Kirby's Dream Land is a fun little game for the Game Boy, but I think most can agree that Kirby's Adventure is when the series fully forms. This is a much larger adventure with a more fleshed-out moveset, the introduction of copy abilities, and vastly more levels. It's also easily Nintendo's most technically-impressive (and probably also best) NES game, with stunning art direction, fantastic music, and an abundance of content. Maybe even too much content since Kirby's Adventure is also infamous for its lag issues. But for now, I want to focus on going over the design of Kirby's Adventure and how it makes big strides over its predecessor in this area.
Introduction
- Kirby's Adventure has one of the best title screen/intro combos on the NES, kicking off with an incredibly charming tutorial detailing how to draw Kirby. I love how Kirby flinches when he gets paint, it's such a cute but unnecessary detail.
- Speaking of charming cutscenes, Kirby's Adventure also brings back the stage intro cutscenes that defined the earlier entries in the series. Personally, I think the ones in Adventure are even better than the ones in Dream Land. Vegetable Valley's cutscene alone is more dynamic than anything in the previous games, detailing a sword fight between Kirby and a Sword Knight, showing off how copy abilities work, and even including a silly fourth wall break where Kirby's sword accidentally stabs the Kirby's Adventure logo. All this time, and I never noticed that was a thing.
- But yeah, speaking of the presentation, let's talk about the graphics for a bit. Kirby's Adventure is an utterly gorgeous NES game with detailed shading, fluid animations, a bold color palette that uses more unconventional colors like orange and purple to great effect, and surreal world design that really gives off a dreamlike and ethereal feeling. I like Nightmare In Dream Land for its gameplay improvements, but it just isn't able to capture the sheer attention to detail and artistry that went into the presentation of Kirby's Adventure.
- As far as controls go, Kirby's Adventure adds a few new features that weren't in the first game. Most notably, you can now run by double-tapping the D-pad allowing the player to control their pace a bit more, and you can slide allowing you to attack enemies and break blocks without needing a copy ability. You can also suck up multiple objects at the same time to shoot out a larger shot or get a random copy ability, once again further fleshing out the gameplay.
- The general movement also feels quite a bit faster and looser, which is a trademark for most of Sakurai's own Kirby games. Some people really like this about them, but I've always preferred the weighter feel of Shimomura and Kumazaki's games. It's not a deal-breaker though, that's just my tastes.
- And finally, I do want to point out that Kirby's Adventure has a tendency to eat inputs, possibly a cause of the game's performance issues. Thankfully, there are ways to mitigate this. Of course, you can play the 3D Classics version which removes lag all together, or you can do what I did and play the Input Fix hack and it's honestly night and day. I don't think I can ever go back to the original after this.
Vegetable Valley
- Okay, now let's get into the actual game. The first stage of Vegetable Valley immediately tosses a bunch of copy abilities at you to try out, and surprisingly, none of them are the Sword Ability. Instead, the first abilities you get in Adventure are Beam, Spark, and Fire.
- The abilities in this game are fairly simple compared to later installments, they each only have one or two moves so their usefulness can feel a bit more limited. Beam and Fire are mostly good for hitting around you, and Spark can be very powerful for hitting enemies from all sides even if it comes at the cost of slowing the game down to a crawl.
- The second room of Vegetable Valley 1 is infamous for having the first of Kirby's Adventure's many secret rooms, which happens to hide the fairly powerful UFO ability. UFO's usefulness really does depend on the game, but in NES Adventure, it's a real game-breaker due to its fast movement speed and charge shot.
- But otherwise, Vegetable Valley 1 doesn't have much going on. It's very much the tutorial stage, offering a safe place to mess around with the controls but not much else.
- Oh yeah, and this game even introduced the Goal Game! The slingshot one Adventure and Return To Dream Land use isn't my favorite of the Goal Games, but it's certainly iconic and can feel satisfying to blast yourself all the way up to space.
