If I was to describe Super Star in two words, it would be "past" and "future".
Super Star has never existed in the "present" for me. Since I got my start on the series with Nightmare in Dream Land and stopped playing for a while after Epic Yarn, Super Star was always the odd title out, a forgotten evolutionary dead end for which references were unexpected. I knew the score: the only relevant title for a given series' identity was the last major release and little more. So it was with the big three series I followed around this time (Pokémon, Mario, Kirby). Super Star getting dual shout-outs in Squeak Squad and Super Smash Bros. Brawl were big exceptions to the rule.
So Super Star existing in the "past" is obvious. What about the "future"? There are a few ways to interpret that.
First is the future Super Star made for itself. It of course became the template for Modern Kirby, beginning with Super Star Ultra. In some ways, the design decisions made by Ultra which became the True template for Modern Kirby (on top of little things like using the Nightmare in Dream Land sprites over the original) would lock Super Star itself in the "past". Nevertheless, Super Star would eventually fulfill its destiny of becoming the mold upon which Kirby was based in the series' "future".
There is also the future of Super Star's reality. It presented a radical change for what Kirby was at the time of its release, converting a straightforward if experimental 2D platformer into a highly-experimental platforming Beat-'Em Up. The contrast between Spring Breeze and the original Kirby's Dream Land (a game only 4 years old at the time) was a striking show of how many leaps and bounds the game was ahead of its "past". Each mode has something different to offer (well, Dyna Blade's just Spring Breeze with a map screen), and it's compelling to see how much the identity shifts with only a couple rule changes. I would've loved to see how much that rejected haunted house mode would've changed things up, but it's also hard to imagine it slotting naturally into the progression you get with the modes as they are: Spring Breeze to Dyna Blade to Great Cave Offensive to Revenge of Meta Knight to Milky Way Wishes (Gourmet Race is a cute pace-breaker). The player awaits every new unlocked mode, waiting to see what rests for them in the "future".
Then there's the finale of Milky Way Wishes. Musically, a lot of Super Star is great, and it's easy to see why this game in particular gets remixed so often whenever the series melodically reaches to its "past" (though, isn't it funny that "Gourmet Race" of all things got the push it did?). But more than your "Gourmet Race"s and "Candy Mountain"s and "My Friend and the Setting Sun"s, the tracks I come back to here are the one-two punch of "Kirby's Triumphant Return" and "Staff Roll". The former has been so brilliantly set up over the course of the game. "Green Greens" is introduced at the top as its own piece, then later remixed as "Crystal Field" in Great Cave Offensive with an additional musical bridge between loops. That musical bridge recurs in Revenge of Meta Knight, becoming a musical stinger at the end of "Havoc Aboard the Halberd". Through this, the leitmotif becomes a musical promise of perseverance and persistence against the odds. Then finally, in the very end, when Kirby throws a mischievous jester into a wish-granting computer the size of a star, and a cataclysmic explosion rips across the universe, there Kirby is, flying home as that same musical sting heralds his victory.
And then the credits music starts in the exact same musical key.
I pause for a quick sidebar. One of the greatest, most important musical triumphs in cinema is John Williams' main theme for Star Wars. It's a well-known fact, but it bears reiteration: the full 20th Century Fox logo sequence had gone unused for decades, but was brought back for the original Star Wars. Part of the reason why that movie's opening crawl was so impactful was because John Williams composed the main theme in the same key (B♭ Major) as the 20th Century Fox logo. The melodic continuity from the majestic studio logo into the film proper is what made Star Wars what it was: something larger than life commanding attention in a way no one had ever seen before.
So we have it too in Kirby Super Star, only at the end of the equation. "Kirby's Triumphant Return" segues immediately, without a break in melodic continuity, into the "Staff Roll". First the music is slow and soft, lulling Kirby into a well-deserved rest. Then, as the little hero dreams and the camera shifts into the sky and endless cosmos, it snaps into focus. The music is constantly building and building, eager and excited. After a quick reprisal of a riff from "Green Greens" - where the adventure started - it returns to the beginning of its loop, still eager. As though the song is a dream of Kirby's and a promise to the player of many tomorrows yet to come...
I don't know that Kirby Super Star had ever been my absolute favorite Kirby. For a while, it was a possible contender, but that's no longer the case now. Still, there are so many things within Kirby Super Star that I love, and that are what the series means to me. What the series could be, and that which the series reached for later on. A waypoint, as both one of the final direct efforts of the series' original creator, and one of the final major releases for its console of origin, right on the cusp of gaming entering a whole new dimension. A relic, but also a way forward.
