VC Review: Kirby’s Adventure

I am a big fan of the kirby series, I have played Super Star on the Super Nintendo, and the Crystal Shards for the Nintendo 64. Each one of these titles looked great, and did have at least somewhat of a challenge to them. I picked up the NES game (Kirby’s Adventure) yesterday, and to be honest, its not really all that difficult, and my feelings on it are kind of a mixed bag.

Developer: Hal Laboratories
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre:Action, Platformer
Rating: E for Everyone
Price: 500 Wii points ($5)
# of Players: 1
Released in: 1993
Console: Nintendo Entertainment System

Here is the story, the dream spring, a well that supplies everyone in dream land with pleasant dreams, is not working. This is causing everyone in dream land to have nightmares, and when Kirby arrives, he notices that the star rod from the spring is gone, and King Dedede is the culprit. Now he is set out on a quest to retrieve the star rod and save dream land. It is a cheesy story I know, but it sets the tone for what you are suppossed to do, protect good from evil.

The game looks ok for the time period. You will fight anywhere from forests, to caves, to sky levels, and so on. Each level looks ok, and has the basic amount of detail to make each environment believe, but they mostly consist of a flat background, with some moveable objects in the foreground. The only problem is in the variety of levels,, as there is little of. You will tend to play through at least five different forest and beach levels alone, each with not much difference to them, other than the location of certain enemies. More variety in the design and level types would have been nice to see.

The character designs are decent and well animated, but tend to repeat themselves quite often. You will see more waddle doos and fire enemies than you will want to in each level. It comes down to the more enemies on the screen, the more difficult the game will be, instead of quite a few varied enemies, each with their own type of attack. Most of the time you can fly above all of them without a scratch, which is really dissappointing. Kirby as always, looks as lively and animated as ever, so no problems on that front.



The music is quite lively, with various upbeat tunes to keep you going throughout each level. It will change up the pace quite a bit during each of the multiple boss fights, which keeps the intensity up, and keeps you focused on what you are doing. The sound effects are great, from kirby sucking in an enemy, to the different powerups you use, they all sound like they should, powerful and loud, and at times very funny.

Playing Kirby is much more fun than looking at it, and that is what really matters. You move him around with the d-pad, jump with the b button, while jumping, you press up on the directional pad to float (which is one of kirby’s most classic moves), suck in enemies by pressing the b button(his most famous move), and then devour them by pressing down on the d-pad to obtain their specific power. The controls make the game easy to pick up and play, and the various powerups that you can obtain from the enemies give you a variety of ways to attack your enemies. You will not need all of them, but it is nice to see what each of them can do, and that alone makes the experience quite enjoyable. The tornado is my favorite, as it can clear out an entire area of enemies, as well as help you access hard to reach areas in certain levels.

The concept is simple, get from one end of a level to another, go through the star door, and then rinse and repeat until you get to a boss fight, then beat the boss to finish off the area you are in, and that is it. There are secret areas in which you can access to get powerups, health, etc., and minigames that you can play in each area to earn the same types of items mentioned above. In quick draw, you have to shoot your enemy before they shoot you to win, the crane game is self explanatory, and egg catcher, in which you have to eat a certain amount of eggs to win. All are fun the first time, but unless you are good at them, they tend to get old pretty quickly.

All in all, I had a fun time with Kirby’s Adventure, but once you have played through all of the 43 levels, which will only take about 5 hours, the game is over, and there is nothing else to do afterwards. Sure the minigames offer a nice diversion, and the different powerups are fun to use, but there is no real reason to come back to this game once you have completed it. Maybe a co-operative mode, in which one person can be one of the different enemies, and can help you defeat enemies faster, and also help you complete the game in less time, would have been nice to see, but it just is not there, and that really sucks.



If you are a fan of the series, or just like simple platforming games, go ahead and give it a shot. At only 500 wii points, there is enough here to justify the purchase for a solid single player experience. If you are looking for a deeply involving game that you can play more than once, look elsewhere. (B-)

-Matt H.