Sonic For Hire - Kirby

Here you go.

Also, Kirby is one cold motherfucker.

Why wasn't this released?

Seriously, it looks fun. Plus, it would have been for the GameCube.

DAT SNOOP DOGG

Because I honestly can't think of anything else.

GamingJustice plays Kirby's Dream Land - Part 3 of 3

Stuff. Also, Dedede.

 [title]Stage 5 - Mt. Dedede[/title]

The four doors are a boss rush.

Basically, you play short sections that look like the level they're from, touch the Kirby near the door to make the Gordo blocking it disappear, and then go in the door and fight the boss. That's it, really. Also, touching the Gordo blocking the door takes off three units of health.

Anyway, why do you fight Lolo and Lala? Aren't they the protagonists of their own series? Also, come on, HAL. Give us a 3D reboot of Adventures of Lolo. Please?

Why do the Kirbys that activate the doors dance? How do they dance like that? How and why does Kirby split into three? Why am I questioning all this?

When you beat all four bosses again, fly into the picture of King Dedede to fight...King Dedede.

Fly away from him when he rushes towards you without his hammer out. He'll slide into you or try to inhale you.

When he pulls his hammer out, move a few steps back, face him and inhale the star he makes when his hammer hits the ground.

When he crouches down, he's about to jump. Get close enough to inhale one of the two stars he makes and spit it at him.

After ten hits, you'll knock him out of his castle, causing the castle to have a sad face. Dream Land is hungry no more...

GamingJustice plays Kirby's Dream Land - Part 2 of 3

Another blog entry for another easy game. On a side note: will Kirby ever eat hot curry again?

Stage 3: Float Islands

Another easy level, though there are a few things to mention:

The clams that attack like the Waddle Doos can't be inhaled if their shells are shut.

The cannons have easy patters, but it's easy to damage from them if you're careless.

The falling coconuts on the palm trees (or are they dates or leaves? I can't tell) don't explode like bombs here, unlike in the later games.

The shells cannot be inhaled unless the occupants of them are poking their heads out and moving around.

The first two sections are easy. The first one just has you moving all the way to the right, and you can fly over all the enemies with ease. The second one has you making your way to the door at the bottom-right corner.

When you reach the ship at the beginning of the third section, you'll find a plate of curry. Taking it will have Kirby spitting out fireballs when you press B, and he'll be in motion and flashing as long as it's in effect. If you go through the door in the middle, you'll find a 1-Up. If you still have the curry power-up in effect when you jump in the water, it'll stop working.

The door at the end of the ship takes you to a Warp Star that takes you to a Whale's blowhole which takes you to the boss section. Fight off the Kaboos and you'll find what looks like an oversized lemon. Taking it makes you fly indefinitely and triggers a boss fight.

Just hold B and move around so your air pellets hit the blimp. Avoid the cannon shots, and move out of the way when it spins.
 

Stage 4: Bubbly Clouds

A little bit more difficult, but not too much.

The first two sections have you moving to the right. There are a good amount of flying enemies here, so be careful. The Sparkys (the smiling things that float) explode like bombs when you shoot air pellets at them. Inhaling them just makes them mad, and they instantly become one-eyed, fanged monsters that chase after you until the blow up.

The third stage is a maze. The flying enemies here have set movement patterns that are easy to anticipate. When you reach a fork in the road, go left for power-ups and right for the mini-boss.

Another mini-boss, and this time it's Kracko...but in a weaker form and not the spiked thunder cloud we all know and love. Fly in the upper-left to avoid both him and his cannonball shots, then quit flying and spit the Waddle Dee he spits out back at him. After three hits comes the Warp Star.

Grab the oversized lemon (whatever it is) to the left of the waterfall...then fly right and break some blocks. There are two Pep Brews and a Maxim Tomato here, so there's no excuse not to have full health at this point.

The rest of this stage is easy - eat some curry and break all the blocks to access the door, then fly to the top to meet the boss.

Kracko is now in his powered-up form. He'll attack with two beams, swoop towards you in a U-pattern, and spit Waddle Doos out. Spit them at him like before, and jump out of the way when he swoops down.

GamingJustice plays Kirby's Dream Land - Part 1 of 3

...and this is where it all began. The

first Kirby game ever.

You should know what's going on here by now. King Dedede has stolen Dream Land's food supply and Kirby has to get it back.

Stage 1: Green Greens

The controls are pretty simple. Press Up to fly (and B to spit the air out - works as a weapon, too), Left and Right to move around, Down ducks, while A are B are jump and suck respectively.

Once again, you can't copy abilities when you press Down after inhaling an enemy. Also, inhaling two enemies still gives you the normal star attack. (Both wouldn't debut until the next game, Kirby's Adventure.)

