Now, it's time to talk about the Kirby series, which is pretty well-known for its music that starts out light-hearted and slowly becomes more epic and dramatic as the game goes on, and it's pretty amazing:
Kirby's Dream Land: Kirby's simple first game gets a fairly simple first soundtrack, but it's impressive just how much Kirby's musical identity was there right from the very beginning! The upbeat tunes, the fast tempo, the key shifts, it's all here in spades. I also think it's interesting how, unlike with Mario and Zelda, this is far from the most iconic soundtrack in the series (that would be either Adventure or Super Star). Green Greens, Bubbly Clouds, and Mt Dedede are pretty well-known, but we also have songs like Float Islands, Boss Theme, and Castle Lololo that, while really good, don't seem to reappear nearly as much as you'd think. Float Islands, in particular, has been pretty much replaced by its calm remix in Super Star. Generally, Dream Land's soundtrack is fairly short and lacks some of the darker tunes the series is known for, but it's a great taste of what you can expect from the Kirby series.
Highlight: Mt Dedede is probably my favorite theme in the game. It's fast-paced, exciting, and perfectly fits the more serious side of Kirby's iconic rival, but I'm also surprised at how the usage of chiptune makes King Dedede's theme so much more intense than some of its other remixes.
3/5 Stars
Kirby's Adventure/Nightmare In Dream Land: Kirby's Adventure is up there with the best NES soundtracks ever made. Fitting the console's most advanced game, this soundtrack is shockingly impressive for an NES, it's incredibly fast-paced and complex, with a backing track that's just as interesting and dynamic as the main melody. Each level theme is iconic here and perfectly captures the vibe, from the upbeat Vegetable Valley, to the lullaby-esque Grape Garden, to the stunningly beautiful Rainbow Resort. Even the hub themes are great, each serving as a calmer version of the level themes. Add in some intense boss themes, catchy mini game tunes, and bonus athletic and forest themes, and you get a massive soundtrack that's jam-packed with great songs. The Nightmare In Dream Land soundtrack is great as well, but it does suffer from the GBA's crusty soundfont.
Highlight: Rainbow Resort's level theme, also known as Starry Sky, is an incredibly emotional theme for the game's final world. It's calm, serene, and absolutely beautiful. It helps that pretty much every single one of its remixes (Nightmare, Air Ride, Star Allies) manage to be just as good if not better, it's just that perfect of a melody.
4/5 Stars
Kirby's Dream Land 2: Dream Land 2's soundtrack is criminally underrated and I think it's time someone does it justice. The music in this game takes Kirby's usual high energy and cranks it up to eleven, nearly every song manages to be fast-paced and incredibly fun to listen to. As a result, the more upbeat tracks like Big Forest, Iceberg, and Rick The Hamster never fail to put me in a good mood, and the darker tracks like Coo's Theme, Cloudy Park, and Dark Castle end up being incredibly intense and emotional. We even get some great remixes of Float Islands and Yogurt Yard just to sweeten the deal! Having praised so many Game Boy soundtracks in my past few retrospectives made me realize just how much I love the soundfont, and it's used to pretty much perfection in Dream Land 2.
Highlight: Dark Castle is easily one of my favorite songs in the series and probably one of my favorite final level themes of all time. It's probably the darkest song in Kirby up to this point, so it manages to be unbelievably epic and intense. And don't even get me started on the Planet Robobot remix which is just godly.
4/5 Stars
Kirby Super Star (Ultra): Kirby Super Star easily has the series' most iconic soundtrack, and given that the game is divided up into multiple sub games, it means the lineup of tracks is absolutely massive. Spring Breeze gives us a ton of great remixes of the first game's music, Dynablade offers an entirely new lineup of top-notch melodies like Cocoa Cave and Candy Mountain, Great Cave Offensive's music is exciting and adventurous, Revenge Of Meta Knight boasts thrilling and epic tunes as you storm the Halberd, Gourmet Race is packed with goofy earworms that perfectly captures Dedede's more lighthearted side, and Milky Way Wishes boasts a phenomenal final boss theme. And that's not even going into Super Star Ultra, which managed to include some the absolute best boss themes in the whole franchise for Dynablade, Heavy Lobster, Kabula, Galacta Knight, and especially Masked Dedede. To be perfectly honest, this isn't one of my personal favorite soundtracks. The soundfont isn't super punchy, and it lacks many hidden gems outside of those overplayed popular ones, but it's still a great selection nonetheless.
