2022 marks 30 years since notorious identity
thief Kirby made his video-game debut, giving Nintendo yet another bankable mascot,
which brought their total to…sixteen, I think? So happy 30th birthday,
Kirby; you don’t look a day over 360. …degrees. Because you are an circle.
Kirby has never achieved the mainstream adoration of Mario, the industry relevance
of Zelda, or the die-hard appeal of Metroid, but for three decades he’s been there,
welcoming players to Nintendo’s various consoles with a big hug, a bigger smile, and a
digestive system I would rather not understand. In order to celebrate the little pink puffball –
as well as to mark the recent release of Kirby and the Forgotten Land – we decided to revisit each
of his games and rank them from worst to best, all while trying to avoid saying “awwwww…”
every time he does something cute. We failed at that bit, but we did do the ranking.
And just where did Forgotten Land rank? Well, I’ll give you a hint: It’s not number 16.
Which itself raises a further question: What is number 16? You’ll just have to watch and find out!
So, without further a-waddle-doo, let’s get to the rules. As always, we will not be counting
ports, collections, or remakes. Kirby’s had a lot of those, and some are quite good,
but you know us. We never bend the rules. We just sometimes forget them, ignore
them, or carelessly misinterpret them. We also won’t be counting appearances by Kirby in
other games, most notably the Super Smash Bros. series, because that’s a different topic entirely
and that fanbase frightens us. We love you, but we are terrified of you.
And…that’s it, really. Unlike many Nintendo series, Kirby has had a pretty
straightforward career, without getting bogged down by browser games, LCD handhelds, CD-i
abominations, or anything along those lines, so we get to focus on good, wholesome cartoon
fun today. A nice change of pace, that. Let’s rank ‘em.
I’m Kirben and I’m King PeePeePee…no, wait, I’m not that. I don’t want
to be that. Can I get another name, please? And this is Every Kirby Video
Game Ranked from Worst to Best. #33: Kirby Slide (2003)
e-Reader Right, well, we do this to ourselves, choosing
to rank every game. If there were an entire batch of disposable Kirby e-Reader games, we
could get away with one big entry about them, dedicating maybe 10 words to each
and moving on. Or, even better, we could just set a ground rule up front
that we weren’t going to count them. Oh, that would have been heavenly.
But when there’s only one…well…it’s not really fair to exclude it, is it? And so
we’re stuck, devoting some measurable portion of our lives to talking about Kirby Slide, a
game consisting of a single sliding puzzle, distributed on a little paper card. You’d scan it
into the Game Boy Advance e-Reader, boot it up, realize seconds later that you – like everybody
else on the planet – hate sliding puzzles, and then you feed the card to a shredder.
You’re not even unscrambling a good picture of Kirby. He’s just…howling into the void, I
think. On the bright side, the game was never actually sold. The card was distributed via toy
stores and magazines – seemingly in North America only – and was intended to advertise a cartoon
block known as The Fox Box. I’d love to tell you more about The Fox Box, but those words in that
sequence are on my list of things to never Google. Instead, you will have to listen to me kill
just a little more time so that this entry doesn’t feel too slight compared to the
others on this list. Aaaand…done. Perfect. #32: Kirby’s Pinball Land (1993)
Game Boy It must be a great feeling when you realize that
the popular character you’ve just created is also a geometric shape. It opens you up to spinoff
possibilities for life, and Kirby’s first spinoff is, on the surface, a fitting one. Kirby
is a ball. Pinballs are balls. What do you need, a roadmap? It falls down, however, in execution.
Pinball video games tend to go one of two ways. Sometimes they are straightforward score attacks
that are similar to actual pinball tables that you might find in the wild. One example would
be 1984’s aptly named Pinball. It’s about earning a high score and then, in true Principal
Skinner fashion, trying to break that record. Otherwise, as in Mario Pinball Land, you use the
mechanics of pinball to progress through a linear adventure. You’re defeating enemies and solving
puzzles, but you’re using a ball and flippers in order to do so. Either approach can work,
but Kirby’s Pinball Land doesn’t quite connect with either. It’s too complex to be a simple score
attack, and relies too much on the unpredictable whims of various obstacles to be a fair challenge.
I’m sure you’ll tell me to git good – and I hope you feel silly saying that about Kirby’s Pinball
Land of all things– but it’s not that the game is difficult; it’s that it gets annoying to
whittle down a boss’s health only for a bad flip or rebound to require you to start over. That’s
neither challenging nor fun; it’s just repetitive. #31: Kirby no Omochabako (1996)
Satellaview Forgive me if I just call this one “Kirby’s Toy
Box,” okay? Those are words I at least know I am pronouncing correctly. Kirby’s Toy Box was the
name given to a handful of Kirby-themed minigames downloadable through Nintendo’s Satellaview
service. And, of course, it suffered the same fate as much other Satellaview content; unless
you could find a cartridge that still had this data saved on it, it was lost forever.
Over time, fans have been able to track the various minigames down bit by bit.
A few here, a few there, until – at the time of writing – just about all of it has
finally been recovered. We are still missing two minigames from Kirby Super Star that were
available here as standalone downloads, but the unique content has finally been put back together.
Is any of it great? I’m glad you asked! Precisely none of it is great. Many Kirby games have little
minigames off to the side, and these are about as interesting and engaging as those are, but
without the virtue of being attached to a full, better game. Sure, what was essentially DLC for
the Super Famicom would have been necessarily small and simple, but these aren’t worth
seeking out as anything more than a curiosity. The games are Baseball, Pinball, Star Break,
Round and Round Ball, Cannonball, Arrange Ball, Pachinko, and Ball Rally. Balls for all,
basically. As a piece of Kirby’s history, it’s fascinating. As anything else? Well,
at least there wasn’t a sliding puzzle. #30: Team Kirby Clash Deluxe (2017)
3DS The traditional “rerelease a bonus game as
a standalone purchase” approach was in full swing here, with Team Kirby Clash from Planet
Robobot getting its time in the sun as Team Kirby Clash Deluxe. And by “getting its time in
the sun,” I mean, “Nintendo got a chance to find out how much money they could squeeze out of
the little pink blob with microtransactions.” Team Kirby Clash was a fun enough diversion
when it was attached to Planet Robobot. You and up to three friends took part in a
sort of abbreviated Kirby Role-Playing Game. Not a JRPG, but more of a…KRPG.
