at all, I also wouldn't call some of them pieces of cake, mainly because of the aforementioned performance and control issues.

The levels themselves are incredibly varied visually and again, I was just so impressed with how good this game looked on the NES. I'd say it's one of the best looking games on the system for sure. Apart from the main levels, there is an overworld for each world where you can also enter minigames and other small areas, such as one's that offer you a selection of enemies whose abilities you can then take into the main level, which is useful if you died and are left without an ability before a boss fight for example. The art style of the entire game is very appealing, especially to kids, but also to everyone else, as it just presentes itself as a laid back, relaxed, casual experience. Each new world is also introduced through a short little thematically fitting clip of Kirby in that world, which is pretty nice. Finally, I enjoyed the soundtrack but I wouldn't say it's among my favorites on the NES due to the lack of memorable tracks. Vegetable Valley 1 and Butter Building are worth highlighting. My favorite sound-related thing in the entire game has got to be the Mike ability, which you can use three times to damage everyone on the screen by having Kirby scream into a microphone. The scream was cute in Kirby's Dream Land already, but here they've added to it by making the third scream have a bit more oomph and Kirby leaning the mic forward like a rockstar when he screams into it, which was just adorable and got a chuckle out of me.

OVERALL | 73/100

Kirby's Adventure is definitely still worth playing today, and best enjoyed using the 3DS version due to the performance issues that are fixed on there. I would call this one of the best games on the NES for sure, so I'd recommend it to any and all platformer and retro fans. The "Copy Abilities" system was pretty fun and added replay value thanks to the amount of them available, and I'm looking forward to seeing how Nintendo builds on it, though I'm not sure if it's next mainline title, Kirby's Dream Land 2, can replicate it on this level due to being a Game Boy game.

Lovely game from start to finish. I enjoy every Kirby game I play and this one is no exception. Most NES games feel so outdated and primitive to me, but Kirby's Adventure is one of the biggest exceptions. I understand this could be in part to it being a late-release NES game, but my point stands regardless. Simply put it's one of the best games on the NES. Kirby's Adventure is the second game in the Kirby franchise, but I'd argue it's even more influential than its predecessor, Kirby's Dream Land. This was the first game to introduce copy abilities, a defining feature of the Kirby franchise, as well as many other game mechanics and characters including one of the most iconic characters of the series: Meta Knight. Everything about this game has aged greatly, from the graphics, gameplay, controls, level design, and music, and it all adds up to a peak experience on the NES.

Kirby's Adventure is a really solid platformer and an insane step up from its GB entry.

Virtually everything that the first game lacks is here, and everything that the first game had is doubled: better music, more stages, fantastic presentation, amazing bosses.

The Copy Ability mechanic first appears here and it's a blast. The fact that you can switch your abilities on the fly elevates it above games like Mega Man where most powers feel like an after-thought due to their optional nature and pausing the game messes with pacing too much.

Honestly a really good game, especially for the NES.

The game looks stunning. they really knew how to do 8bit pixel art at this point in the consoles lifespan i guess, because this game looks fantastic! it practically puts every other NES game to shame in terms of its visuals.

All of the animations just ooze with charm and character. from kirby bonking his head when he falls from high up to the cutesy intro's to each zone, it's just all so whimsical feeling.

The copy ability pretty much changed the series forever and it kinda shocks me how fleshed out it is. it has i believe 24~ different ability for you to use which keeps the gameplay fresh.

probably my favorite NES game. (so far)

Also: shout-out to King Dedede. absolute legend.

Kirby gained his identity with this entry. This is what you expect out of the series, the ability to take the abilities of your enemies and use them to your own advantage. Naturally, this is the earliest form of this staple mechanic, so you shouldn't expect Smash Bros-like movesets where holding each direction lets you use a power in a different way. The abilities here come down to one single move, one single advantage. But swapping in and out of them is still just as quick, and even this early on, using each power is encouraged to solve bite-sized puzzles for 1-ups, health items, and the occasional secret button. Of course, you could also just try and stick to one powerup, if you're interested, but that'd mean you wouldn't be taking full advantage of the level design given to you. I won't fault you if you really grow to like that Sword, though, I know I did.

Being a very late NES title, Kirby's Adventure has some wonderful art direction on display. The closer you get to the end, the more you start appreciating the variety of colorful and dream-like backgrounds. This was undoubtfully a team that was ready to work on a SNES title, but had to make-do with making one of the best looking NES games instead.

There is plenty of charm to this game, amongst a relaxing difficulty, a great soundtrack, an exciting final boss, and a couple neat one-button minigames to play around with. Under these circumstances, I'd rate it 4.5 stars at least, but there is one single major flaw that really puts a stain on Kirby's Adventure's otherwise impeccable quality: Unresponsive inputs. In other words, sometimes when you press the jump button... Kirby doesn't jump.

Now, I thought I was crazy at first, because this is barely talked about on the internet. I thought it might've been my controller breaking down, and it was time for a replacement. But, every game I've played before and after this one did not have this problem. And I managed to officially confirm it when I asked my friend to keep an eye out when they played the game themselves, and it turned out they also reported instances of the controls randomly failing to respond.

And this fucks the game up, because it feels completely random and unpredictable when it happens, and it has predictably led to several instances of me running straight into an enemy or a bottomless pit because Kirby did not jump when I pressed the button. There's nothing worse than a game where you cannot trust the controls to do what you want. It may be hyperbolic to call it "unplayable," but it's certainly a big enough annoyance to deter me from wanting to play it agai- oop, hold on.

The GBA remake is out there, and plays overall better, although you'd have to to accept that the art style on that one is way different, and imo did not hold up as well as the NES counterpart. I did however, learn just now that there's a romhack for the NES version that's meant to fix the inputs. So, perhaps this is the definitive way to play the game? I should try it out sometime! Especially since playing the game without it does not seem like a good idea these days.

A wonderful little romp through some colorful Kirby worlds, with creative level design which avoids repetition often found in 2D platformers. The basic movement is gratifying, and the copy abilities enhance this, even if many are a little bit one-note. The bosses are also well-balanced and decently fleshed out for an NES game.

It's a relaxing game, which I often find myself coming back to for a half-hour here and a half-hour there. It's easy, but that's actually a boon; sometimes, all one wants is a bit of casual button mashing, and this game fills that niche perfectly.