It feels wrong to interrupt the hardware chatter here, but I just had to write about this game! I picked up Kirby’s Dream Land recently, having only previously played it a long time ago on a friend’s Game Boy.
After (finally!) conquering expert mode this afternoon, I’m happy to report back that it really exceeded my expectations. As we’ve seen with many other Game Boy classics, less really can mean more.
Being the first Kirby game, the little puffball doesn’t have his signature copy ability that he’d later obtain in his Famicom debut - but he really doesn’t need it. Dreamland’s five tightly designed levels are the perfect match for Kirby’s limited - yet expressive - moveset.
While a first playthrough isn’t particularly testing, the game is beautiful, its backgrounds, limited (yet purposeful) enemies and short pre-level animations conveying a lot with a little.
It’s what happens after the credits roll that really made the game for me. The first short playthrough was really just a test run to familiarise yourself with the controls and rules of the world and its enemies. Extra Mode puts up a tough and engaging challenge. It remixes what were once unthreatening enemies and level layouts into testing arenas that demand mastery of Kirby’s abilities.
Sections and bosses that you could clear sloppily first time around now demand careful attention to your movements and awareness of enemies, and get the nature of Kirby’s free-flying floating gameplay means victory rarely feels like the product of trial and error. Even when level 4 took about twenty attempts!
This is a game that doesn’t outstay its welcome, and it’s mindblowing to think how much they got out of a simple idea like this - even the shmup segments make perfect sense given Kirby’s abilities and the powerups in the game. It’s another product of its time in the sense that the Game Boy’s hardware and storage limitations - and Kirby’s then-absence of expectation from a new series - were an editor of sorts, keeping excess at bay. I just wish I tried it sooner and didn’t dismiss it due to its relative simplicity compared with its larger Famicom sibling.
I’ve still got Trip World to play (again, on 3DS VC), but there’s also quite a few well-known titles left that I haven’t looked into. I’m definitely picking up Revenge of the Gator on @D.Lo’s recommendation, but is Metroid II and Kid Icarus II worth a look?
I thought Avenging Spirit is one of Jaleco’s best games, but there’s also two predecessors to SFC game Operation Logic Bomb on Game Boy, hope those are good.