Kirby's Adventure is a 1993 platform game developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It is the second game in the Kirby series after Kirby's Dream Land (1992) on the Game Boy and the first to include the Copy Ability, which allows the main character Kirby to gain new powers by eating certain enemies. The game centers around Kirby traveling across Dream Land to repair the Star Rod after King Dedede breaks it apart and gives the pieces to his minions.

Masahiro Sakurai returned as director after serving the same role for Kirby's Dream Land. He conceived the copy ability to add more challenge and replay value after the last game received criticism for its simplicity. Because the NES hardware had greater graphical power than the Game Boy and programmers were skilled with the now antiquated hardware, HAL Laboratory was able to create impressive visuals. Kirby's Adventure is the first game to depict Kirby in color. Sakurai had always planned him to be pink, much to the surprise of other staff.

Kirby's Adventure was well received and commended for its tight controls, level variety, and the new copy ability. In retrospect, journalists have ranked it among the best NES games. It was remade in 2002 for the Game Boy Advance with enhanced graphics and multiplayer support, titled Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land. The original NES version was re-released later via Nintendo's Virtual Console digital distribution services, the Wii compilation disc Kirby's Dream Collection, the NES Classic Edition, the Nintendo Classics service, and with stereoscopic 3D for the 3D Classics product line for the Nintendo 3DS.

Gameplay

thumb|left|Kirby inhaling a Hot Head in the first stage in Vegetable Valley

Like its predecessor Kirby's Dream Land (1992), Kirby's Adventure is a 2D side-scrolling platform game.

Kirby retains his abilities from Kirby's Dream Land:

The game consists of forty-one levels across seven worlds, with Takashi Saitou assisting designing. Hiroaki Suga was lead programmer, while Satoru Iwata, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Takao Shimizu were the producers; Iwata also provided programming assistance. According to Sakurai, development began in 1992, after he was asked to port Kirby's Dream Land to the NES. Since the Game Boy title was aimed at beginners and the NES player base was more experienced, Sakurai chose to create a new game instead. As a result, little of Kirby's Adventure is based on Kirby's Dream Land: "Even though we could use the same pixel art for Kirby, when it came to capacity and what was possible, all that expanded greatly with NES."

HAL Laboratory wanted to expand Kirby's existing repertoire of moves. Kirby's Dream Land was designed for beginner players, but as a result received criticism from more experienced players looking for a challenge. With Kirby's Adventure, Sakurai wanted to retain simple gameplay, but improve it so skilled players would enjoy it. This led to the conception of the Copy Abilities, which the team hoped would allow players to experiment and improve the replay value. HAL Laboratory created over 40 Copy Abilities, after which they selected their favorites to include in the final game. in North America in May 1993, and in Europe on September 12, 1993. It was released late in the NES's lifecycle, ten years after the system launched in Japan. By 1993, most gamers had already moved on to playing primarily on 16-bit systems.

Rereleases

In October 2002, Nintendo released Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land, an enhanced remake of Kirby's Adventure for the Game Boy Advance (GBA). The core gameplay and level design were left mostly unchanged; minor tweaks include hidden entrances being easier to find and boss fights being more difficult. However, all the graphics and sound effects were redone from scratch to take advantage of the GBA's more powerful hardware. According to Next Generation, 970,000 copies were sold worth $29 million in revenue. The game was sold out in three weeks according to 4Kids Entertainment.

A port of Kirby's Adventure was released as a downloadable game for the Nintendo 3DS's eShop in the west on November 17, 2011, and in Japan on April 25, 2012. As a part of the 3D Classics line of rereleases, it has the ability to use the 3DS's stereoscopic 3D functionality and customize controls, and features small tweaked visual details and an improved frame rate in demanding levels. The game is otherwise unchanged. The GBA version was released on the Wii U Virtual Console in 2014. The NES version is also included in Kirby's Dream Collection (2012), a compilation of Kirby video games that commemorates the series' 20th anniversary, and on the NES Classic Edition (2016) dedicated console. It was added to the Nintendo Classics service on February 13, 2019.

Reception

Official Nintendo Magazine listed it as the 69th best game on a Nintendo console in 2009, and IGN ranked it as 84th on a similar list of best "Nintendo games". In August 2006, Next Generation ranked Nightmare in Dream Land as the 17th best handheld video game of the 2000s. Meta Knight became a recurring playable character in the Super Smash Bros. series, starting with Super Smash Bros. Brawl in 2008.

The multiplayer mode in the remake Nightmare in Dream Land would reprise the yellow coloration used for a second-player Kirby in Kirby's Dream Course (1994), itself the initial coloration for Kirby proposed by Shigeru Miyamoto before the original Kirby's Adventures release. In subsequent games, a yellow color palette would become a recurring colorization for multiplayer Kirbys in the Kirby and Super Smash Bros. series, often as the default color for the second player.

Notes

References

  • Official Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land minisite (Japanese)
  • Kirby of the Stars: The Story of the Fountain of Dreams on the Famicom 40th Anniversary page