(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.
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.