You choose your class, fight bosses and…well, okay, that was basically the
whole game. It was pretty good, though, and it left a lot of room for a standalone
release…or two…to fulfill the KiRPG promise. Sadly, the standalone game doesn’t
really build on the experience that much. There’s more to it, yes, but the bosses are also
damage sponges, taking a lot of time to defeat. This is meant to encourage you to level up and do
better next time, so it’s fine. I’m joking. It’s actually to encourage you to spend real-world
money to buy fake-world money that lets you get better gear. Of course, you don’t have to
spend your money. You could just wait around for 12 hours or so each time you want another shot
at progressing. And that certainly sounds fun, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it? Oh, it doesn’t?
Weird. It’s almost like Nintendo knew that… #29: Super Kirby Clash (2019)
Switch But don’t you worry, because the next Kirby Clash
game will have a third chance to give us the Kirby RPG of our dreams and…no, sorry, it’s another
free-to-play game because God hates us. Now, I have no way of knowing whether or not
Nintendo makes more money from these games being packed with microtransactions than they
would have made if they’d just…you know…let us buy them. From a business standpoint, perhaps
this makes a lot of sense. But it seems wrong. In a famously child-friendly series on famously
child-friendly consoles, the approach feels dirty. Buy little Ashton a $10 game and you
can all but guarantee she’ll have plenty of fun. But let little Ashton download a free
game, hoping against hope that she never works out how to charge your credit card for digital
Kirby Bux, and there can be no happy ending. But wait, did I call this the “next Kirby Clash”
game? I certainly did! But I shouldn’t have! It’s Team Kirby Clash Deluxe again, only with online
multiplayer, better graphics, and almost nothing else. It’s no less predatory in its monetization,
but it allows you to spend more money on in-game currency than you were able to spend at once
before, so we’re glad to see the developers made the most important updates to the experience. It’s
a little disappointing that the phrase “Kirby RPG” didn’t inspire Nintendo to create anything
more interesting than a cash register. #28: Kirby’s Star Stacker (1997)
Game Boy Every great handheld needs at least
one perfect puzzle game, right? The Game Boy had a half-dozen at least…and it also
had Kirby’s Star Stacker. Which is… something. To be clear, it isn’t bad. It’s a perfectly
competent falling-block puzzler, but “perfect competent” isn’t really reason enough to
dig it up again 15 years later. We did, and then we played it, and then we stopped playing
it, and then we forgot again that it ever existed. At first glance, it might seem similar to Tetris
or Columns, but it plays far more like Yoshi, released in 1991 for the NES. That game saw you
stacking baddies between two halves of Yoshi eggs to make them disappear. This game…also
does that, except you can do it horizontally, and you’re stacking stars between Kirby’s animal
friends. There’s not much else to it. King Dedede sometimes causes blocks to rise up from the
bottom, giving you a little less room to work with until you clear things up a bit, but that’s it.
The game received an enhanced SNES port a year later, called Kirby no Kirakira Kizzu because
they were worried I wouldn’t have enough Japanese to struggle with in this script. It
didn’t come to the West, which is unfortunate, because it’s superior in every way, not least
because it adds a story mode that was lacking in the original game. As you can imagine, the story
about Kirby putting blocks around other blocks to make the blocks between the blocks disappear is
really good. …right, okay, it’s obviously not, but the game looks better, sounds better,
and has convenient multiplayer. So there. #27: Kirby’s Avalanche (1995)
SNES Boy, developer Compile just knew that the West
would love its Puyo Puyo series…so long as it were called anything other than Puyo Puyo. In 1992, the
first arcade game got a fairly standard English localization, but the home releases changed their
names as though embarrassed by their families. 1993 saw Mega Drive fans blessed with Dr.
Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, 1995 saw American PC gamers get Qwirks, and that same year, SNES
owners got Kirby’s Avalanche. And yet they’re all Puyo Puyo, with superficial changes being almost
exclusively the only differences between them. This game, specifically, was a rebranded version
of 1993’s Super Puyo Puyo. And how is it? Well, it’s exactly as good as Super Puyo Puyo.
You match blobs with a focus on creating chains and dumping rubbish blobs on
your opponents. An avalanche of them, if you will, hence the title. Unless you
were in Europe, of course, where we called it Kirby’s Ghost Trap, for what I’m sure
must have been a very good reason. There is a story mode, which consists of
head-to-head matches against a series of enemies, but don’t worry, Kirby lore masters. According
to the Kirby Wiki, “the game’s storyline does not fall into the canon, and certainly does
not reflect Kirby as a character in the main series.” Whew. I was very concerned about
precisely where a Puyo Puyo reskin would fit into my meticulously constructed Kirby timeline.
Ultimately, it’s a Kirby game in name only, and there’s snow reason to track it down.
Snow, like an avalanche? No? Nothing? That’s cold… #26: Kirby Mass Attack (2011)
DS Early in the DS’s lifespan, games sought
to make as much use of the system’s unique features as possible, oftentimes at the
expense of the overall quality of the game. That’s understandable. New hardware is exciting.
It’s a new toy for developers to have fun with. I get that. What I don’t get is why a Kirby
game fitting that exact description was released for the DS after the 3DS came out.
Kirby Mass Attack feels like an early DS game in the sense that it’s full of ideas but offers
only a glimpse of what better execution might look like. And yet, the DS was already in the rear-view
mirror. Did Nintendo make this game in 2004 and just forget to release it for seven years?
The end result is a game that manages to feel both very slight and bloated at the same time.
