Kirby’s Dream Land (GB)

I know I’m a little late to the party, but here it goes anyway. HAPPY 25TH BIRTHDAY KIRBY!!! That’s right! This year marks the 25th anniversary of everyone’s favorite pink puffball, Kirby. Sorry Jigglypuff, we love you too.

Anyway, Kirby’s Dream Land for the Original Game Boy was released on April 27th, 1992 in japan and August 1st, 1992 here in the USA. It marked the first appearance of the now iconic character known as Kirby. However, he was a somewhat different character in his first appearance than what he is now. Sure, his appearance was still the same, and he could still run and jump, and inflate himself like a balloon. He could even swallow enemies up whole and spit them back out like projectiles. So you may be wondering, what could possibly be missing if he can do all that? The answer is his copy ability! In his first outing, Kirby did not yet possess his now character defining ability to copy his opponent’s powers. He was also white instead of pink, but that’s a limitation of the system more than anything. So with that in mind, and in celebration of his 25th birthday, let’s head off to Dream Land and see how well the game has aged!

Gameplay

The game starts you out in Green Greens with no introduction, so let me fill you in on the backstory according to the Instruction Manual. On a distant star, there is a place known as Dream Land. There, the Dream Landers use their magical Sparkling Stars to work and play and create food. One night, King Dedede and his band of thieves came down from Mt. Dedede, ate all of the food in Dream Land, and stole the Sparkling Stars. Without the Sparkling Stars, the Dream Landers can’t make any more food and soon became very hungry. That’s when Kirby showed up, and took it upon himself to get the Sparkling Stars back from King Dedede!

With that out of the way, let’s get right into the actual game. Even without his copy ability, the gameplay itself still feels very familiar. Kirby can still inhale his enemies and shoot them back as projectiles. He can also inflate himself and fly around the world with ease.

There is also a decent sense of exploration in the game, with Kirby being able to enter various buildings along the way, usually with goodies inside. And of course, there are the warp stars half way through most of the levels that will bring you to the other areas.

After taking the warp star, Kirby finds himself in his first mid-boss battle with Poppy Bros. Sr. This enemy generally keeps its distance and will throws bombs at our hero. This makes him a relatively easy boss to defeat. Just suck up the bombs and spit them back at him. Before you know it he’ll be defeated and Kirby will be on his way.

That won’t be the last time we’ll be seeing the Poppy Bros though. During the rest of the stage we’ll see several Poppy Bros. Jr. Often times they’ll even be riding on the back of a Grizzo giving them a slight height advantage over little Kirby.

As we progress through the stage, Kirby’s flying ability really starts to come in handy as we need to fly to the top of a hollowed out tree. You have to be careful though, because there are quite a few enemies that seem to call this hollow tree home.

Shortly after making it through the hollow tree, Kirby will find himself falling right in front of the game’s first boss, Whispy Woods. Since his first appearance here in Kirby’s Dream Land, Whispy Woods has become a highly recognizable recurring boss in the series. He usually shows up as the first boss, since he is in fact very easy to beat.

As you can see, he is a sentient tree, so he really can’t move at all. What he can do though is drop apples from up above in hopes of hitting Kirby on the head. There is usually plenty of time for Kirby to get out of the way, and now he has a projectile to shoot back at the massive enemy.

Other than that, the only other attack Whispy Woods seems to have is to blow little puffs of air in hopes of making Kirby go away. That of course doesn’t work, and Kirby makes short work of the tree, causing it to start crying and handing over the first of the Sparkling Stars.

After a quick victory dance, we find ourselves in Stage 2 – Castle Lololo. If you don’t know, this castle is named after another Hal Laboratory character, Lolo, from the Adventures of Lolo Series. Unlike Kirby, The Lolo games are puzzle games which I find very fun, and hope to someday review on this site.

The journey through the castle is quite different from what we faced in Green Greens. For starters, it feels like there are a lot more enemies in this area. It is also a bit more maze like in its layout, forcing you to swim through some tight spaces.

Thankfully, there is a nice invincibility lollypop just lying around at one point. This lets Kirby just fly right though the swarms of enemies without a care in the world. Of course, this effect is only short lived, but it serves its purpose well and helps Kirby reach the Warp Star of this stage.

This brings us face to face with Lololo himself, acting as the midboss for the stage. This is another incredibly easy fight. The whole time, Lololo is just pushing boxes out in front of himself which Kirby can suck up and spit back at him. After a few hits Lololo is defeated and we can continue on our adventure.

After the midboss fight, there really isn’t a whole lot left to the castle. All you have to do is float up a tower avoiding the spiky Gordo enemies as well as a few others. Then easily take care of the group of enemies on the roof. After that, the boss battle is straight through the door at the top of the castle.