- Once you leave the first stage, you'll have a greater chance to explore the hub. The hubs in Kirby's Adventure are quite solid. I like the calm music that plays in them, and being able to clear out more of each hub as you beat levels is really satisfying.
- These hubs also contain a number of bonus games and side rooms you can unlock, the first being the Crane Game minigame. For what's technically the first subgame in the entire series, it's not a particularly engaging one, but the charming visuals do a lot of the heavy-lifting.
- Stage 2 is a bit more exciting, kicking off with a Warp Star sequence immediately followed by a Poppy Bros fight (sounds familiar?). It also introduces the Cutter ability which is one of my favorites in this game for being relatively long-range and having a decent amount of depth. You can only throw three blades at a time, so you can try to catch your blades to restore your ammo quickly or let it go and hit enemies behind you.
- The second half of Stage 2 has a neat environmental shift to taking place inside a cave, and it finally grants you the Sword ability. This is definitely one of Adventure's better copy abilities, it feels great, hits hard, can be spammed, has an aerial attack, and has a decent attack radius to it.
- Also, swimming controls! Kirby's Adventure has legitimately swimming controls this time, and he can even attack underwater. It's still fairly slow, but it's a big improvement over Kirby's Dream Land.
- Stage 3 further ups the ante with its first segment having you deal with a bunch of invincible Shotzos. Most of the time, Shotzos will be placed on breakable blocks which is how you can take them out. This first screen is also notable for having the game's first slope. Adventure specifically allows Kirby to slide down slopes to gain momentum, and it feels really fun.
- Stage 3 also introduces the Burning/Fireball copy ability which will be your best friend in this game. Not only does Burning let you do a dash that will allow you to speed through levels, but it's one of the few abilities that can break hard blocks, which often hide important collectibles. It can also absolutely shred through boss healthbars.
- Beating Stage 3 unlocks the Museum which gives you a copy ability to bring into levels. It's a solid option whenever you're in a pinch, especially as the game goes on and you unlock museums with more powerful abilities.
- Stage 4 is definitely my favorite Vegetable Valley stage, taking place primarily in a forest. The first screen has you fight Mr Frosty and get the very fun Freeze ability (which is basically just Spark but it lags less), and the next screen has enemies perfectly lined up for you to test Freeze out on.
- The second half of Stage 4 has you climb up a tree trunk, once again iterating on a concept introduced in Green Greens. You get access to the Needle ability, another radial copy ability here, but its slow startup time makes it not worth using that much. And the final stretch has you use an Invincibility Lollipop to mow through enemies, which is always satisfying.
- Funnily enough, Meta Knight's first appearance in the game is him tossing you a Lollipop. His portrayal in Adventure has always felt shrouded with mystery since he always seemed to be both helping and harming Kirby at the same time, but I think most fans have generally come to the agreement that he was training Kirby in this game.
- Whispy Woods in this game doesn't really do anything he didn't do in the previous game, he still drops apples and shoots wind gusts at you. If anything, the larger battlefield and screen real estate make him even easier in this one.
Ice Cream Island
- Kirby wearing sunglasses, nuff said.
- Ice Cream Island 1 is a beach level that initially starts as a pastiche of Float Islands. The first screen has you frantically dodging those falling coconuts, and there's even a little cave you can enter to get a health pickup.
- The second and third rooms introduce a few more abilities in the Parasol, Crash, and Tornado. Crash is the series' first one-time use which can do a ton of damage on bosses if you can hang onto it, Parasol is a decent sword analog that also lets you glide (which is put to some great use at points in this game), and Tornado lets Kirby turn invincible and fly around almost uncontrollably. But if you can figure out how to wrangle Tornado, this is another real boss shredder.
- Beating the first Ice Cream Island stage unlocks my favorite minigame in Kirby's Adventure, Egg Catcher. You basically need to catch all the eggs King Dedede is tossing at you without accidentally swallowing the bombs mixed in. Getting a perfect score in this one feels incredibly satisfying.