In other words: "past" and "future".
Super Star has never existed in the "present" for me. Since I got my start on the series with Nightmare in Dream Land and stopped playing for a while after Epic Yarn, Super Star was always the odd title out, a forgotten evolutionary dead end for which references were unexpected. I knew the score: the only relevant title for a given series' identity was the last major release and little more. So it was with the big three series I followed around this time (Pokémon, Mario, Kirby). Super Star getting dual shout-outs in Squeak Squad and Super Smash Bros. Brawl were big exceptions to the rule.
So Super Star existing in the "past" is obvious. What about the "future"? There are a few ways to interpret that.
First is the future Super Star made for itself. It of course became the template for Modern Kirby, beginning with Super Star Ultra. In some ways, the design decisions made by Ultra which became the True template for Modern Kirby (on top of little things like using the Nightmare in Dream Land sprites over the original) would lock Super Star itself in the "past". Nevertheless, Super Star would eventually fulfill its destiny of becoming the mold upon which Kirby was based in the series' "future".
There is also the future of Super Star's reality. It presented a radical change for what Kirby was at the time of its release, converting a straightforward if experimental 2D platformer into a highly-experimental platforming Beat-'Em Up. The contrast between Spring Breeze and the original Kirby's Dream Land (a game only 4 years old at the time) was a striking show of how many leaps and bounds the game was ahead of its "past". Each mode has something different to offer (well, Dyna Blade's just Spring Breeze with a map screen), and it's compelling to see how much the identity shifts with only a couple rule changes. I would've loved to see how much that rejected haunted house mode would've changed things up, but it's also hard to imagine it slotting naturally into the progression you get with the modes as they are: Spring Breeze to Dyna Blade to Great Cave Offensive to Revenge of Meta Knight to Milky Way Wishes (Gourmet Race is a cute pace-breaker). The player awaits every new unlocked mode, waiting to see what rests for them in the "future".
Then there's the finale of Milky Way Wishes. Musically, a lot of Super Star is great, and it's easy to see why this game in particular gets remixed so often whenever the series melodically reaches to its "past" (though, isn't it funny that "Gourmet Race" of all things got the push it did?). But more than your "Gourmet Race"s and "Candy Mountain"s and "My Friend and the Setting Sun"s, the tracks I come back to here are the one-two punch of "Kirby's Triumphant Return" and "Staff Roll". The former has been so brilliantly set up over the course of the game. "Green Greens" is introduced at the top as its own piece, then later remixed as "Crystal Field" in Great Cave Offensive with an additional musical bridge between loops. That musical bridge recurs in Revenge of Meta Knight, becoming a musical stinger at the end of "Havoc Aboard the Halberd". Through this, the leitmotif becomes a musical promise of perseverance and persistence against the odds. Then finally, in the very end, when Kirby throws a mischievous jester into a wish-granting computer the size of a star, and a cataclysmic explosion rips across the universe, there Kirby is, flying home as that same musical sting heralds his victory.
And then the credits music starts in the exact same musical key.
I pause for a quick sidebar. One of the greatest, most important musical triumphs in cinema is John Williams' main theme for Star Wars. It's a well-known fact, but it bears reiteration: the full 20th Century Fox logo sequence had gone unused for decades, but was brought back for the original Star Wars. Part of the reason why that movie's opening crawl was so impactful was because John Williams composed the main theme in the same key (B♭ Major) as the 20th Century Fox logo. The melodic continuity from the majestic studio logo into the film proper is what made Star Wars what it was: something larger than life commanding attention in a way no one had ever seen before.
So we have it too in Kirby Super Star, only at the end of the equation. "Kirby's Triumphant Return" segues immediately, without a break in melodic continuity, into the "Staff Roll". First the music is slow and soft, lulling Kirby into a well-deserved rest. Then, as the little hero dreams and the camera shifts into the sky and endless cosmos, it snaps into focus. The music is constantly building and building, eager and excited. After a quick reprisal of a riff from "Green Greens" - where the adventure started - it returns to the beginning of its loop, still eager. As though the song is a dream of Kirby's and a promise to the player of many tomorrows yet to come...
I don't know that Kirby Super Star had ever been my absolute favorite Kirby. For a while, it was a possible contender, but that's no longer the case now. Still, there are so many things within Kirby Super Star that I love, and that are what the series means to me. What the series could be, and that which the series reached for later on. A waypoint, as both one of the final direct efforts of the series' original creator, and one of the final major releases for its console of origin, right on the cusp of gaming entering a whole new dimension. A relic, but also a way forward.
In other words: "past" and "future".