You use the stylus to tap, flick, and drag up to 10 Kirbys around the touchscreen. Again and
again and again. Then the game keeps going. Kirby Mass Attack is not long, but if you bother
to tap, flick, and drag yourself to the end of it, you’ll have aged about a decade. The game is
imprecise to the point that losing Kirbys will rarely feel like your fault, and while it’s
certainly cute, it also has an emphasis on pace-breaking puzzles and an irritating reliance
on imperfect controls. It’s a gimmick-heavy Kirby game released long after anybody wanted one, and
it doesn’t provide much of a reason to revisit it. #25: Kirby Fighters Deluxe (2014)
3DS Kirby Fighters Deluxe is an expanded version
of one of the modes in Kirby Triple Deluxe, and if you think I’m going to struggle for
words when filling out this entry, just you wait until I also need to talk about its sequel.
The original side-mode version of Kirby Fighters was a perfectly fine diversion, not least because
it was just some free extra content. Releasing an expanded game on its own as a paid download
suggests that…well…that it’s worth paying for, and I’m not entirely sure that Kirby Fighters
Deluxe clears that hurdle. For starters, there’s little reason to own this if you already have
Triple Deluxe, unless the Kirby Fighters mode were the runaway highlight for you. It’s basically a
stripped-down version of Smash Bros. in which you can only play as Kirby and only use abilities from
Kirby games. With Kirby and Smash Bros. sharing a pedigree, the quality is here…but the depth isn’t.
It’s a novelty, and it feels markedly less novel the more time you spend with it. The addition
of online multiplayer would have gone a long way towards justifying this as its own release
– online matches provide an endless wealth of content – but instead you’re limited to Download
Play, which the side-mode version had anyway. There’s a few minutes of fun to be had here,
but rare is the person who will get hours of fun out of it. In households that had multiple
3DS consoles, this might indeed kill some time, but more time would be killed – and in better
ways – with a single copy of Triple Deluxe. #24: Kirby Battle Royale (2018)
3DS Kirby Fighters Deluxe left us more than a
little cold, being as the entire thing boiled down to hitting each other and avoiding stage
hazards. With Kirby Battle Royale, however, you…hit each other and avoid stage hazards.
Right, okay, but it’s more fun. For a while. Kind of. Look, I’m trying to be positive, okay?
Released precisely one hour before the phrase “battle royale” started referring to things
that were nothing like Kirby Battle Royale, this is a sort of party game slash arena fighter
slash minigame collection, and it’s every bit as unfocused as that sounds. Still, it does have
online play, which is good. Or it was good, until Nintendo decided to murder the 3DS in cold blood.
The various modes are not created equal, as might be expected, but they’re all simple enough that it
can lead to frantic fun with friends. Basically, if you’ve played any other Kirby games and got the
most mileage out of their multiplayer minigames, Kirby Battle Royale gives you an entire
mess of similarly simple competitions. Some of them are team-based, some of them
are every-spherical-pink-person-for-themself, and most of them devolve into all-out chaos.
Download play means that the game isn’t a complete bust without online multiplayer, but if
you can get three friends together and convince them to spend the night playing Kirby Battle
Royale, then you have better friends than I do. Actually, will you be my friend? Leave a
comment below if you will be my friend. #23: Kirby: Squeak Squad (2006)
DS I’m sure there are people out there for
whom Kirby: Squeak Squad – or Kirby: Mouse Attack if you want to get European about
this – is the bee’s knees. Or the mouse’s…blouse? I don’t know, leave me alone. For the rest
of us, this is the Kirby game that is very easy to forget ever existed. There’s very little
that one can do here that they can’t do better in other games, and the levels are often so
short that you can blaze through an entire world in less than 30 minutes without rushing.
There’s sort of a gimmick here – it’s the DS, so of course there’s a gimmick – in the form of
the titular Squeak Squad. As you seek out each level’s treasure chests, the Squad can appear, nab
a chest from you, and then need to be chased down and defeated if you want to take it back. There’s
little more to it than what I just said, and what I just said isn’t all that fun or interesting. I
should know, because I nodded off while saying it. The more notable gimmick is the series of
touchscreen minigames, all of which are fun for exactly half a minute. Other slight wrinkles
to the gameplay, such as the elemental puzzles, do little to make Squeak Squad stand out. Again,
I’m sure somebody out there absolutely adores the game, and that’s okay. It’s certainly not bad.
But it’s just as certainly not great, either. #22: Kirby: Canvas Curse (2005)
DS If you played Yoshi Touch & Go and thought,
“This would probably be better if it were an actual game,” then congratulations; you played
Yoshi Touch & Go. Kirby: Canvas Curse – or Kirby: Power Paintbrush because we need our own
ridiculous titles for everything – takes the same basic concept and…y’know…does actual stuff
with it. Like Yoshi Touch & Go, you don’t control the characters directly. Instead, you place lines
to help them avoid various obstacles. That’s around 80% of what you do for the entire game.
Otherwise you can steal a handful of abilities and tap Kirby for a burst of speed, but those are
just flourishes. Your control over the little ball boy is intentionally minimal, making even the
simplest stages feel like a puzzle, which I mean as a compliment. Little of the game is especially
complex, but keeping Kirby moving and out of danger does require some pretty good reflexes
and the ability to think ahead. It’s a game built around the touchscreen rather than one that leans
on it for unnecessary gimmick, and that’s nice. Less nice is the fact that it still
feels…empty. The lack of side modes is glaring, especially when you consider how short the
game is. As a showcase of the then-new DS and the kinds of gameplay it would make possible,
it’s alright. But it also feels half-baked, as though the developers were trying to sell the
public on a console that even they couldn’t get a complete game out of. How appropriate, then,
that Canvas Curse got its followup on the Wii U. #21: Kirby Super Star (1996)
SNES The box advertises Kirby Super Star as being
“8 games in one!” That sounds wonderful, but it is also your first indication that
this is a quantity-over-quality release. There’s Samurai Kirby, which is a single-button
reaction game. There’s Megaton Punch, which is…another single-button reaction game.