In this fight you once again fight against Lololo, this time accompanied by his girlfriend Lalala. Their battle strategy, if you can even call it a battle strategy, is much the same as the previous battle with Lololo. They will simply appear from the doors pushing boxes and walk across their platforms.

Death Count: 1

While not a very difficult boss in general, the tight spaces can make it hard to get out of their way. Eventually this became too much for me and I died. It’s shameful, I know, but look at this whole site, it’s a shrine to my pathetically shameful deaths.

Anyway, after that first attempt, I learned quite a bit about what I’m supposed to do in this battle. The second attempt went much better. This time, Lololo was the first to be defeated, having only shaved a single hit point off of Kirby so far. With the battle now one-on-one, Lalala was no match for Kirby and was also quickly defeated.

And with that, Kirby collects his second Sparkling Star, does another victory dance, and we’re off to Stage 3. This time we’ll be heading to Float Island. From the title card, it looks like we’ll be in for another open area like Green Greens.

Just as expected, we are outside again, but it’s quickly apparent that this is a much different area compared to Green Greens. For starters, there are a lot of environmental hazards you need to be aware of here. The Palm trees in the background for example will actually drop their coconuts on Kirby’s head as he walks under them. Then for some reason there are several canons hiding in the water ready to shoot our hero as he flies over.

After avoiding all those hazards, Kirby finds himself in a rather dangerous looking cave system. Just look at those stalactites hanging there! They’re easily sharp enough to rip our little hero to shreds. There are also strange floating heads called Kabu which seems to be able to fade in and out of existence, making them somewhat more difficult that other enemies.

We do however find a very helpful secret. Hidden in this mass of blocks is a secret door. Once you pass through this door, you’ll find yourself in a small path of star water, at the end of which is a much appreciated 1up.

We continue our journey and eventually make our way out of the cave and quickly find ourselves on a large boat. It’s here that we find one of the rare power-ups in this game. Eating a plate of spicy curry will grant Kirby the temporary ability to breathe fire at his enemies. It’s not quite the same as Kirby’s signature copy ability, but it’s as close as this game is going to come.

From here, it’s just a short distance more before we find the Warp Star, making the midway point of the level. However, there is no Midboss this time. Instead Kirby find himself stuck in the blowhole of a rather large whale. The whale of course isn’t too happy to have Kirby there and quickly blasts him out and up into the sky.

Rather than flying off into the distance, Kirby actually manages to land on the clouds themselves. Of course, he’s not alone up here in the sky. There are actually a few enemies here already. They don’t pose much of a threat however. What’s curious is that there is a Mint Leaf up here as well. At least, I’m being told it’s a mint leaf. It looks more like a lemon that any type of leaf I’ve ever seen.

Anyway, eating the mint leaf will give Kirby “Minty Fresh Breath” which means he can puff out an unlimited number of air bullets. He’s going to need that too as the next boss battle will take place entirely in the air against the blimp boss Kabula.

Due to the flying nature of this battle, it takes on a very classic side scrolling shooter feel to it. Kabula will be flying around shooting randomly in every direction. All you have to do is avoid those shots and pretty much never stop shooting air bullets. Occasionally Kabula will actually try to ram Kirby, but this is also fairly easy to avoid.

Before long, Kabula will explode, releasing the 3^rd Sparkling Star, and marking the end of this stage. Once again Kirby will do his victory dance, and we move onto the next area. It would appear Kirby never does manage to get out of the clouds, as the next area is Bubbly Clouds. Curiously, we see a whole army of Kirby popping out of the one cloud during the title card sequence. I wonder what that could mean.

Bubbly Clouds is home to some rather unusual new enemies. The first of which is Scarfy, which at first glance looks like a fairly normal cute floating ball with cat-like ears. However, these enemies cannot be inhaled like other enemies. Attempting to do so will only make them mad and transform in the Mutated Scarfy. Once mutated, they will chase after Kirby and explode on contact. It would be best to simply avoid these guys whenever possible.

There are also strange demon heads called Kookler floating about. They appear to have a somewhat gelatinous body texture, as they seem to squish and contort themselves as they move around. Otherwise, they aren’t much of a threat.

Continuing forward, we eventually make our way to a castle in the clouds, and our first introduction to the Sir Kibble enemies. These guys are one of my personal favorites because they would normally give you the Cutter ability, which lets you throw a rather large boomerang like projectile. Unfortunately, Kirby lacks the copy ability in this game, and so Sir Kibble is simply another enemy to destroy in this game.

Death Count: 3

Shortly after passing through the castle, we find ourselves in a rather tight cloud maze full of enemies. Sad to say, this ended up being too much for me, and I died a few times while trying to pass through here. The maze itself isn’t very difficult to navigate however, and we soon find our way to the exit.