Once you have an enemy in your mouth, B spits them out as a star-shaped projectile. I don't know why I'm even mentioning this, as the controls are so easy you don't even need the instruction manual to figure them out, so let's just get back to the game.

The enemies here are nothing you haven't seen before (unless you've never played a Kirby game in your life - if you haven't, then your gaming expertise is bad and you should feel bad), so all you really need to do is just inhale them and spit them back out at other enemies.

The door with the word "in" above it leads you to two Pep Brews. Don't know why you'd need to refill four units of health this early in the game unless you've either run into or jumped on everything...but okay...

There's a Warp Star at the end of the first segment. It takes you a fight with Poppy Bros. Sr., which is a joke if you've played Kirby before. Just inhale the bombs he throws, and spit them back out at him. He does have a leaping attack, but if your aim is perfect every time you won't see it. After three hits, it's smooth sailing from here.

The third section is the inside of a tree. The segments of the level blocked off by the Star Blocks lead nowhere, so just go straight up. If you need to refill your health for whatever reason, there's a Maxim Tomato near the top, which refills all your energy.

The boss here is Whispy Woods. He's ridiculously easy - just suck up the apples and spit them at him. Duck when he spits the air clouds. That's it.

When you beat him, grab the star and it's on to Stage 2.

Stage 2: Castle Lololo

It's the stage they didn't put in Kirby Super Star - sort of.

When you enter the castle, inhale the microphone and spit it back out to destroy the enemies. Go into the door on the right.

Some of the other doors take you to dead ends with either enemies or power-ups. The game is so easy, however, that they aren't noteworthy.

When you see the bomb, inhale it and spit it out. As long as the resulting explosion remains on-screen, they'll kill off any enemies in your way.

The masks can be inhaled when they change expression. The faces in the ? blocks can also be inhaled. Go down and to the left in the third section.

Interesting note about the fourth section: he can't attack underwater, because the water gun attack wasn't introduced yet. D'oh! Just go from Point A to Point B here.

Grab the Candy and float all the way up. Simple.

The sixth section has the Mummy Balls, which can only be destroyed by an air pellet (made by pressing Up to fly and pressing B to stop flying). Since you're most likely still invincible, just run to the Warp Star.

You'll face Lolo here. Spit three of the boxes he shoves at you to beat him and move on.

You could go all the way right in the next section, but going to the top beforehand gives you a Maxim Tomato...and more points in the way of enemies to fight when you get up there.

After an easy section, you'll get a room full of doors. The one at the very top is the one you want, but another door leads to a 1-Up! (The rest just take you to another door in the room.) One last easy section, and you'll face Lolo and Lala.

Same thing as last time...just spit three boxes at each of them. Try not to get cornered, please.

Video Game Icons: Kirby

NOTE

I've only played everything up to Kirby 64, so I can't really say much about the newer games. But if reception of Kirby's Epic Yarn (the newest game out there when I first posted this) proves anything, the newer games are just as good. I'm just letting you guys know.

Intro

Kirby...probably the simplest name you can give one of the smallest video game heroes in history. He's pink, he inhales enemies, he spits them back out at other enemies, he copies his foes' powers, and he rides on warp stars.

Then again, he was always a simple hero.

Origins

Kirby's Dream Land originally showed up in Japanese video game magazines in 1991 under the name "Twinkle Popopo." He always had a pink body and red feet (shoes?) at the beginning, especially in video game magazine scans from that era - proof that Kirby was never white, not even in the early '90s.

Even less obvious, however, is how Kirby got his name. Some sources have told that he got his name from the Kirby Vacuum Company, but Kirby's creator Masahiro Sakurai says that he has no recollection on how Kirby got his name.

From the beginning, it was made clear that Kirby and his kind were inhabitants of Dream Land. Both then and now, however, no explanation has been given as to what species Kirby and others like him were. Twenty-plus games later, we still have no explanation...but in a way, it doesn't matter.

The Early Games

The first game to feature Kirby was Kirby's Dream Land, which came to American shoes in February of 1992 for the Nintendo Game Boy. Unlike the Kirby games that come out these days, this one was simple: Kirby couldn't copy powers; all he could do to enemies was inhale them and spit them back at other enemies in the form of stars. He could fly at the beginning, just by breathing a bunch of air and holding his breath, a seemingly simple ability which set him apart from other protagonists at the time.

Compared to future entries in the Kirby Universe, the first game was relatively easy. It still holds the record as the only game I've ever beaten the day I got it. However, it also came with an Extra Game mode that changed the appearance of some of the enemies and made the game harder, provided you know the (very simple) code that shows up when you beat the game.

