Those of you whom haven't played some form of Kirby need to crawl out from under
your rock and live out your gaming life. Most should know the drill: Kirby Jumps, dashes,
floats, and best of all inhales enemies and absorbs their powers to use against them. He
receives anything from a sword capability to a racing wheel, sparks, ice, stones, super
jump, laser fire and the parasol, as well as a slew of others. This game comes off as a
cross between Mario 3 and Donkey Kong Country. Finish a stage, unlock
some bonuses, find secret doors, and fight a boss at the end of each world. This is a long
game like Mario 3 and there are no warps, but this game makes up for it with a
feature lacking in too many NES games: an auto save feature!The game features some nice graphics for the time; they are drawn well and are very fluid. The one thing that needed some improvement was that the characters and enemies could have been a little bigger, and another issue was that some of the stages and enemies needed brighter colors and a little better detail in some stages. Overall, the graphics are very pleasing to the eye.
Gameplay is where this game shines. Kirby's maneuvering is dead-on. Kirby has an onslaught of moves that he can perform to kill the bad guys. The bosses are very well designed and some take some practice to beat, and require some strategy to defeat. All are unique and well designed. My favorite is the Sun and Moon team.
The story, although decent (Naughty King Dedede had shattered the star road and giving
pieces of it to his friends, and now Kirby must seek out the pieces to repair the star
road), is a little clichéd for the time. It fits the setting well though. For those of
you that haven't played this, it closely resembles Super Mario RPG's storyline. It must
have been good enough for the time to spawn as many sequels as it did.Overall, this is a great game for all of you NES-a-holics and retro gamers alike. Like mentioned above this game spawned a number of sequels. Kirby's Dreamland for the Game Boy, Kirby's Avalanche (a lousy Tetris knockoff) Kirby's Superstar, and my personal favorite, Kirby's Dream Course for the SNES. He even got a game on the N64 and made appearances in both Super Smash Bros. games. So there you have it. There's no reason not to buy this title.