Highlight: For the original game, the highlight would probably be Gourmet Race, which is one of the most iconic themes in the series for a reason. It's upbeat, fast-paced, light-hearted, and packs an incredibly great chorus. However, if you include Ultra, the best song is easily Masked Dedede, which is an insanely epic and propellant remix of King Dedede's theme. Its remix in Triple Deluxe is just as good, if not even better!
4/5 Stars
Kirby Block Ball: This is more of a sidenote since it's not one of the major games but Kirby Block Ball has one of the most unnecessarily fantastic soundtracks out of any game I've ever heard. It's hard to really explain what it does well aside from the fact that every single tune is an absolute banger and a great piece of chiptune. Just listen to it, you won't regret it.
5/5 Stars
Kirby's Dream Land 3: Dream Land 3's soundtrack is super underrated and I love the soundfont it uses. It's so comfy-sounding and perfectly fits the game's pastel aesthetic. But even more, this soundtrack feels so nostalgic in the way that its songs are structured. Most of this game's themes start fairly upbeat only to go through a key shift halfway through that just hits so hard. My only major gripe with this soundtrack is that it's just too short! By Cloudy Park, the game starts reusing old songs for many of its levels which is a shame because every tune here is excellent and I'd really like to see more of it. Still, what is there is fantastic.
Highlight: Sand Canyon 1 is the quintessential Kirby song in my opinion. It's so upbeat, fast-paced, and never fails to put a smile on my face, and the chorus (which utilizes the key shift I mentioned earlier on) is just so good!
4.5/5 Stars
Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards: Ending off the Dark Matter trilogy on a high note, Kirby 64 once again has an excellent soundtrack, managing to top the already great score of its predecessor. While there's already a great selection of typically peppy Kirby tunes and lovely cutscene music, what really elevates 64's soundtrack is how unusually dark it gets. Songs like Quiet forest and Factory Investigation are super atmospheric, boss themes like Vs Boss and Miracle Matter are super intense and thrilling, songs like Neo Star Map and King Dedede's Castle go full-on DnB, and of course, the final boss theme is one of the most haunting tunes in the whole series. Like all the best Kirby soundtracks, it starts off great and only gets better and more awe-inspiring as it goes on.
Highlight: There's a lot of great songs I could pick but Zero Two is easily the highlight. It's so solemn and melancholic for a Kirby song, with a great bassline and an absolutely beautiful melody. For me, this is the song that started the trend of Kirby final boss themes being phenomenal, and you should expect to see many more of them in the highlights.
5/5 Stars
Kirby Air Ride: While Ishikawa and Ando are the main composers of Kirby, sometimes Shogo Sakai of Smash Bros Melee and Mother 3 fame comes in to compose, and it's almost always amazing. He has this grand orchestral style that you'd think wouldn't fit Kirby, but it works perfectly in Air Ride. All of the songs in this game feel straight-out of Smash Bros, they're bombastic, they're epic, and they never fail to leave you hyped. From the soaring Air Ride themes, to the more Kirby-esque Top Ride themes, to the adventurous City Trial themes, to the great remixes of previous Kirby tracks, every song in here is excellent.
Highlight: Oh, so many! City Trial is the obvious choice here, an epic track that builds up to a beautiful fanfare at the end, but I also have to give praise to the absolute techno banger that is Machine Passage, which feels so unlike Kirby it fits perfectly.
5/5 Stars
Kirby And The Amazing Mirror: Despite my gripes with the GBA's sound quality, the Kirby games are some of my most-played games on the system, so I have a lot of nostalgia for their music. Amazing Mirror's melodies manage to be excellent in spite of the low sound quality, from the epic Radish Ruins, to the intense Dark Meta Knight, to the absolutely beautiful Candy Constellation. I wouldn't say Amazing Mirror's music excel in any particular area, it's just a really strong lineup of a bunch of really strong Kirby tunes.