Then, on the traditional side of things, there’s Spring Breeze – a truncated, worse
remake of Kirby’s Dream Land – and Dyna Blade, in which Kirby beats up a bird.
On the more experimental side, there’s Gourmet Race, in which you and Dedede
gobble up food. It’s essentially worthless aside from its incredible music. There’s The Great
Cave Offensive, which is offensively boring. Some sources refer to it as a metroidvania. It’s not.
Yes, you absorb abilities from enemies, but that’s not like Metroid or Castlevania; that’s just
Kirby. Here, you do it in a long, winding series of rooms that contain treasures. It’s horrid.
Then there are two unlockable games. Revenge of Meta Knight is…not bad, actually. It’s over
before it ever begins, but it’s fine. Milky Way Wishes is the most robust and best mode in
the game, but to even play it you’ll need to complete the other, far-less-fun games first.
Kirby Super Star offers a lot of content, but much of it is actively disappointing, and
the best of it really isn’t that great. We know, you disagree. Vent your spleens, please. That’s
what the comments are for. But we’re just as happy to move on to the better games, rather than the
eight halfhearted shrugs of Kirby Super Star. #20: Kirby & The Amazing Mirror (2004) Game Boy Advance
Kirby had three games on the GBA. Nightmare in Dreamland was a remake of Kirby’s
Adventure. Kirby Slide was like sitting down in a dark cinema to find that your seat’s
previous occupant had bladder-control problems. And so the only proper one was Kirby
& The Amazing Mirror. That’s…disappointing. To put the positives up front, the game looks
excellent. There might not be a better fit for the cartoon-ready hardware of the GBA
than Kirby, a sentient notebook-doodle. And the idea of exploring large,
interconnected maps is a good one. The game itself, however, leaves a lot
to be desired, and it simply isn’t much fun. Kirby games overall walk a tight line. The
simplicity of the gameplay is in itself appealing, but if you don’t complicate that simplicity,
the games feel too similar and grow stale. Then again, if you do complicate it, you run
the risk of dampening the appeal altogether, relying on unsuccessful gimmicks that
are less fun than what they’re burying. That’s what happens here, with levels and puzzles
relying on the existence of multiple Kirbys. If you can find three friends to play with, things
are crowded and cumbersome. If you can’t, you can add “frustrating” to that list, as you
need to count on your AI-controlled companions to work with you. Whenever you need more
than one Kirby to accomplish a task, the AI is unpredictable. It attempts to mimic
your intentions, but is easily distracted, and sometimes flat out ignores you. It’s
a great concept and the GBA absolutely deserved a must-have Kirby adventure. Upon
reflection, though, The Amazing Mirror ain’t it. #19: Dedede’s Drum Dash Deluxe (2014)
3DS Dedede’s Drum Dash Deluxe has the interesting
distinction of being the only game on this entire list that doesn’t have the word “Kirby” in the
title. In fact, Kirby’s not a character in the game at all, though you’ll see him in some
artwork so you won’t have to go cold turkey. Drum Dash Deluxe is a rhythm game with some
extremely mild platforming elements. “Mild” does not mean “easy,” to be clear; it just means that
most of what you are doing will be rhythm-based. One immediate plus is the fact that you’re
playing along to Kirby music, which is some of the happiest, most satisfying music in human history.
On that note – ha ha, music joke – it’s a success. Sadly, there aren’t many tracks to enjoy, with a
few of the most famous ones missing completely. There are also only seven levels in the
game, though each of them do have more difficult variants. If you own Triple
Deluxe, you’ll be glad to know that the four stages from that game don’t repeat here,
but there’s little replayability outside of whatever your innate need for perfection is.
As you bounce along drums at the bottom of the screen, you’ll have to time your button
presses to get Dedede to the correct height, collect coins along the way, and – if you’re
feeling flashy – clap on the backbeat while you’re in the air. It’s difficult to master, but
once you do, it feels great to pull off. We just wish there were more of it, as it still feels like
a minigame. Only this time, we had to pay for it. #18: Kirby’s Blowout Blast (2017)
3DS The last of the side-mode-cum-full-games is
Kirby’s Blowout Blast, this time expanding on the Kirby 3D Rumble mode from Planet Robobot. Kirby 3D
Rumble was sort of a puzzler, with an emphasis on efficiently clearing small stages. Kirby’s Blowout
Blast is… that, again, but with bigger stages. Your job is to perfect these levels in every way
possible: complete them quickly, avoid damage, rack up combos, you know the drill. This works to
the benefit of Kirby’s Blowout Blast. Kirby games are rarely about difficulty, and finishing
each stage here isn’t difficult, either. But by emphasizing what would otherwise
be self-imposed challenges, it becomes clear how satisfying these games can be.
All of that is good, and the boss fights are genuine highlights, but there isn’t
much depth to this one. Which is ironic, because at the time, this was the closet we
had to a true 3D Kirby game. It’s interesting, but it’s also not a concept that is going to
appeal to everybody. Then again, you’ve seen all of the weird directions this series has
taken, so none of it is going to appeal to everybody, but you understand what I mean.
Of course, that’s one good thing about these stand-alone side-mode releases: If you
aren’t interested, you can just ignore them. And if you are, you’ll get a game you’ll
love for just a few notes. Or you would have, except that Nintendo shuttered the eShop. Super
sorry, everyone! Hope you had fun while it lasted. #17: Kirby Star Allies (2018)
Switch Kirby has had companions before. Kirby has been
able to steal abilities before. But Kirby Star Allies sought to combine the two, in a sense,
by allowing Kirby to do what he does best: Charm the living flip out of everything that lays eyes
on him. Here, you are able to draft up to three enemies at a time to fight alongside you. It’s an
interesting way of breathing some new life into Kirby’s ever-expanding rogues gallery, but it’s
not enough of a hook to hang an entire game upon. It’s similar in many ways to what we’d already
seen in Amazing Mirror and Return to Dream Land. In the former, multiple Kirbys were required for
puzzle solving and progression. In the latter, multiple friends could join just for the sake
of adventuring together. Star Allies is better than Amazing Mirror, but isn’t nearly as fun or
robust as Return to Dream Land, which felt like a Kirby game first and multiplayer chaos second.