- Kirby's Adventure has so many original backgrounds that you see only for a split second. Ice Cream Island 2 has this neat shot where you hop on a Warp Star and fly up a distinct purple waterfall that looks unlike anything else in the series.
- The second half of Ice Cream Island 2 takes place in a neat desert environment where you unlock the Wheel ability. The Wheel ability lets you dash forward at a nonstop rate which makes it great for speedrunning, though you can't jump with it like in later games. However, this stage specifically gives you a bunch of long straightaways across dunes to let you mess around with the ability.
- Ice Cream Island 3 is another strong stage. It starts with a brief Parasol-focused segment where you can use it to fly over a large pit, before putting you inside an intricate cavern area filled with tucked-away secrets like a hidden 1up and the UFO ability.
- This is also a great stage to put the UFO ability to work since it lets you bypass underwater sections and becomes very useful in the first Meta Knights fight. Occasionally, Meta Knight sends a bunch of his knights at you for you to fight, and they all have weapons ranging from axes to maces to spears. In hindsight, it's weird none of these weapons have ever became copy abilities to this day.
- Ice Cream Island's museum introduces the Laser ability, and I'm a bit mixed on it. It's a solid long-range option and can be very useful in rooms built around it since it can ricochet off slopes, but its short attack radius can leave you feeling fairly vulnerable with it equipped.
- Ice Cream Island 4 is fairly ability-focused. The stage's miniboss nets you the Mic ability, another screen clear ability that is less powerful than Crash but you can use it three times rather than one, which you can proceed to use on a handful of perfectly-placed Scarfies.
- Soon after that, you'll get another Laser ability which is followed by a fair share of rooms with angled corners perfectly designed for you to use it.
- After this level, you'll get access to your first Arena, a miniboss fight you can do whenever you want for an ability and a Metamato.
- Ice Cream Island 5 starts with a surprisingly tricky room with Shotzos shooting at you from all sides, all the while you have to deal with fast-moving Waddle Dees with homing Parasols that feel like they're coming straight out of the previous game's Extra Mode. Just blitz through and you'll be fine, though.
- This section is followed by another Wheel-focused section that shows you that you can use abilities with invincibility frames like Wheel to phase through Gordos without taking damage, which will be very useful in future stages.
- I love the look of the next area, this pastel-colored city in the sky is such a distinct biome within Kirby's Adventure. I also like how you can go into one of the huts through a secret door to get access to a Burning ability.
- This stage also introduces the Hi-Jump which, aside from one notable section involving them, kinda blows in this game. You can use it to boost up high and break blocks in the way, but you can only use it when on the ground. You can't use Hi-Jump in the air like in later games, so it just feels worse to use.
- Paint Roller is technically this game's equivalent of Lololo & Lalala in that it runs around the stage at a fast-paced, so I'm obviously not a huge fan either. However, I like how he's able to draw a variety of little enemies to deal with, some of which even giving you abilities. This technically makes him one of the most important bosses in Adventure's boss rush.
Butter Building
- Butter Building is the point where the game really starts to pick up, and it's the first truly inventive biome, a large tower that you slowly climb up over its six levels.
- Butter Building 1 is mostly just the entrance of the titular building, but it illustrates the neat continuity that Kirby's Adventure often uses. Doors in one room are often directly connected with doors in other rooms so you can picture in your head how each stage is connected together.
- This plays into the game's first Big Switch, the main collectibles that open up parts of the hub to unveil more minigames and museums/arenas. You need to find a hidden door, enter a backroom, and then re-enter the main room where the Switch is.
- Butter Building 2 has the first "balcony" section, these iconic rooms where you run along the building from the outside as it rotates behind you. It's a sick visual effect and the fact that it didn't get carried over the GBA remake is a sore spot for many.
- Otherwise, this stage has yet another fairly fun Wheel segment, and a neat room where you need to slide to pick up falling items. The stage also introduces Buggzy and his Backdrop ability, though I'd recommend not bringing Wheel over to fight him because he can catch you while in your Wheel state.