Highlight: Candy Constellation is one of my favorite Kirby tracks of all time and one of my favorite tunes on the GBA . It's so beautiful and nostalgic-sounding, and every single one of its remixes manage to be amazing on their own, especially the one in Squeak Squad.
3/5 Stars
Kirby Canvas Curse: Canvas Curse's soundtrack is an acquired taste, but I absolutely adore it. Following the more DnB direction of 64's music, Ishikawa decided to go for a soundtrack composed almost entirely of glitch techno remixes of pre-existing tracks, and it's unlike anything I've ever heard in a video game. The new genre really gives all of these tried-and-true Kirby tunes new life, with a large chunk of the aforementioned remixes being the definitive versions of those songs for me. From the chill Bubbly Clouds remix in Tiny Town, to the brilliantly chaotic Nightmare remix in Spectacle Space, to the club banger Float Islands remix in Collapse Castle, to the mesmerizing Rainbow Resort remix in Frozen Fantasy, to the quirky Ripple Field 3 remix in Ghost Grounds, to the frantic Factory Investigation remix in Mad Mechanism, the list goes on and on. No joke, Canvas Curse does techno better than Planet goddamn Robobot, so no wonder a lot of its tracks were used for that game's bonus stages. And while most of Canvas Curse's music is remixes, the original tracks are some of the best in the whole series, particularly the horror-leaning endgame themes.
Highlight: As mentioned above, Tiny Town, and Spectacle Space are so good they manage to surpass the originals, but my favorite songs are easily Drawcia Sorceress and Drawcia Soul, which are easily two of the most intense themes in the series. Sorceress is absolutely beautiful and ethereal, while Soul is a terrifying mess that feels like Kirby's version of Hartman's Youkai Girl. Both final boss themes are some of the greatest and most underrated in the whole series and elevate an already great final encounter to legendary heights.
5/5 Stars
Kirby: Squeak Squad: For a while, I thought of this game's soundtrack as lazy due to almost entirely being composed of pre-existing tracks and fairly straight remixes (especially compared to Canvas Curse's unique style), with the only original stuff being the songs for the Squeaks. However, I think I was a bit harsh on this one. Sure, there are a lot of remixes, but a large portion of them are essentially better versions of Amazing Mirror tunes and combined they barely comprise half the soundtrack. There are a lot more original tunes than I initially remembered, and many of them are really soothing and calming. Songs like Wonders Of The Stars, Digging Through The Clouds, and many of the menu themes help to make this one of the comfiest soundtracks in the series. There's just a vibe to Squeak Squad's music that perfectly encapsulates the Flagship era of Kirby, making for the best score out of their three games.
Highlight: The Legendary Halberd is easily the highlight here, a mashup of Meta Knight's Revenge and the Legendary Air Ride Machine theme that sounds absolutely glorious. It's epic, grand, and it manages to perfectly fit Meta Knight. It also helps that this song comes with one of my favorite levels in the whole series. Other highlights include the tense Troubling Situation (the Squeaks boss theme), the haunting The Final Stretch, and the incredibly nostalgic File Select.
4/5 Stars
Kirby's Epic Yarn: This was my first Kirby game, so you can probably guess just how warped my initial perception of Kirby music was at first. I thought all Kirby music was cute and cuddly like this game's was! Despite the generally light-hearted and calm vibe, or maybe because of it, Epic Yarn's music is absolutely beautifully-composed. Tomoya Tomita did an amazing job with every single song here, it's honestly the perfect soundtrack to study to. I love the composition of Epic Yarn's songs, and the heavy usage of piano legitimately made me want to learn the whole score on piano myself. Epic Yarn has easily one of my favorite soundtracks in the series, it's stunningly beautiful, even with how different it is from the rest of the series.
Highlight: Melody Park is probably my favorite, with a wide variety of instruments that perfectly fits the game's token music level. However, I'm also a big fan of this game's Gourmet Race and Battleship Halberd remixes, the latter of which makes piano epic, along with Snowy Fields, which is so unabashedly Christmas, I can't help but love it. Oh, and Big Bean Vine is downright stunning. I hope I've made clear just how much Epic Yarn's music means to me!
