The game in which Kirby became who he was. I've mentioned before that Nightmare in Dream Land was my first Kirby title, so I've indirectly played this game many times over the years, in addition to my two runs of the original years after the fact.
It always feels unreal, whenever I see Kirby's Adventure juxtaposed with other major releases from the NES. Timing's a huge part of that; we haven't had a video game console before or since that lived for 10+ years (though the Switch is having an honest go at it!), so pairing something like Super Mario Bros. with Kirby's Adventure feels like running into both "Love Me Do" and "Let It Be" on the same Beatles album. For something developed as a budget release on aging hardware, the team behind Kirby's Adventure clearly understood everything that was possible on the NES. The vibrant, dream-like backgrounds, the use of color, how expressive each character is, that one bit in Butter Building with simulated parallax scrolling (apparently so sophisticated that the Game Boy Advance couldn't replicate it!), falling through the atmosphere in the fight against Nightmare Orb... seemingly at all times, there's a visual marvel to behold. Kirby's Adventure is almost certainly the best-looking game on the console and a contender for the best-looking game of the 8-bit era, up there with the original Phantasy Star.
I'll admit that I'm much more familiar Nightmare in Dream Land. By way of reference, during my recent series livestream playthrough, it took me two sessions to clear Adventure - two weeks' worth of time. In that time, I beat Nightmare in Dream Land FOUR times. A consequence of this skewed familiarity is that I'm always thrown by the physics and momentum of Adventure compared to Nightmare, since Nightmare takes its queued from Super Star's momentum and ups the speed considerably. This isn't really anything Adventure has done wrong, so it's unfair of me to hold it against it. Still, I am ranking on my overall enjoyment of the game as much as I am what I think of it critically, so I must rate the game accordingly.
I suppose I should acknowledge abilities! It's interesting to see that Adventure took the scattershot approach to abilities in their first appearance, basically implementing any ability function that seemed interesting. Were I in charge, I would've skewed closer to a more conservative set, like we'd see pushed in Dream Land 2, so I really respect how much the team was willing to experiment with big gimmicky abilities like Hi-Jump, Laser, and Light. You run into some oddness; these days, it feels weird seeing Fire and Burning exist separate from one another when they make for such natural complements in Super Star-style movesets. Likewise for Ice and Freeze. Some of the abilities feel redundant as well here, like Needle and Spark, and Stone NOT sliding down slopes feels totally off. But there is a lot of fun to be had with how the game effortlessly encourages experimentation as the game progresses. Plus, you can really tell the team wanted more of a combat focus than this game was ready for, going by abilities like Backdrop and Throw. Not hard to believe that Sakurai would come up with the beat-em up moveset expansions for Super Star immediately after this.
(plz bring back Laser as an ability, though, there's soooo much untapped potential with it for puzzle solving. Also give Cool Spook his due, he's a cool guy)
I don't love Nightmare Wizard. I always always always thought of him as a dumb disposable blahthingie. Maybe if I'd seen more of the anime ahead of time, I might've been impressed by him, but whenever he shows up, I almost always groan a little. Yeah, sure, fine, fangless Dracula over here has his place too, I guess. But I'm fine with him mostly existing as an Adventure throwback rather than a character constantly developed by Modern Kirby's expansion of lore.
Adventure represented the series-making title for Kirby, enough so that almost any other series could afford to ignore its existence as a sequel, akin to Super Mario Bros. or Mega Man 2. It's not the template Modern Kirby would follow - this would be Super Star, of course - but it did prove to be the template employed by Classic Kirby. It's not the series at its best yet, but for its time, it was a great, great title. And it remains a fun, quick little adventure, too.
It always feels unreal, whenever I see Kirby's Adventure juxtaposed with other major releases from the NES. Timing's a huge part of that; we haven't had a video game console before or since that lived for 10+ years (though the Switch is having an honest go at it!), so pairing something like Super Mario Bros. with Kirby's Adventure feels like running into both "Love Me Do" and "Let It Be" on the same Beatles album. For something developed as a budget release on aging hardware, the team behind Kirby's Adventure clearly understood everything that was possible on the NES. The vibrant, dream-like backgrounds, the use of color, how expressive each character is, that one bit in Butter Building with simulated parallax scrolling (apparently so sophisticated that the Game Boy Advance couldn't replicate it!), falling through the atmosphere in the fight against Nightmare Orb... seemingly at all times, there's a visual marvel to behold. Kirby's Adventure is almost certainly the best-looking game on the console and a contender for the best-looking game of the 8-bit era, up there with the original Phantasy Star.
I'll admit that I'm much more familiar Nightmare in Dream Land. By way of reference, during my recent series livestream playthrough, it took me two sessions to clear Adventure - two weeks' worth of time. In that time, I beat Nightmare in Dream Land FOUR times. A consequence of this skewed familiarity is that I'm always thrown by the physics and momentum of Adventure compared to Nightmare, since Nightmare takes its queued from Super Star's momentum and ups the speed considerably. This isn't really anything Adventure has done wrong, so it's unfair of me to hold it against it. Still, I am ranking on my overall enjoyment of the game as much as I am what I think of it critically, so I must rate the game accordingly.
I suppose I should acknowledge abilities! It's interesting to see that Adventure took the scattershot approach to abilities in their first appearance, basically implementing any ability function that seemed interesting. Were I in charge, I would've skewed closer to a more conservative set, like we'd see pushed in Dream Land 2, so I really respect how much the team was willing to experiment with big gimmicky abilities like Hi-Jump, Laser, and Light. You run into some oddness; these days, it feels weird seeing Fire and Burning exist separate from one another when they make for such natural complements in Super Star-style movesets. Likewise for Ice and Freeze. Some of the abilities feel redundant as well here, like Needle and Spark, and Stone NOT sliding down slopes feels totally off. But there is a lot of fun to be had with how the game effortlessly encourages experimentation as the game progresses. Plus, you can really tell the team wanted more of a combat focus than this game was ready for, going by abilities like Backdrop and Throw. Not hard to believe that Sakurai would come up with the beat-em up moveset expansions for Super Star immediately after this.
(plz bring back Laser as an ability, though, there's soooo much untapped potential with it for puzzle solving. Also give Cool Spook his due, he's a cool guy)
I don't love Nightmare Wizard. I always always always thought of him as a dumb disposable blahthingie. Maybe if I'd seen more of the anime ahead of time, I might've been impressed by him, but whenever he shows up, I almost always groan a little. Yeah, sure, fine, fangless Dracula over here has his place too, I guess. But I'm fine with him mostly existing as an Adventure throwback rather than a character constantly developed by Modern Kirby's expansion of lore.
Adventure represented the series-making title for Kirby, enough so that almost any other series could afford to ignore its existence as a sequel, akin to Super Mario Bros. or Mega Man 2. It's not the template Modern Kirby would follow - this would be Super Star, of course - but it did prove to be the template employed by Classic Kirby. It's not the series at its best yet, but for its time, it was a great, great title. And it remains a fun, quick little adventure, too.