- Backdrop is a fairly weak ability though since it's basically just standard Kirby but he slams enemies into the ground after inhaling. There's a certain other melee-focused enemy that I find to be a lot more practical.
- Butter Building 3 is a fairly short stage, but it does have one of my personal favorite setpieces in the game. The final room is split into two separate rooms with doors that directly connect them, so you need to enter doors in one room to get to the exit in another room. It's easy, but it's a decently fun little puzzle.
- One of my bigger issues with Kirby's Adventure stages is that some of them can feel a little short and underdeveloped, a common issue with NES games that feature a lot of stages. Butter Building 4 is a great example, as it only consists of a short Warp Star ride, a Meta Knight fight, and a brief room where you float up on an updraft dodging Shotzo fire. That last room is actually really fun, but it feels like the start of a level not the end of one.
- Oh, I forgot about the Quick Draw minigame! This is a pretty standard Kirby subgame at this point and I always thought it was alright. The western theming is super charming, but gameplay-wise, it does wear out fairly quick.
- Butter Building 5 is another fairly short stage, but it has some neat moments. The intro where you dash across the balcony with an Invincibility Lollipop is really cathartic, and the stage ends with you getting access to the most powerful ability in the game, the Hammer. It has a wide radius, an aerial move, can hit stumps, break hard blocks, deals a ton of damage, and unlike UFO, you can carry it between levels. It's so powerful that you can only get Hammer from a miniboss, which has remained that way up until Forgotten Land.
- Butter Building 6 starts with another really iconic room, this tight metallic corridor with tons of slopes for you to use the Laser ability on. From then on, you get a weirdly placed tree climb that traps you in with Shotzos and Gordos aplenty, the final balcony sequence which really shows how close you are to the room, and a fun platforming sequence where you scale up the outside of the building.
- The Big Switch location is also great. This stage introduces Bomb Chains that can create blocks, so you need to quickly get past the Bomb Chain before it blocks you off, a common Kirby puzzle that later games will iterate upon even more.
- I also can't talk about Butter Building 6 without talking about the most useless ability in the series, Light. Light is the definition of a context-sensitive ability, it's one-time use and only serves to light up a dark room. Most of the time, you don't even need to do this outside of revealing some obscured doors, and even then, if you know where the doors are, you can enter them anywhere.
- The boss of Butter Building is a big step up over the previous ones both in complexity and difficulty. Mr Shine & Mr Bright each trade places to fight you, while the other shoots at you from the background. Fighting them as Normal Kirby can be tough since you need to use the background boss's shots to hit the foreground boss while dodging both of their attacks at the same time, but they flinch upon damage, so with a good copy ability like Cutter, you can easily wipe the floor with them.
Grape Garden
- Kirby losing a balloon, trying to grab it, only to lose all the others is a real mood. Probably the most relatable intro cutscene to a stage.
- Grape Garden has some beautifully serene visuals, and its first stage is a great example of this. The starry, purple cosmic backgrounds you see in the second half of Grape Garden 1 go so freaking hard.
- Grape Garden 1 is a pretty notable stage for just giving you UFO. No bonus room, no secrets, the stage is built around the UFO ability, with a big room in the second half filled with Star Blocks to use it on. Kirby's Adventure is usually at its best when it's crafting levels that fully utilize all of its abilities, and I mean all.
- Grape Garden does a pretty good job of making each of its stages feel varied, especially compared to the previous world, so I like how Grape Garden 2 has an entirely unique castle environment.
- Hopping through the pixel-wide spikes in that one room in Grape Garden 2 is really satisfying too.
- Grape Garden 2 ends with a boss fight against two Poppy Bros which is surprisingly tough. But once you get one of them, you can get Crash to use on the other one, and it feels awesome.
- Grape Garden 3 is one of my favorite stages in the game for a number of reasons, but right off the bat, it introduces the cannon, which gets used throughout the series. If you light the fuse and get to the cannon on time, you'll be blasted to a secret area.