Return to Dream Land was designed in a way that’s easy to appreciate. Solid levels, a decent ramp
up in challenge, memorable setpieces, and so on. Star Allies often feels like it was plopped onto
the screen rather than designed. The challenge is negligible and the levels rarely rise above dull
mindlessness. Star Allies received significant post-launch content, which helped to put a bit
of meat on this otherwise boney experience, but in our eyes, that’s an admission that the game was
nowhere near engaging enough to begin with. It’s worth a spin for fans, but it’s also an easy one
to skip if you just want to play the highlights. #16: Kirby: Triple Deluxe (2014)
3DS Kirby: Triple Deluxe sells itself on containing
three games, and one of them is a full, proper Kirby adventure. That alone elevates
it above Super Star, but the other two are Kirby Fighters and Dedede’s Drum Dash, which
got spun off into their own titles anyway, so they’re not worth focusing on here.
Of the main game…well, there’s no polite way to say this. Triple Deluxe
is fine and it’s well-made, but it also feels very by-the-numbers. There’s precious little in the
way of heart here. It is, indeed, a Kirby game on the 3DS. Whatever you’re imagining is exactly what
you get…no more, no less. That’s not a bad thing, but it is disappointing, as it’s a rare Kirby
game that doesn’t feel interested in being more. At no point do you really need to think about what
you’re doing, and the entire thing feels shallow. You move through recognizable environments and
fight recognizable enemies, with only two real tweaks, neither of which are all that great.
The first is the ability to tilt your 3DS to slide things around the screen. Fortunately,
this gimmick is used relatively rarely, but when the best praise you can offer is
“at least I don’t have to do it often,” that’s not good. Secondly, there’s
the hypernova, which permits Kirby to suck up bigger things. It allows you to
turn your brain off for entire sequences, and since game already struggled to keep
us engaged, that’s not a great inclusion. #15: Kirby Tilt ‘n’ Tumble (2001)
Game Boy Color Kirby Tilt ‘n’ Tumble is definitely one
of those “you had to be there” games. Its cartridge had special accelerometers built into
it, allowing it to respond to tilt controls, but owning the cartridge wasn’t enough; you had
to own a Game Boy Color or other hardware that had the cartridge slot in the same place. The Game Boy
Advance SP, for instance, played Game Boy Color games just fine, but because the cartridge
slot was on the bottom, the accelerometers would not read your tilting correctly.
As such, playing Kirby Tilt ‘n’ Tumble today requires a bit more than simply picking up
a copy, but it’s worth it for the novelty alone. You tilt the Game Boy Color to roll Kirby around
and flick the system upward to get him to bounce. Surprisingly, it feels quite good. As
much as the strange control style could have held the game back, it ends up
being the best part of the experience. Why? Well, because Kirby Tilt ‘n’ Tumble
hates you. For a game about rolling a squishy marshmallow friend through colorful environments,
it is absolutely brutal in its difficulty. Levels are long, complicated, and full of instant death
traps. They require both immediate reaction and precise use of motion controls, and you can
imagine how easily those things go together. Oh, and did I mention the tight time limit? I know
Kirby games are often derided for being too easy, but nobody was asking for Kirby Tilt ‘n’ Tumble
to stomp us repeatedly in the skull until we died. It’s by no means a bad game, but it
works hard to be downright impenetrable. #14: Kirby’s Block Ball (1995)
Game Boy Kirby’s Block Ball is basically what
Kirby’s Pinball Land should have been. Here, the obvious template is Breakout, but I can’t
imagine anyone could play this for more than 30 seconds and conclude that “it’s just Breakout.”
For starters, you are often controlling multiple paddles, which both keeps you engaged at least
twice as frequently and increases your options for aiming the ball where you need it to be.
Then, of course, there are the abilities that you can absorb from enemies. They each give you
some kind of increase in power and control, which helps reinforce the idea that your progress is
genuinely skill based. It’s quite good and a huge improvement from Pinball Land. In that game, an
unfortunate rebound could drop you off the screen without any hope of recovery. Here in Block Ball,
unfortunate rebounds and unlucky angles still happen, but you have more ways of dealing with
them. That not only makes the game feel more fair, but it opens up a lot more room for strategizing.
If we have any real complaint, it’s that it still ends up feeling repetitive after a while.
That’s not so bad – Game Boy games were often designed for short play sessions – but it’s
worth mentioning. The timed challenges and disappearing items can also get a bit annoying,
as it’s easy for them to show up when the ball is nowhere near them. Just a few more seconds on
the clock would have gone a long way, but that’s nitpicking. Kirby’s Block Ball doesn’t do
much, but everything it does, it does right. #13: Kirby Fighters 2 (2020)
Switch Like the Kirby Clash games, Kirby Fighters
was a side mode that became a standalone release and then got a sequel. But
don’t worry; unlike those games, Kirby Fighters 2 actually attempts to
give you content for your money, instead of…imaginary currency. It’s a crazy
idea, but it just might work. In fact, it works quite well. It’s not a must-own Switch
game, but it’s very clear about what it’s trying to be. It’s also a much fuller experience, with
more stages, more abilities, and more characters making it feel like a proper sequel, as opposed to
simply being a “Switch version” of Kirby Fighters. There’s even a story mode which is shockingly
not terrible, being as it’s a story mode in a fighting game. You’ll receive randomized
options for powering up as you progress, making things feel different from run
to run. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but for an inexpensive online fighting game, it’s
actually really quite impressive, and it’s packed with references and allusions to Kirby’s past
adventures. It’s a celebration of the little guy, which just happens to take the form of the little
guy beating the tar out of everyone and everything that opposes him. It’s violently adorable.