Unfortunately, this brings us face to face with the midboss of this stage, Kracko Jr. Kracko Jr is actually one of the more disturbing looking enemies you encounter in the whole game, as it’s simple a giant floating eye surrounded by 4 small orbs. Curiously, Kracko Jr is capable of spawning enemies to attack Kirby with. This of course backfires as those enemies quickly become projectiles for Kirby to fight with.

Kracko Jr. will also occasionally throw out several small black orbs as well as attempt to dive bomb Kirby. Both of these attacks are fairly easy to avoid, and Kracko Jr will quickly be defeated. Unlike other stages where the warp star brings you TO the midboss, defeating Kracko Jr will actually produce the warp star and allow you to continue to the rest of the stage.

After flying high up into the stars, we quickly find another mint leaf. However, this isn’t to be used in another boss battle. Instead you use it to break your way through a rather large wall. If you do it strategically, you can even pick up a few goodies along the way.

Shortly after this you find a plate of curry with lets you clear out a long corridor of blocks. Just be careful you don’t accidentally fall down any of the holes in the floor.

Following the long corridor, all that’s left of this stage is a flight straight up through the stars, all the while trying not to be damaged by the many enemies you encounter along the way. Waiting for you at the top of the stars is a small doorway. Just pass through it and get ready for this stage’s Boss fight.

It would seem Kracko has done some growing up since we last saw him. Instead of simply being a floating eyeball, he now has a much puffier appearance. Now he looks more like a large cloud…with a massive eyeball stuck in it… it’s still kind of disturbing you matter how you look at it.

Death Count: 4

Anyway, the battle doesn’t exactly go well for us. Kracko is regularly dive bombing Kirby, which with its larger body is now much harder to avoid. Not only that, but it now has a double beam attack which covers a large area of the screen. Needless to say, Kirby was dead before any damage could even be done to the boss.

The second attempt goes much better than the first did. Now that I’ve seen the attacks, I have at least some idea of how to avoid them. During the battle, Kracko once again spawns enemies which Kirby can shoot back as projectiles. The battle was pretty well balance between the two of them, but Kirby ultimately won out in the end.

This gives us the 4^th Sparkling Star and yet another victory dance. With all the bosses defeated, we finally make our way to the castle atop Mt. Dedede to face off against King Dedede himself.

We crash through the walls of the castle and right into the main chamber where we find 4 doors. If you look, you can see they all represent the 4 bosses we’ve already defeated. But there’s no door to fight King Dedede himself. It looks like we’re going to have to boss run all four bosses in a row before victory will be ours.

We start things off easy by getting Whispy Woods out of the way first. Surprisingly, there actually is a short level before the boss fight itself. At the end of the level it took me a second to figure out how to get through the doorway. For some reason there was a Gordo floating right in the doorway. The only way to get rid of this was to touch the impostor Kirby that was standing behind it.

This brings us once again to our battle with Whispy Woods. He is much more powerful this time around, but his attacks haven’t changed much, and he is still incredibly easy to defeat. Just launch a few apples at him, and before long he’ll be crying for mercy.

After this I thought it would be fun to fight Kabula next rather than fighting them in the original order. Just like with Whispy Woods, the battle with Kabula hasn’t changed much. Kabula does seem to be moving and shooting much faster this time around, which does make this a little bit difficult, but nothing we can’t handle. After an intense battle, Kabula once again explodes, and we’re half way through our boss run.

Following that battle, we head over to fight Lololo and Lalala again. Their battle seems almost identical to the first time we fought them. They might be moving a little faster than before, but if they are it’s not a noticeable improvement. Without much trouble they too are defeated.

Death Count: 5

This leaves only Kracko left for us to battle, and only a single hit point to do it in. This of course proved to be impossible. We only managed to get one good hit on Kracko before getting hit ourselves and dying. Thankfully, you progress through the boss run is saved, and we still only have to fight Kracko.

Our second attempt at Kracko goes much better. Well, we win the battle at least, but we took a pathetic amount of damage in the process. Just like the other bosses, Kracko seems to move a bit faster, and attacks more aggressively. We win in the end, but we are left with only 2 hits and a single life going into the final battle with King Dedede.

Death Count: 6

And so we fly into the center portrait of King Dedede and almost immediately die. We barely had a chance to learn anything at all about his attack pattern before we died. Thankfully, that wasn’t actually our last life. We get one more chance at it before it’s over.

Even with another attempt, we don’t make much progress. King Dedede just has too many attacks and not enough openings. It actually took me a while to figure out how to attack him since he doesn’t seem to produce anything to be used as projectiles. Equipped with his giant mallet, he will regularly come running at Kirby and swing it hard enough to produce stars on impact.