The next game was Kirby's Adventure, which was released on the NES in 1993, during the sunset of the 8-bit era. Unlike just about every NES release, the game utilized a lot of data space - 6 megabits, to be exact - and took the NES's hardware to its full potential. It wasn't very showy or glitzy, even compared to the Super NES released from around this time, but it was a lot more colorful compared to other games on the NES and utilized parallax scrolling, special visual effects and even improvised 3D rotation for towers in a few stages. That last one made me stare at the screen like I was re-creating the Inglip face the first time I saw it, since I had never seen that in an 8-bit game before. It was also the first game where Kirby was not only revealed to be pink (to American games, anyway), but that he could also swallow enemies and steal their powers when the player presses Down after inhaling certain foes. Some powers, such as Beam, Parasol and Bomb would become mainstays, while other such as Tornado, Hi-Jump and UFO wouldn't show up in any other Kirby game. The game was remade on Game Boy Advance under the name Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land, and is slated to be released on the 3DS, supposedly with camera support.

1995 brought the next side-scroller entry in the Kirby universe: Kirby's Dream Land 2 for the Game Boy. This game brought us new help in the form of Rick the Hamster, Coo the Owl and Kine the Fish, who strangely have never figured into another Kirby game save for Dream Land 3. This was also the debut of Dark Matter, who would hound Kirby in other games - most notably Kirby's Dream Land 3 and Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. This was also one of the first games along with Kirby's Avalanche (a Super Nintendo Puyo Puyo clone) and Kirby's Dream Course (a Super Nintendo golf sim with Kirby as the ball) that depicted Kirby as pink instead of white on the American packaging.

Later Games, Non-Sidescrollers and Other Appearances

Kirby has appeared in many non-platformers throughout his existence. The first one was Kirby's Pinball Land for the Nintendo Game Boy in 1994. This game had Kirby acting as a ball in pinball-like worlds where he would fight other enemies in the Kirby universe, and proved that Kirby was better-suited to the pinball world than Mario, Samus Aran and - perhaps - Sonic the Hedgehog, whose Sonic Spinball was released in October of 1993, months before Kirby's Pinball Land. Since then, he's been a mascot in a Puyo Puyo clone, a golf ball, a racer, a fighter (he's been in all three Super Smash Bros. games, and he'll more than likely appear in the 3DS entry), a ball in a Breakout clone, and more.

In 1995, HAL released Kirby Super Star for the Super Nintendo, which was advertised as having eight games in one. Even though they were all short, it was the storylines as well as what you could do in each game that counted. There was Spring Breeze with its re-telling of Kirby's Dream Land, Dynablade with its simple worlds and worl map, Revenge of Meta-Knight with its dialogue running on the screen as you beat the clock, Milky Way Wishes and its interesting concept of letting you choose your power at any time (assuming you found it first), Gourmet Race and its food-gobbling races to the finish line...and quite possibly my favorite of them all, the spelunking adventures of The Great Cave Offensive. Looking for treasure, fighting bosses and riding mine carts appealed to me back then, and even though the exit to the pyramid section was right next to the pyramid, I would explore that pyramid for hours on end for no reason at all. The game also had a co-op mode that allowed Kirby to take their power and use it to create an ally with that power with a press of a button, who could then be controlled by a second player. The game has since been remade and re-released for the Nintendo DS, bringing the wonder of this game to a new generation.

The Kirby's Dream Land trilogy was completed with Kirby's Dream Land 3, released on Super Nintendo in 1997. Having come out in the twilight of the 16-bit era almost immediately after Kirby's Super Star and became what is the last first-party game ever released for the system in the West, the game has been considered underrated by some, but also brought in some great ideas that, once again, never showed up in any other game. Even though some of the things you could do in Kirby Super Star were absent, three new animal buddies along with a second player in the form of a black blob named Gooey who could do everything Kirby could and was instantly summoned in exchange for sacrificing two hit points made up for it. At least co-op wasn't out of the question: the second controller could be used to control Gooey.

In 2000, Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards was released for the Nintendo 64. Even though the graphics were in 3D, the gameplay was still entrenched in the 2D roots of the series. The big thing here was the ability to use two powers at the same time by swallowing one enemy, pulling the power out of the Kirby's stomach, and throwing it at another enemy to get a combination power-up, whether it be wielding a flaming zweihander, turning into a stone-cut version of one of the animal buddies and running into enemies, spewing volcanic rocks out of Kirby's head, they were as hilarious as they were useful.

As I admitted at the beginning, I haven't played any of the Kirby games that have come out after Kirby 64, but I'm pretty sure that everything after it is pretty interesting, especially the GT-revered Epic Yarn. Let's hope that the upcoming Wii game is just as good.