There’s a slight whiff of “We have Super Smash Bros. Ultimate at home” about it, but that’s
practically unavoidable. Taken on its own merits, Kirby Fighters 2 is a good time, and hopefully an
indication of high-quality spinoffs still to come. #12: Kirby’s Dream Land (1992)
Game Boy Playing Kirby’s Dream Land today, it’s difficult
to focus on what’s there, as opposed to what isn’t there. This wasn’t a problem in 1992, but it’s
strange to play a Kirby platformer in which he can’t absorb abilities. It’s also extremely short,
it’s very easy, the water with the stars in it reminds our writer of that disgusting Orbitz
drink, and Kirby isn’t even pink! Well, right, I know, nothing had color on the original Game
Boy, but unless you had the Japanese version, he was white on the box, too. What a fraud!
In fact, aside from featuring sweet blob Kirby and psycho penguin King Dedede, this feels
more like a proof of concept than an actual installment. And yet, it’s one hell of a good
proof of concept, and it’s no wonder that it spawned such a beloved franchise. The graphics are
lovely, embracing their simplicity in a way that allows them to be profoundly expressive. Little
animations between levels give Kirby a huge amount of personality. And the music – though there’s
admittedly little of it – is fantastic, with some of the series’ most enduring compositions
coming out of the primitive Game Boy speaker. Playing through it will leave you with the better
part of an hour to use as you see fit, and while a secret, harder difficulty is revealed to you after
you finish the game, it still won’t put up much of a fight. But “fight” isn’t what Kirby’s Dream Land
is about. It’s a lovely, relaxing experience with charm to spare. The series has gotten better,
but it started off pretty well from the start. #11: Kirby’s Dream Land 2 (1995)
Game Boy We’re ranking this ahead of Kirby’s Dream Land,
but the margin isn’t nearly as comfortable as we’d like it to be. First, the good: You get a
lot more for your money here. As opposed to the four proper levels in the previous game, now
you explore seven entire worlds. Additionally, there are hidden collectibles that allow you to
find and face a hidden final boss, meaning that by sheer volume of content, this game is superior.
It also, impressively, allows you to copy enemies’ abilities, and it alters those abilities depending
upon which animal companion you’ve got with you. Oh, right, this game has animal companions.
The only thing more adorable than Kirby is Kirby riding a hamster, and I think
every last one of us can agree on that. With so many more stages, though, the average
quality drops severely, and far too many of them rely on mazes or autoscrolling. Those
things don’t make the game more challenging, but they do make it significantly less fun. Then
there’s the fact that the Game Boy doesn’t quite seem to be able to handle it. It’s impressive
that Kirby can do so many things in this game, but it results in a game that suffers
from intermittent lag and eaten inputs. It feels rough and undercooked in a way
that its predecessor didn’t. There’s more here – there’s no question about that
–but it also has significantly more bloat. Overall, it’s good…but with some tweaking
and trimming, it could have been great. #10: Kirby Air Ride (2003)
GameCube Kirby Air Ride is guaranteed to spark significant
disagreement wherever it ends up on a list like this. It’s a polarizing game, and let me be very
clear that I understand that. On the surface, it’s Kirby Kart: a simple racer with a cute
mascot, crazy environments, and lots of ways to end friendships. Classic framework, really. But
Kirby’s Air Ride simplifies the experience in some ways, which in turn complicates it in other ways.
Confused? So were most people who played the game. In Kirby’s Air Ride, you don’t control the
acceleration. You scoot ahead automatically. You do have control of braking, which is your
only hope of cleanly navigating the track. That braking also becomes – if you
hold it down long enough – a boost, meaning that it’s something you will have to
use often, either because you want to slow down or speed up. It’s a unique control style that,
in our eyes, works quite well, but we understand why many players would have jumped ship to a
more traditional alternative. Say, Mario Kart: Double Dash. Now that is an overrated racing
game, but we’ve been through that on another list. Kirby Air Ride is a lot of fun once you
adjust to the kind of game it actually is, but it didn’t do itself any favors by looking so
much like games that played totally differently. If you tried it and gave up on it long ago, it’s
worth another shot, with fresh eyes. Of course, if eBay prices are anything go by, it’s also
worth at least one kidney, so…up to you, really. #9: Kirby’s Return to Dream Land (2011)
Wii When the title is basically “Kirby’s Dream Land”
with added “Return to,” you’d be forgiven for expecting this game to hearken back to Kirby’s
earliest days, or to lean into features of the Dream Land games that we haven’t seen since.
That’s not what this game does. The European name was “Kirby’s Adventure Wii,” which instead
implies that it hearkens back to that NES classic. That’s not what it does, either. 0 for 2, Kirby.
Instead, it’s…just a fairly standard Kirby game, really. It’s a very good one but it actually
draws inspiration from New Super Mario Bros. Wii, allowing simultaneous co-op with up
to three friends. The story involves helping a space faring traveler repair his ship and get
back home, and it brings previous friends and foes together in service of a greater goal:
illegally harboring space aliens. Kirby, you used to be so squeaky clean. What happened?
You can of course play the game on your own, and it’s a perfectly fine experience that way. In
fact, if you played it in 2011, it probably seemed even better, because there hadn’t been a true
Kirby platformer since Kirby 64 in 2000. (Kirby’s Epic Yarn was great, but it didn’t scratch quite
the same itch for many.) Really, though, Return to Dream Land shines in multiplayer, and that’s by
far the preferable way of experiencing it. Take that away and you’re left with a very good game
that, in retrospect, is overshadowed by a number of better ones. There’s little it does wrong, but
we think the rest of these games do more right. #8: Kirby’s Dream Course (1994)
SNES Many series end up in “strange spinoff land”
at some point, but few series have spinoffs as good as this one. In fact, Kirby’s Dream Course
is not just one of the best spinoffs overall, but it may actually be the very
best “spinoff in which the main character is suddenly a golf ball” ever made.
