30 years of Kirby: Kirby: Planet Robobot
Kirby doesn't need a mech to defeat his foes, but Kirby got a mech, anyway.
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.
There’s nothing terrible about Kirby’s first outing on the Nintendo 3Ds, 2014’s Triple Deluxe, but it is definitely missing something vital. It’s all very competently done, design-wise, and both the audio and the visuals stand as an impressive way for Kirby to debut on the most powerful portable Nintendo had made to date. What it lacks, though, is that extra gear or idea that can set it apart from much of the rest of Kirby’s library. The game certainly got better as you played more of it, and the last boss fight is actually one of the better ones in any Kirby title, with killer accompanying music to boot, but in the end, Triple Deluxe is in that Crystal Shards realm where it’s merely good, not great, because you can easily envision ways in which it could have been meaningfully better.
You only had to wait two years to have those feelings proven true, as well, because HAL Laboratory’s 3DS followup, Planet Robobot, is legitimately great. Robobot built on the best parts of Triple Deluxe, but added in that missing wrinkle that makes a Kirby game feel vital: the titular robobots. They’re basically just armored infantry mechs that are, narratively, designed to adapt to the user utilizing them. In the hands of the enemies you face, they’re just mechs with some basic weaponry transformation powers. Piloted by Kirby and his “infinite power,” (to use the words of game director Shinya Kumazaki) however, they’re mechs with the ability to scan enemies and copy their abilities.
The gameplay, in general, was an excellent way to change up the basic Kirby-with-copy-powers formula, with the introduction of not just a powerful robot to ride in sometimes, but also the impact it brought to Kirby’s copy powers. They work differently in the robot than without it, so not only do the robot — or robobot, whatever — and Kirby, as well as their respective sections, play differently, but you get to discover all over again what the copy powers do in this new context. As an example, when you’re just Kirby, if you have the Bomb power, you throw bombs like usual. Riding in your robot, the bombs have legs, and can be used to solve environmental puzzles. Powers that are melee for non-mech Kirby might be projectiles in the mech, and so on: there are plenty of powers to choose from, and they all basically have variants you’ll need to experiment with in order to see all there is to see in Planet Robobot.
This is a significant leap from Triple Deluxe’s system, which had more standard copy power usage, and with a gimmick that was nowhere near as versatile or enjoyable to use as the robots. Triple Deluxe had the “Hypernova” ability, which granted Kirby the ability to inhale much larger objects he normally could not. It was a visually impressive mechanic, and used to great effect on occasion — such as in the last boss fight, where Kirby even inhales Queen Sectonia’s health bar from the HUD — but overall it was a bit of a downgrade from Return to Dream Land’s Super Abilities, which were a little more varied and emphasized your need for speed in a satisfying way, since you often needed to still have some power left in time to clear a puzzle or obstacle that only the Super Ability could clear, opening up the way to additional secrets in the level. Return to Dream Land also had an enhanced inhale power if you just shook the Wii Remote, too, so basing an entire game around that… well, Forgotten Land’s Mouthful Mode is a vastly superior way to emphasize Kirby’s ability to swallow very large things in a way that is satisfying from a gameplay perspective, and actively changes up your experience with the series, too.
So, the switch to these robots capable of copying enemy abilities, and doing so in a way that created different copy powers from the ones Kirby would get were he to simply inhale the enemies outside of the robot? That’s the good stuff. HAL knew what they needed to do, too, and did it: while answering a question about why Planet Robobot emphasized story so much more than some other Kirby games, Kumazaki let on that there was a need to improve the action of Triple Deluxe (translation courtesy Nintendo Everything):
In the beginning of the development when the game was still “Kirby Triple Deluxe 2”, we came up with a story of new enemies emerging from the sky in order to enhance Hypernova ability, but I wanted to break away from the deja vu feeling of the previous titles while still being a succession in the series, so the world view was completely changed. Introducing various Robobot Armor improved the action feel from Hypernova, so the story was entirely a means for new action. We got excited and came up with a sci-fi story while making the world more in line with the Robobot Armor.
That’s part of what makes Robobot feel so good to play, too: it’s really its own thing in this larger universe. No other Kirby game is quite as sci-fi and robot-focused, even if there are elements of both in basically every other mainline title. Marrying the setting, narrative, and unique gameplay elements together the way Robobot did makes it stick out, deservedly so, much more than its predecessor was able to.
Planet Robobot makes great use of the Nintendo 3DS’ stereoscopic 3D tech, as the game just flat-out looks better with the slider up. Well, not the “flat” part of that phrasing: it looks great in part because of the extra depth it brings to the visuals, but it also makes the backgrounds and foregrounds pop in a way that benefits the player, since you’ll be spending time in both. Thanks to the 3D elements, you’ll more easily spot items, enemies, secret entrances, what have you in the background while you’re playing in the foreground, and they also help make boss encounters that much more intriguing, too, especially since how the platforming works can change in those instances, by opening up beyond your standard left-to-right platforming setup.