5/5 Stars
Kirby Mass Attack: Another Shogo Sakai soundtrack, and while it's not as good as Air Ride's, it perfectly captures his grand vibe. It's so strange, even with this game's somewhat small scale and arcade-y nature, its score gets surprisingly dramatic at times and it still works, without sacrificing the game's tone. We even get some great Air Ride remixes as well! But while I love the level themes, we also get some excellently upbeat and charming themes for the minigames as well, from the intense Kirby Quest theme, to the slapbass-heavy Pinball themes, to the peppy Strato Patrol EOS themes.
Highlight: I won't cheat by listing the Air Ride remixes as highlights, so I'll probably go with either Dark Clouds, Ruins Ahead, or Tree To Tree. Dark Clouds is a darker remix of an earlier theme that oozes Sakai's style, Ruins Ahead is a desert theme so powerful it manages to beat the remix of Air Ride's Sky Sands, and Tree To Tree is so upbeat and cute it's hard not to smile while listening to it.
4/5 Stars
Kirby's Return To Dream Land: Return To Dream Land was my first "real" Kirby soundtrack and it blew me away. As per the usual, it starts off upbeat but slowly gets darker as the game progresses, culminating in my favorite final boss theme of all time. In my opinion, Return To Dream Land has the catchiest soundtrack in the series, with the best melodies. While there are still plenty of fantastic atmospheric pieces befitting the interdimensional theming, Ishikawa and Ando went for a more arcade-y vibe with this soundtrack, putting a big emphasis on synth and even bringing back the Dream Land 3 soundfont for a few songs. As a result, it really feels like there isn't a single bad theme in this entire lineup, they're all memorable, catchy, and super enjoyable to listen to. In its own way, it just feels like the definitive Kirby soundtrack, the magnum opus that all of Ishikawa and Ando's past works have been building up to. And yet it's still not even my favorite in the series...
Highlight: Sky Tower and Techno Factory are two of my favorite Kirby tracks, and Aurora Area is downright transcendant, but CROWNED is my favorite song in the series, and part of my Top 3 video game songs of all time. It's epic, it's bombastic, it's fast-paced, it's excellently composed, it has an awe-inspiring intro and yet it never loses the momentum, it's pretty much a masterpiece of a video game song. And just to add on to how mind-blowing it was for me, just imagine listening to this song for the first time thinking Epic Yarn was the standard for Kirby music. Yeah, mind blown.
5/5 Stars
Kirby Triple Deluxe: Triple Deluxe easily has my favorite Kirby soundtrack and is definitely the series' most consistently strong. For a game about beauty, Triple Deluxe's definitely lives up to that bar. Nearly every song here is just stunning, the instrumentation is great, and the tone and intensity slowly rises as the game progresses. Each world's music is better than the last culminating in one of the greatest final stretches of music I've ever heard in a video game soundtrack. And that's not to mention the bonus levels which utilize nearly Return To Dream Land's entire soundtrack, so we really have the best of both worlds here.
Highlight: I already brought up the Masked Dedede remix and how unrelentingly awesome it is, but frankly this game's entire final world is probably the musical highlight of the entire series. Moonlight Capital and Beautiful Prison are epic and intense final level themes, Revenge Of The Enemy has an amazingly sinister turn halfway through the song, the remixed Hypernova theme uses electric guitars to sound even grander than the original, and all of Sectonia's boss themes, from the elegant Sullied Grace to the beautiful Moonstruck Blossom to the exciting The World To Win, are absolutely phenomenal. It's hard to just pick one highlight in this game, so I'll just go with the entirety of World 6!
5/5 Stars
Kirby And The Rainbow Curse: Kirby music has always been good but since Epic Yarn, it's been nothing but banger soundtracks since, and Rainbow Curse is no except. Shogo Sakai returns for what is likely his last full Kirby soundtrack, along with the similarly fantastic protege Megumi Ohara (who secretly got many of the best tracks in the game), and what a way to go out! The higher quality instruments really let Sakai go wild with complex and memorable melodies that still feel distinctly his, and the masterful use of varying leitmotifs rivals his work on Mother 3. But in case an already great soundtrack for the main campaign wasn't enough, Sakai and Ohara also decided to do nearly 40 additional remixes of Kirby's best tracks, ranging from series highlights like CROWNED and Candy Constellation to deep cuts like Big Forest and Snowball Shuffle, and they're great too! Many of these remixes rival or even surpass the originals, and even the ones that don't give the tracks a fresh new coat of paint. They even made a medley of tracks specifically used for YTMPVs, because why the hell not?! If you said this was your favorite Shogo Sakai soundtrack, I wouldn't blame you! Air Ride just sticks with me a bit more, but it's still another top-notch Kirby OST nonetheless.