- Most of the stage, however, takes place on a fleet of blimps with wind constantly pushing you forward. It's such a unique and fun environment not just within Kirby but in games in general, and I love the steampunk feel the whole stage has.
- This area is also absolutely massive with wide vertical scrolling and a few hidden nooks and crannies, one of course hiding a Big Switch.
- Oh yeah, I should talk about the Ball ability. You can get it in Grape Garden 1 but I didn't use it for UFO reasons, so unlocking the museum is my first experience with it in this playthrough. This is an ability that allows Kirby to turn into a ball and bounce around, dealing damage as he bounces. It's not great, timing your bounces is too precise and handling Kirby in his ball form is too unweildly. This is generally regarded as one of Adventure's worst abilities and I'm inclined to agree.
- Grape Garden 4 is another real visual spectacle. I like how the first room takes place on what feels like a dock for the blimps you were just on, but the second room really stands out for taking place in what seems like a forest where all the leaves are replaced with purple bubbles.
- After that follows what is easily the best Wheel segment so far, as you need to quickly race down a long vertical series of slopes to get to a 1up before a Bomb Chain blocks you off.
- The stage ends with you getting the Throw ability and it's basically just Backdrop but better. Instead of slamming enemies into the ground, you can toss them as powerful shots in any direction. It's faster, it's snappier, it deals damage to those around you, and the stage ends with a room specifically designed to take advantage of the Throw ability to really show you what it can do.
- Grape Garden 5 is generally a bit less remarkable. There's a Lollipop setpiece where you perilously hop across small platforms to maintain your speed, there's another Meta Knights fight, and it ends with a room filled to the brim with Gordos to encourage using the Fireball ability.
- Grape Garden 6 also doesn't have too much going on outside of the return of the Light ability. This time there is actually a hidden Big Switch it can help uncover. Oh, and the Stone puzzle where you need to dig up a 1up is pretty creative.
- Kracko's fight took a massive bump in quality from the previous game, and weirdly enough, it's all because of the Hi-Jump ability. The first phase has you racing up a long vertical platforming section as Kracko Jr chases you, and the second phase has Kracko Jr turn into Kracko and proceed to fight you with his usual arsenal. That opening bit really elevates the fight for me, and being able to hit Kracko from high up with copy abilities mitigates any potential waiting.
Yogurt Yard
- Coming off the constant stream of creativity that was Grape Garden, Yogurt Yard is a bit less standout as it's more focused on expanding upon what was already there. So I'll probably be running through it a bit faster.
- Yogurt Yard's first level is another great example of Kirby's Adventure's attention to continuity. It starts off with you still in the clouds, before sending you on a long fall down to Earth. I also really like how you can find Stone in a secret room to smash through all the enemies on your way down.
- Similarly, Yogurt Yard 2 has you go back and forth through a mountain, double-back through a bunch of different rooms to get out. There's also a good amount of secrets here, with two hidden 1ups to find.
- Yogurt Yard 3 continues to expand on prior copy abilities, featuring fairly fun segments built around the High Jump, Wheel, and Stone abilities. The real highlight, however, is the Parasol room which has you carefully float down a shaft completely covered in spikes. It's a legitimate challenge and one of my favorite screens in the game.
- Yogurt Yard 4 has another great ability-centric room where you dash through tight corridors with the Fireball ability, keeping up the momentum feels really satisfying. It also has another long drop down a waterfall, but there's no Stone to help so you'd better hope you're good at bouncing off enemies.
- Yogurt Yard 5 is where the Big Switch puzzles start to get a bit more devious. At the bottom of a fairly open starting area, you'll find a room with a Hi Jump and a Fire enemy, a cannon, and some blocks stacked vertically. Figuring out the order of operations of which ability to use when, and executing it without hurting the wrong enemy can be quite precise.