Not only that, but King Dedede seems to have the same inhaling ability Kirby does. If you get too close, he might just swallow up little Kirby whole and spit him back out like a projectile himself.

The air isn’t safe either as Kind Dedede, despite being a penguin, has remarkably powerful legs which allow him to jump incredibly high into the air. So high in fact that he lands hard enough to produce two stars around him on impact.

As it turns out, these stars are actually the key to victory. They are the only things to appear during this battle which can be inhaled and shot back at him. But they disappear so quickly that you’re going to have to stick close to him if you want a chance to swallow them up in the first place.

Death Count: 7

Unfortunately, it took me too long to come to this realization and we once again die. Since it was our last life, that of course means a game over for us. All the inhabitants of Dream Land are doomed to starve to death now. Or they would be if it weren’t for the continue we have. Thank the gaming gods for continues!

Death Count: 8

With a full new set of lives, we head back into the ring with King Dedede. We’ve made improvements, that’s for sure, but still not enough to win. King Dedede apparently also had a few extra moves hidden under his sleeves that we hadn’t seen yet. The first is mostly useless as he’ll occasionally run straight at you and fall on his face. The second however is the one which killed me. Apparently if you’re flying above him, he’ll occasionally jump straight up at you and swat you out of the sky with his giant mallet. These are good things to know.

It’s once more into the ring for our hero Kirby. Using everything we’ve learned over the past few battles, it looks like we can finally win this one. We take a few hits, but we deal them right back out. And just when King Dedede thinks he has Kirby cornered, we knock him flying right out of the ring!

As King Dedede goes flying off into the distance, Kirby remains back in the ring doing his victory dance. We now have all of the Sparkling Stars and the day is saved.

And so, Kirby inflates himself larger than ever before, turning himself into basically a hot air balloon. One large enough to carry the whole castle off the mountain top and let it rain food down on all the Dream Landers. They’ll never have to worry about food again.

As a reward for beating the game, you are presented with the secret button combination needed to play the “Extra Game”. I’m not going to play this, but from what I understand, it’s basically a hard mode for the game. If you want to give it a try, good luck, but that’s all you’ll be seeing from me, Thanks for reading.

Verdict

Gameplay – 8 / 10

Without his copy ability, the game did feel a bit bland. However, it was still a very fun and enjoyable game with a lot of character.

Graphics – 9 / 10

I really like the graphics in this game, and the fact that it’s an original Game Boy game just makes it all the more impressive. Really it deserves a perfect score, because there isn’t much more you can get out of the limited system. But I’m going to take one point off simply on the technicality of Kirby’s design. While he may be an iconic Nintendo character now, I can’t overlook the fact that he was originally intended to be a place holder for a real character to be designed later. He’s still rather expressive and charming despite this, but he is without question one of the most simplistically designed characters ever.

Audio – 10 / 10

The Kirby soundtrack has a very unique sound to it which works perfectly with the game. It has a very upbeat and cute feel while still keeping the fast pace action energy of the game. Again, the fact that this is coming from a Game Boy, you really can’t ask for anything more.

Story – 2 / 10

In game, there is really no mention of any kind of story at all. Had I not tracked down a copy of the manual I would have had no idea why I was doing anything I was doing. I know most old games were like this, but this is definitely at the extreme end of the spectrum for lack of story. It only gets any score at all because it at least had something in the manual.

Total Playtime – 0h 36m

It’s a REALLY short game. Had I not died it probably wouldn’t have broken half an hour. While that is very short there are a few things to keep in mind. First, it is a Gameboy game, so it’s almost intended to be played in a short burst. Also, there are a lot of areas for exploration, as well as the whole “Extra Game” to offer a bit of replayability. Then the general simplicity of the game as well as the short length would probably make this a good title for speed runners.

Total Deaths – 8 Deaths

All in all, I’m not too upset with that death count. I managed to make it all the way to the final boss before I had to use a continue. Even before that I didn’t die for the first time until almost half way through the game. In general it’s a fairly easy game to play. King Dedede is really the only “Hard” enemy you face.

Overall Score – 8 / 10

Even without his copy ability, this is still a very solid and enjoyable game. It’s short, and fairly easy, but it’s also incredibly charming. Since it’s the first game in the long series, it’s hard not to compare it to the later games and their improvements. But at the same time, there never would have been later games if the first one wasn’t already a masterpiece of its own. You don’t get the strategy or customization options you see in later games, but you still get a very enjoyable adventure with Kirby. Considering you can pick up a used copy of the game for generally less than $15, there’s no reason you shouldn’t add this classic to your collection.

Looking forward to another 25 years Kirby!

 

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