Each level has a number of computer cores to find, which are then used to unlock each world’s boss stage. You also open up more difficult and longer EX stages upon finding all of the core’s in a given world, and finding these cores, after their “hey, look at this easily found core, you’re going to want these” introduction are a significant part of the gameplay themselves, as they’re hidden behind obstacles, behind hidden doors, and often involve solving some kind of puzzle to collect even after solving a puzzle to find them in the first place. There are stickers to collect, too, which look pretty cool with the 3D slider turned up, and are also neat for the same kind of reasons, artistically speaking, as the stamps in Super Mario 3D World — these are Robobot’s answer to the keychain collection in Triple Deluxe, and while they don’t have the same tactile enjoyment as the keychains, which could slide around the screen with the 3DS’ gyroscope, the stickers are still some good-looking 2D art, hidden inside a 3D game, and it’s fine to admit you appreciate looking at it.
The visuals and audio both have a sci-fi, robotic bent to them, befitting the game’s setting. For instance, the very first stage looks a lot like Triple Deluxe in its design — outdoors! grass! plants! — but everything has now been converted to metal and machine, even the trees. A nifty way to segue into the design elements you’re used to from Planet Popstar, and into those of Planet Robobot, which is still Popstar, but one invaded by aliens who are mechanizing it all in order to extract its resources.
Sometimes the more machine-like music is a little more subtle, with some electronic beeps and boops used in songs, such as in Adventures in the World of Machines:
And sometimes, like in Residential Laboratory, they make the whole song out of those vibes — this track was known as Sky Tower in Return to Dream Land, but, like Popstar once it was invaded, it was remade to fit its new role in this mechanized world:
There are also arrangements of past Kirby songs that already fit perfectly with Robobot’s aesthetic, such as in this updated version of Crystal Shard’s Factory Inspection, known as Studying the Power Plant in Robobot:
The soundtrack is great from start to finish, whether it’s leaning into the mechanization or more traditional in its approach — even the more robotic, computer-ish stuff still comes off as clearly Kirby, like it fits right into the decades of established sound for the series, which should be no surprise. Robobot was a joint effort by series regulars Jun Ishikawa and Hirokazu Ando, and as of this point is also the last mainline Kirby game where it was just the two of them doing their thing: Kirby’s Switch debut, Star Allies, also featured Yuuta Ogasawara in a composer role, and Forgotten Land added Yuki Shimooka to that threesome.
As is traditional with Kirby games that aren’t Dream Land, there is more here than just the base game, too. The two sub-games of note in Robobot, not counting the Arena modes that are in so many Kirby titles, are Team Kirby Clash and Kirby 3D Rumble. The former is basically a way for you to fight large bosses as a team with other Kirbys, with experience points earned for doing so, while the latter is the most basic version of Kirby Fighters you’ll find: it of course became its own release with that name (with a sequel, no less), and Team Kirby Clash would receive a fleshed out Deluxe release on the 3DS, and a Super variant on the Switch. Neither is particularly necessary anymore, given they have much fuller individual releases that are far more worth your time if you’re looking for Kirby spinoffs in non-platforming genres, but they were a good time when Robobot initially released.
Robobot also features a Meta Knight game mode, Meta Knightmare Returns, which not only lets you play through Robobot as Meta Knight in what is meant to be a speed run, but also gives you some additional cutscenes and story that further fleshes out just what is happening with this CEO whose business plan involves invading other planets, and his robo-secretary, Susie. True Arena, similarly, has additional scenes and bosses and challenges you won’t find in the standard game or arena — Forgotten Land wasn’t the first Kirby game to stuff actual main-game content into its other modes, you know.
The only complaint to be made against Robobot is that it’s a bit on the easy side, even for Kirby, but as has been written by me in this space and elsewhere, there is a difference between “easy” and “boring.” Triple Deluxe, admittedly, had some moments where it was a bit boring, especially early on when it hadn’t escalated its design in any way — Planet Robobot is engaging throughout, and while it’s never difficult, its complexity grows to keep you focused and having fun. More and more of those cores are necessary for you to progress as the game goes on, and what you need to do in order to acquire them, and how alert you need to be to find their hiding places in the first place, helps keep you an active participant in the game instead of someone who is sleepwalking through it because you’re in little danger of dying or running out of lives. Those kinds of distinctions matter, and they’re why Robobot is not only a ton of fun to play, but a standout on the 3DS, and, hopefully, on the short list of titles on that system Nintendo might someday port over to the Switch as it fully transitions out of the handheld-only space.
Portions of this write-up originally appeared in Retro XP in a compilation feature on games that just missed the Nintendo top 101.
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