30 years of Kirby
We're up to three decades of the insatiable pink puffball.
August 1, 2022 marks the 30th anniversary of the North American debut of Kirby. Throughout the month, I’ll be covering Kirby’s games, creating rankings, and thinking about the past and future of the series. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.
Sure, 30 years isn’t geologically a long time or anything, but in video games? That’s a significant chunk of the industry’s life. The very first video games might have come in the decades prior, as computers were utilized for some of the earliest examples of the form, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that the industry took off as a commercial enterprise. So, Kirby taking all the way until 1992 to debut makes him both young and old in this space. A late entry for what is considered the classic NES-era franchises, which themselves came after the first arcade boom, yes, but again: the little guy has been around for three full decades now, in an industry that is basically half-a-century old.
Kirby doesn’t feel old, though, which has much to do with the current relevance of the series. Kirby and the Forgotten Land, released in 2022 on the Nintendo Switch, feels fresh and innovative, welcome to potential players both new and old to the series, and very well might be one of the best titles in a very expansive library — whether I’m talking about Kirby’s personal catalog or the Switch itself there barely matters, since it’s a true statement either way. Relevancy like that can keep you feeling young, so “Wow, Kirby is 30 years old now” doesn’t make me feel like time is slipping away like it does when you realize the anniversary of your favorite album from a 90s band has come up, and said band has also been defunct for half of that stretch. Kirby remains vibrant as he exits his 20s, and that vibrancy is passed along to those who play the games.
Kirby’s Dream Land released on the Game Boy in Japan on April 27, 1992, but it would take until August 1 for the then-monochrome round puff to debut in North America, and another two days before PAL regions got a hold of him. Kirby is often described as “for kids,” but that wasn’t the goal. Series creator Masahiro Sakurai has said time and again that Dream Land was designed for beginners, not explicitly kids: as he shared in an interview about the remake of Kirby’s Adventure (translation courtesy Shmuplations):
You know, I feel like games are too difficult today. When we were making the very first Kirby for the Game Boy, I deliberately lowered the difficulty, and because of memory limitations, the stages were fairly short, meaning it was an easy pick-up-and-play experience for beginners.
…
I feel like the situation with video games today is similar to how it was when we made the first Kirby… for example, if you walked up to your random neighborhood auntie and asked her to play a newer release, I think she would find it very difficult. There's all these different buttons, and you have to memorize all this junk... I doubt she'd be able to do much at all. Kirby's Adventure struck a good balance: people with no experience at all could still manage it, but it also maintained a certain level of challenge and depth as an action game.
You have to remember that platformers were a brutal affair at the time that Kirby was getting off the ground. You might be able to plow through the various Super Mario Bros. titles now as an adult with loads of experience behind you, but they were not inherently easy games to play, and were difficult to master, too — and those were considered the more approachable style of platformer out there, which is part of why they exploded the way they did. Now, we’ve seen a bit of a renaissance in openly evil platformers with the rise of digital distribution and indie studios — which is great, don’t get me wrong — but you need the other side of that coin, too, and Kirby has been on it since his inception. Video games as a whole are better for that.
As is HAL Laboratory, the developer of Kirby 30 years ago and, with a few exceptions along the way, still the developer now. Kirby has been whatever HAL needed him to be. A platforming star, the focus of a variety of puzzle games, the pinball in a pinball game, the ricocheting ball in a Breakout-style game, a golf ball, a racer, a brawler. One Kirby, four Kirbys, 10 Kirbys, with copy powers or without, limbs or no limbs, buttons or motion, 2D, 2.5D, 3D, topdown, pixels, polygons, whatever. Kirby has done… well, not all of it, but pretty close.
Especially when you factor in, say, the sub-games of the series. And you should, especially considering our more modern reckoning of what actually constitutes a game and what forms they can take. There are 35 Kirby games out there now, if you count the few remakes as their own titles, and then another 65 sub-games. Some of which have been significant enough conceptually to be released as their own beefed up solo title, and others where that could have been the case, had HAL decided to go that route. Kirby is always moving, which is also how his games feel to play, and part of why they work.
For the next few weeks, I’ll be covering various Kirby titles that I haven’t already written about in this space, in the same way I usually write about games. In addition, though, there will also be a couple of essays, some rankings, and even a look at Kirby games that should exist. And I’ll call this celebration “Kirby’s Blowout Blast,” which should be self-ex…. wait, wait. That one’s taken. Kirby really does have a game for everything.
In the meantime, here’s what I’ve already written about Kirby — the games, the franchise — here and elsewhere.
The music of Kirby’s Dream Land 3
Kirby and the Forgotten Land review (Paste Magazine)
Kirby is the most powerful character in all media… and he’s only getting stronger (Paste Magazine)
The 30 best Kirby sub-games (Paste Magazine)
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