Kirby Super Star: Sakurai's Magnum Opus

This is it. This is the one. If you only play one Kirby game your entire life, it has to be Kirby Super Star (or Kirby and the Forgotten Land if you’d rather opt for a modern title). This was Masahiro Sakurai’s best and final mainline Kirby game in which he functioned as Game Director. He would contribute to a few future Kirby titles in minor roles, but his attention would be shifted primarily towards the Super Smash Bros. franchise.

I consider Kirby Super Star (KSS) to be the pinnacle of the series. The best Kirby games to follow were those that more or less captured the iconic speedy gameplay and feel that was nearly perfected in KSS. Shimomura’s followups (Dream Land 3 and Kirby 64) departed significantly, and many KSS fans (including myself) were disappointed.

KSS is masterful action platforming on par with other high-caliber SNES platformers like Super Mario World and the Donkey Kong Country trilogy. It just “feels good” to play. Kirby is quick, responsive, and powerful. It’s fun speeding through levels and slashing enemies into little bits.

Sakurai and the HAL crew set the bar high in Kirby’s Adventure with 25 copy abilities, but they crammed 26 copy abilities into KSS. Plus, many of these copy abilities are much more deeply developed, with complex move sets similar to characters from a fighting game. Instead of just pressing Y to use one attack, many copy abilities have a dash attack, an aerial attack, a ↑Y attack, and a ↓Y attack. Some abilities allow you to charge up Y for a more powerful attack, and some have combo sequences by pressing Y repeatedly near an enemy.

There are 5 main game modes, which make up 5 different shorter Kirby adventures:

• Spring Breeze is an abridged full-color remake of Kirby’s Dream Land

• Dyna Blade contains 4 levels on an overworld map that lead to a final boss encounter

• The Great Cave Offensive is a somewhat non-linear treasure hunt for 60 hidden treasures across four main areas, each featuring a boss battle

• Revenge of Meta-Knight is a story-driven mode in which Kirby confronts Meta-Knight on the Battleship Halberd

• Milky Way Wishes is the longest game mode with a neat twist on the copy abilities (Kirby collects copy “essences” in an inventory that allows him to select that ability at any time)

4 additional game modes add some variety to the gameplay:

• Gourmet Race is a racing game between Kirby and King Dedede

• The Arena gives Kirby one life and pits him against every boss in the game

• Samurai Kirby and Megaton Punch are mini-games that test your reflexes

Visually, Kirby Super Star looks fantastic on the SNES. There’s a variety of vibrant environments filled with well-designed enemies and bosses showing off some top-notch sprite animation. The soundtrack is one of my all time favorites (though nostalgia probably plays a very large role in this). Jun Ishikawa is one of the more underrated SNES composers.

During development, Miyamoto gave a tall order to Sakurai and Sotoru Iwata (the President of HAL) – he wanted them to add co-op to KSS. They created the “helper” role. If Kirby has a copy ability, he can press a button to create a helper which can be controlled by AI or by a 2nd player. This helper has the full move set of that ability and looks like the enemy type that sourced the copy ability. Co-op feels a bit like “little brother mode,” since helper deaths don’t count against Kirby’s lives and the screen always follows Kirby. This can be a great introduction for new or younger gamers, but playing as the co-op helper can still be enjoyable for more experience gamers as well.

The only criticism I can bring against KSS (and the reason I didn’t give it a 10 score) is the shorter length of the game. If you know what you’re doing, you can blast through all of KSS in less than four hours. The same could be said for a game like Super Mario World (5-6 hrs for skilled players), but there’s a measure of difficulty and discovery (hidden exits, etc) that is lacking in KSS. That being said, I’ve probably put in at least 100 hrs playing through this game over and over again with friends.

Kirby Super Star was another swan song title, released late in the SNES life cycle. There have been some other great Kirby games released after Sakurai’s departure from the franchise, but the lofty excellence of KSS will likely forever cement this title as the greatest 2D Kirby platformer. It is my favorite Kirby game, and it easily sits in my top 10 favorite games of all time.