The game was originally designed as a unique title called Special Tee Shot – which itself
did see release through the Satellaview – but developer HAL Laboratory realized that Kirby & co.
fit the experience like a glove. HAL was right. Dream Course works brilliantly as a Kirby
game, taking into account not just his shape, but his penchant for absorbing various
abilities and working them into his moveset, which comes in handy as you’re trying to smack
him around the course and sink him into holes. As a golf game, it’s darned good, and there’s
always room for creativity in how, exactly, you intend to clear the stage. And I do mean “clear
the stage,” as, unlike in real golf, you need to defeat all but one of the enemies on the course,
with the final one transforming into the hole. At least, I don’t think that that’s how real
golf works. If it is, I’m even worse at that sport than I thought. This lends a welcome puzzle
element to things, as you need to not just decide how to hit all of the baddies, but think ahead to
which powers you’ll need and which enemies to hit in what sequence. It’s a spinoff done right, and
that’s something I wish I could say more often. #7: Kirby and the Rainbow Curse (2015)
Wii U Kirby and the Rainbow Curse – or Kirby and the
Rainbow Paintbrush because we can’t just leave these names alone, can we? – is much like Canvas
Curse in many obvious ways, but is far better in ones that are not as immediately apparent.
As with that game, it’s your job to keep Kirby rolling along by dragging a stylus
across a touchscreen. Unlike Canvas Curse, however, Rainbow Curse feels more like a
game than a single, experimental concept. The levels are bigger and more complex, the
challenge has increased substantially, and the game is just gorgeous. As in, handsome squidward
but instead Kirby gorgeous. Rainbow Curse has an incredible claymation aesthetic that makes me
wish more games would attempt something like this. It’s beautiful stuff, with every obstacle,
enemy, and level element being lovingly sculpted. All of which makes what I’m about to say that
much more painful: The game is for the Wii U, meaning you won’t experience the gorgeous visuals
on your television; you’ll be focusing on the little game pad on your lap instead. They still
look quite good there – if you can see anything through all of that dust – but for one of the
runaway best-looking games in the entire series, “quite good” doesn’t do it justice. Rainbow Curse
is doomed to be remembered as a sequel nobody asked for on a system nobody bought, but those who
seek it out are in for a surprisingly fun time. #6: Kirby’s Dream Land 3 (1997)
SNES Kirby’s Dream Land 3 gets so much right,
and yet it isn’t held in very high regard. It received middling reviews from critics, fans
disliked how slight it felt after the previous year’s Kirby Super Star, and it missed out on
releasing in Europe and Australia entirely. Scrape away all of that pesky context, however,
and you’ve got a truly excellent swansong for original Dream Land trilogy. The graphics
are nowhere near as great as Yoshi’s Island, but it does strive for a similar hand-drawn aesthetic
that works really well. It also improves upon the innovations that Kirby’s Dream Land 2 attempted,
fleshing them out and realizing them better on superior hardware. The soundtrack, too, is
excellent, and each level has side objectives that must be completed in order to see the true ending.
All of that is great. It’s not perfect, however. It’s fitting enough that Kirby moves sluggishly,
but many of the stages would benefit from pacing that was just a bit faster. And the side
objectives are left deliberately vague, which we respect, but a few of them
will be extremely difficult to work out, even on repeat playthroughs.
That holds Kirby’s Dream Land 3 back a bit, certainly, but it often achieves greatness,
striking an impressive balance between accessibility and challenge in its later levels
particularly. Also, if you successfully complete all of the side objectives, Kirby
gets to wield the Love-Love Stick! Which, now that I’ve said it out loud, makes me
feel very dirty, and I’d like to move on, please. #5: Kirby’s Epic Yarn (2010)
Wii Kirby’s Epic Yarn is another divisive game,
this time owing entirely to the first word in its title. By 2010, people knew what to expect
from Kirby platformers. They had very specific ideas in mind, and Epic Yarn barely even touched
upon them. There’s a reason for that: The game was originally about a new character called
Prince Fluff. The little prince was relegated to a costarring role when Kirby stepped in,
bringing the weight of expectation along with him. But ignore the fact that it doesn’t feel much like
a Kirby game and focus on the fact that it is a very, very good game on its own. There is immense
charm behind every aspect of the presentation, from its gorgeous arts-and-crafts visual style
to its incredible soundtrack full of bright, twinkly piano melodies. Every second of the
game manages to be the cutest thing you’ve ever seen in your life, and it’s always outdone
in that regard by the next second of the game. Critics be critiquing, of course, and no
shortage of them derided it for being too easy, because “you can’t die.” Which… is correct. And
if making it to the end of the game is your only criterion for difficulty, Kirby’s Epic Yarn comes
up short. That’s not entirely fair, however; the game rewards you at the end of each level
based on the number of beads you are holding, and keeping them requires you to
explore thoroughly and avoid damage. A child can reach the end, but an adult
will still have to work to master it. A spiritual successor – Yoshi’s
Woolly World – made it to the Wii U, and that game is similarly great. Between the
two of them, we hope we haven’t seen the last yarn-based game by Nintendo. Certainly Woolly
Wario Land is just around the corner, right? #4: Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (2000)
Nintendo 64 Go ahead, name a cuter game for the Nintendo 64.
I’d love to see you try. Actually, I wouldn’t, because there isn’t one, and I wouldn’t love
to see you lie to my face like that. No, not even Yoshi’s Story! Stop bringing up Yoshi! We’ll
rank the Yoshi games when we’re good and ready! Anyway, whereas many traditionally-2D video game
universes looked necessarily rough in their first 3D outing, the basic shapes and bright colors
of the Kirby world translated exceedingly well. Then again, the characters and stages are 3D, but
the gameplay isn’t. Kirby still only moves left, right, up, and down, which at times feels
limiting, because the stages look huge and inviting, and you’re restricted to a single plane.