- Yogurt Yard 6 starts off with a section that seems designed to encourage you to use Wheel. That is a trap, don't do it. Instead, you need to unlock the world's arena, get Hammer, and bring it to a side-room with off-colored blocks only it can break. As you can expect, this is one of the game's more infamous puzzles, and while Nightmare does fix this by making the blocks you need to break a more obvious metal color, it's still quite tough.
- Yogurt Yard's boss, Heavy Mole, is easily one of my favorites in the game. It's a dynamic scrolling boss that digs through the dirt in an erratic pattern, and it shoots missiles at you that give you Hammer! The only catch is your Hammer can dig through the dirt as well, so don't make the same mistake kid me did and accidentally dig yourself into a pitfall.
Orange Ocean
- Orange Ocean is the second of the beach worlds in Kirby's Adventure and it's probably the world I'm most divided on. On one hand, the sunset visuals are gorgeous and the level design does a bit more with the beach concept. On the other hand, there are a lot more swimming levels to deal with.
- Orange Ocean 1 has a first half that is pretty much all swimming, though hopefully you should still have a Hammer to deal with enemies underwater. And I really mean hopefully because there's yet another Big Switch hidden behind a hard block.
- Orange Ocean 2 has a lot of Scarfies to navigate, along with a fairly huge room in the clouds where you have to repeatedly climb up and down around columns, a fun final stretch where you hop across palm trees, and yet another Big Switch locked behind Hammer, are you kidding me?!
- Orange Ocean 3 is another highlight for me as it takes place primarily on a pirate ship. You start on the dock, go inside, go onto the deck, and climb up the mast, capping off with a visually-stunning Warp Star sequence where you soar into the background, with a neat pseudo 3D effect for good measure. It's fantastic stuff.
- Finding the Big Switch in this level is also quite the feat, Orange Ocean 3 can be a real maze with a bunch of hidden doors, and figuring out that you can use Laser to light a cannon fuse from underwater is probably the toughest puzzle to figure out in terms of practicality.
- Orange Ocean 4 mostly consists of another huge cavern filled with puzzles, hidden 1ups, tight pathways with spikes, and the one Big Switch I actually had trouble finding this playthrough (it was in a secret passage). The stage also ends strong with a fun sequence where you use a Parasol to block the falling coconuts.
- One thing I like about Orange Ocean is that its last two stages kinda cross over into Rainbow Resort, really giving off the vibe that this is the penultimate world and that you're approaching the end of this journey. Orange Ocean 5 specifically doesn't have too much of note beyond the environmental shift, though I do want to praise the Big Switch for having one of the tighter cannon chases in the game.
- Orange Ocean 6 is all UFOs. Right off the bat, it gives you a UFO and just lets you loose to wreak havoc on a swarm of other UFO enemies, two minibosses of your choice, and the last army of Meta Knights. It's just a pure dumb fun stage, I like it a lot.
- And if Heavy Mole isn't the best boss in Kirby's Adventure, it's definitely Meta Knight. It's the fast-paced, epic, genuinely challenging sword fight the entire game has been building up to, and I don't have to say it doesn't disappoint.
Rainbow Resort
- Rainbow Resort is probably my favorite world in the game, at least visually, but it does not start strong. Its first stage does begin with a fun Laser section, but it's quickly followed by the worst Big Switch in the game. You will have to run back and forth through a cramped block maze filled with fast moving enemies, swapping between the right abilities to break both star blocks and hard blocks disguised as normal blocks to carve a path to the Big Switch. It's not fun, and I dread it in either version of the game even if the NiDL version is a bit clearer.
- Rainbow Resort 2, thankfully, is a big improvement. This is the first of many mini-boss towers across the series, and the short health bars of minibosses in this game makes it very breezy. I also adore the starry background that caps this stage off, this entire world is absolutely gorgeous.
- Rainbow Resort 3 has one of the more memorable setpieces from this world, having you hop across sloped shards of ice both vertically, and horizontally in a fun Lollipop sequence.