Highlight: Dark Crafter's theme is yet another excellent final boss theme for the series. It's short, but it's grand and utilizes Rocket Kirby's leitmotif in a triumphant fanfare. I also like Infiltrating The Junk Factory which is an intense techno piece that kickstarts the final world of the game on a great note.
5/5 Stars
Kirby Planet Robobot: Planet Robobot has a great soundtrack, but just like the game itself, it's my least favorite of the modern quadrology. Befitting the technological landscape, the soundtrack has an emphasis on techno, which works pretty well since Kirby has already had a history with the medium. At its best, Robobot packs some pretty banging tracks like the boss themes, the desert theme, and the remixes that play during the laboratories. I also like how cohesive this focus on techno music makes Robobot's soundtrack. However, I don't feel like most of Robobot's music is really able to surpass some of the best techno bangers in the series like Machine Passage and Miracle Matter, and its heavy usage of its leitmotifs can get pretty repetitive near the end.
Highlight: I already mentioned the godly remix of Dark Castle, so I'll go with P.R.O.G.R.A.M. which is an excellent reprise of the already great title theme for the final boss. This is the type of song I wanted to hear from the whole score, it's intense, pure unbridled techno and it's an absolute banger!
4/5 Stars
Kirby Star Allies: Not gonna lie, this might be the perfect soundtrack to end this retrospective on. Star Allies is a big anniversary celebration of all things Kirby, and its score contains a massive 200+ songs ranging from beautiful level themes like Nature's Navel and Eastern Wall, to intense boss themes like Hyness Unmasked and Prayer Song To God, to amazing remixes of some of the series' best songs like CROWNED and Zero Two. It's an amazingly ambitious soundtrack that perfectly epitomizes why I love Kirby music so much. The constant fast pace, the blend of upbeat themes and darker more dramatic tunes, the remixes that nearly always manage to rival or surpass the original, they're all here and they're amazing. And if all that's not enough, Star Allies even managed to get a third composer Yuuta Ogasawara, and he's just as great! His music goes for a more mystical tone, which is pretty unique for the series, but they ended up being some of the best tunes in the game like Planet Earthfall and Planet Towara.
However... it is a bit tough to call this one of my absolute favorites of the series because I kinda lied. Star Allies does have over 200+ songs, but roughly 50% of that is reused from older games. Kirby games have a tendency to reuse songs from past games, but Star Allies is practically a Kirby's greatest hits collection with some great original songs thrown into the mix. It's awesome to listen to, but doesn't make for the most cohesive or emotionally impactful soundtrack. Still a series highlight, though.
Highlight: The Star-Conquering Traveler is easily one of the most ambitious songs in a Kirby game, and it's absolutely amazing. This is a whopping five-movement suite, each perfectly fitting the phase of the final boss you're fighting. I particularly love the synth-y Movement 2, the organ-heavy Movement 3, and the oddly somber tune that plays during the fight with Void, but this song is at its best when it's listened to in its entirety. As part of one massive whole, this is one of Kirby's best final boss themes, and that's saying something.
5/5 Stars
Kirby And The Forgotten Land: I made a whole post about its music but TL;DR, it's 5/5 Stars and one of the best in the series.
With so much great music under its belt, here's my Top 10 soundtracks in the Kirby series:
- Kirby Triple Deluxe
- Kirby's Return To Dream Land
- Kirby's Epic Yarn
- Kirby Air Ride
- Kirby And The Forgotten Land
- Kirby Canvas Curse
- Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards
- Kirby And The Rainbow Curse
- Kirby Star Allies
- Kirby Block Ball
Next up, let's check out the Sonic soundtracks, because no matter how flawed the game, Sonic music generally tends to be pretty great...
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