That disappointment wears off quickly when you see how much there is to do and enjoy on that single
plane, though. Kirby 64 is almost relentlessly charming, with nearly every stage having some
kind of memorable sequence. Other games in the series allow you to combine abilities, but it’s
never felt as creative and fun as it feels here. Combine ice and electricity, for instance,
and you turn into a refrigerator. Combine fire and needles to turn into a bow that
fires flaming arrows. Not all of them are useful, but learning the ways in which they
combine is a huge part of the fun, as they make a big difference in how easy or
difficult it is to complete certain levels. Kirby games are usually wholesome, comforting
entertainment for the whole family, and Kirby 64 is no different, even if it does feature a
sequence in which a painter gets her face chewed off by a demon from the depths of Hell. Such is
the power of Kirby, I suppose. Even abject horror is rendered cute and cuddly by his mere proximity.
The world needs you now more than ever, Kirby. #3: Kirby: Planet Robobot (2016)
3DS “Kirby in a mech” shouldn’t work…and yet it works
better than most other Kirby gimmicks that should work. It’s the most adorable work of mech fiction
ever. Mobile Suit Gumdrop, if you will. The game is, frankly, great. If you’ve sat through the rest
of this list wondering, loudly, “What do you even want from a Kirby game?” perhaps even going so far
as to type it clumsily into the comments section below, well, the answer is Kirby: Planet Robobot.
Everything about it just feels…correct. There’s so much love and care invested in it, and that
love and care manifests in its stage design, its bosses, even what should have been the
worst possible gimmick Kirby ever had to endure: the mech. Part of the reason it fits so well
is that, unlike the hypernova of Triple Deluxe, the mech doesn’t just give you a chance
to blow – or suck, we suppose – mindlessly through entire sequences. The mech is used to
solve puzzles, to access optional areas, and to vary the gameplay in a way that feels meaningful.
There is also an abundance of top-notch design, with a great use of the 3DS’s depth, making it
feel as though the developers learned a lot from Triple Deluxe and were keen to take advantage
of that knowledge here. Planet Robobot tests the player on their understanding of how the various
levels of depth interact and on their spatial awareness, giving you a reason to pay attention
that isn’t specifically tied to overt challenge. The soundtrack is great, the story
is fun, and the abilities pull double duty thanks to the fact that your
mech gets to use them in unique ways as well. It’s an impressive little game, and was one of
our biggest surprises while making this list. #2: Kirby’s Adventure (1993)
NES Kirby’s Adventure is not just a great
2D platformer; it’s a highlight of the genre and of the NES overall. Everybody will
have their own personal favorites, of course, but Kirby’s Adventure is a firm contender
for the titles of best-looking NES game, best-sounding NES game, and best NES game
full stop. It’s so well made that, even if you ignored the constraints of the hardware, it’s
difficult to imagine how it could be improved. It’s full of secrets, the copy abilities are
impressively integrated into the gameplay, and it’s just fun. If games are meant
to bring us joy, then Kirby’s Adventure must be one of the medium’s crowning achievements.
With few exceptions, this is the magic the series has been attempting to replicate ever since.
In fact, it’s not surprising that nearly all of Kirby’s platformers to follow were strictly
2D. Once you come so close to perfection, is it worth shaking things up with a third
dimension? Won’t that only pull you further away from the heights you once achieved?
Sometimes Kirby makes some animal friends. Sometimes he splits into a collection of smaller
Kirbys. Sometimes he hops into a robot to pound seven shades of screws out of anyone who gets in
his way. And, sometimes, those ideas work quite well and lead to memorable games of their own.
But here, in only his second outing, on the dinky little NES, Kirby had an adventure so pure, so
well designed, so brimming with personality, that it’s been difficult for any game to measure
up to since. Kirby’s Adventure isn’t trying to do much beyond provide an excellent platformer, but
that’s what it does, flawlessly. It just wants to be the very best game it can be. That’s
a fair goal, and, impressively, it succeeds. Few long-running series manage to come
anywhere near the heights of this one, and this was only Kirby’s second outing.
I tell you, the guy makes it look easy. #1: Kirby and the Forgotten Land (2022)
Switch First things first: There will be no spoilers in
this entry. Second things second: Kirby and the Forgotten Land was by far the most difficult game
to rank. Not because we didn’t know how we felt about it, but because it’s impossible to know how
we will eventually feel about it. The other games on this list have all had years to reveal their
flaws and settle into a rough order of preference. This game, at the time of recording, has had
almost no time at all. It’s possible that in a year, we won’t love it quite as much. It’s
equally possible that we’ll love it even more. No matter what, we don’t see Kirby
and the Forgotten Land being dethroned any time soon. It feels perfectly at home on the
Switch, where so many of Nintendo’s aging IPs are experiencing a renaissance. Super Mario
Odyssey, Breath of the Wild, and now Kirby and the Forgotten Land all feel like exciting glimpses
forward for how these franchises will evolve. For Kirby, the way forward seems to
be a long-overdue leap into true 3D, with an expected evolution of his copy abilities
and a far-less-expected reliance on environmental storytelling. Kirby and the Forgotten Land
takes place in what very much looks like a post-apocalyptic Earth. The detritus of modern
life is heaped about, and it’s your job to pick through the ruins, rescuing Waddle Dees from the
marauding baddies. Again, no spoilers, but it’s a striking backdrop for Kirby’s innate cuteness.
Speaking of which, the cuteness has never been… cuteness-er. Everything feels, looks, and
sounds brilliant and, for the first time, it feels as though it’s worth using
any copy ability at any point. There are “correct” places in which to use them,
but everything has been perfectly balanced, letting you decide how to proceed at almost
every point. There are admittedly fewer copy abilities than usual, but the novelty of the
mouthful abilities more than makes up for that. The puzzles are fun, the boss
fights are the best in the series, and the enemies are so adorable, you’ll almost
feel bad for chewing their spines out. Almost. Kirby and the Forgotten Land is a great reminder
that, when they really want to, Nintendo knows how to conjure an entire game out of pure magic. The
happiest of birthdays, to our little pink friend.
