Kirby's Adventure (NES, 1993)
A swan song classic for the NES. The birth of copy abilities.
Nostalgia Factor: High. I’m a massive Kirby dweeb.
Difficulty: Easy. Slightly more challenging than other Kirby games.
My first Kirby game was Kirby Super Star for SNES, which I still consider to be the pinnacle of the series, so I was worried what kind of experience I’d have playing through Kirby’s Adventure. It’s a NES game, right? It will be primitive and dull and frustratingly wonky, like some of the other NES games I’ve played.
I was pleasantly surprised to find this game to be wonderfully playable. Sakurai has done it again. He squeezed everything he could out of the Game Boy for Kirby’s Dream Land, and now he’s squeezed everything he could out of the NES. This is easily one of the smoothest action platformers on the console. The visuals look fantastic. Obviously, the NES can’t compete with the SNES and other more recent consoles, but I’m amazed at some of the visuals they were able to pull off in this title.
The music is solid, and Hirokazu Ando will go on to compose great tracks for many future Kirby titles, but I do still place Jun Ishikawa (Kirby’s Dream Land, Kirby Super Star) on the highest pedestal of Kirby composers.
The level design is primo, filled with hidden exits and a pleasing variety of environments across 41 levels and 7 worlds. The mini-games are a nice bonus as well, which kickstarts a longstanding tradition of great mini-games in Kirby titles to come. Kirby’s Adventure introduces the iconic “copy ability”, allowing Kirby to copy an enemy’s ability by swallowing it. Sakurai and the gang at HAL have crammed a whopping 25 copy abilities into this game! They initially created 40 copy abilities, and selected their favorites to include in the final version of the game. Even though not all abilities are particularly complex, this is still a very ambitious feat for a NES game.
Kirby’s Adventure brings a few firsts. It’s the first Kirby game in color, the first game to introduce copy abilities, and we are also graced with the first appearance of Meta Knight, a now regular character in the franchise. Even though, technically, Kirby’s Dream Land is the first Kirby game, Kirby’s Adventure lays the groundwork for what the rest of the Kirby franchise will be.