- Rainbow Resort 4 has one of the most unique and striking one-off locations in the series, this weird inverted forest area that feels entirely out of sync with the rest of the world. It's the kind of location that could fit an entire world's worth of levels, but it's limited to a single screen.
- The rest of this stage is also quite memorable though, having you go through a series of rooms colored after the rainbow, each flooded with a unique type of enemy for you to deal with.
- Rainbow Resort 5 has a fun opening sequence where you run through a group of falling bombs, windy shafts that blow you up or down, and an absurdly tight cannon sequence so precise that I haven't been able to pull it off. Thank goodness there's no Big Switch hiding there.
- And of course, Rainbow Resort 6 is just an extended throwback to Kirby's Dream Land. I don't really need to go into the specifics, but I will say that it's a wonderful start to Kirby's legacy of fanservice and a fantastic final stage.
Fountain Of Dreams
- Fountain Of Dreams contains one of my favorite moments in the entire Kirby series, and it should be pretty obvious why if you've played the game.
- King Dedede's fight in Kirby's Adventure is good. It's almost exactly the same as the one in Dream Land, though he has a few more moves up his arsenal (he can now float like Kirby, and leap super high to do a super powerful hammer slam). However, something feels off. Why isn't King Dedede's usual theme playing (another thing NiDL got wrong btw)? Why did he go down so quickly?
- The succeeding cutscene is so perfectly animated. The way Kirby literally walks off the boundaries of the game screen, King Dedede's horrified face as he tries to stop Kirby from putting the Star Rod in the fountain, the ground-breaking twist that the series' established villain was actually good the entire time, and Kirby and Dedede immediately putting their rivalry aside to stop Nightmare. It can be argued that this very moment is where Kirby really becomes my favorite video game series of all time.
- As for the fight against Nightmare, it's pretty good. The first phase may even be great. It's yet another shmup fight and while I find Nightmare's attacks a bit easier to dodge than Kabula's, the addition of a ticking time element does give the fight a ton of urgency.
- The second phase where you actually fight Nightmare in his true form is also quite good, I especially love the opening where Kirby crashes his warp star trying to chase after him, perfectly timed to the drop in the music too. Atmosphere-wise, this fight is top-notch.
- Gameplay-wise, however, it does feel a tad underwhelming. Nightmare tries to elongate the fight by only revealing his weakspot at certain times, but he still only goes down in six hits of the Star Rod and most of his attacks are fairly slow and easy to dodge. Combined with the prior phase and the strong atmosphere, I can still easily call Nightmare a satisfying final boss, and definitely one of the best on the NES, but I still think it could've amped up the challenge a bit.
- Once you beat Kirby's Adventure, there's a really solid amount of post-game content, as per the usual for the series. There's the return of the Extra Game, a new Boss Rush mode, and an unlockable menu option that lets you play the three subgames whenever you want. For an NES game, the sheer amount of side stuff is quite impressive and ahead of its time.
Conclusion
In terms of game design, Kirby's Adventure is a huge step-up over the previous entry. It's longer, more complex, more content-rich, and more visually and audibly ambitious. It introduces so many important series mainstays, from the copy abilities, to King Dedede's redemption arc, to sliding, to the miniboss tower, to shameless fanservice, to creepy final bosses, to the Goal Game. It's impossible to deny Adventure's influence, but it's also not just an influential Kirby game. Many series-defining entries tend to feel increasingly generic as time goes on and the series starts to experiment a bit more, but Adventure's striking and varied art direction lends it a unique identity that no other entry in the series has been able to match.
And that's why it's a real shame that Nightmare In Dream Land just didn't carry over the same strong art direction because, mechanically, I have a lot of issues with the NES version of Adventure that NiDL fixes. The loosey-goosey controls, the eaten inputs, the slowdown, the erratic and at times sloppily placed enemies, the obtuse hard block puzzles, they don't seriously impact the game for me but they do prevent it from reaching the potential I know it has. It sucks we'll probably never have the true definitive version of this game, but the sheer artistic merit of the NES original alone is enough to make it my personal preferred way to play.
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