Kirby's Dream Land

There isn't much to the pink puffball's first outing. Don't get me wrong, the game is beautifully designed with a unique system of movement and combat, a cute cast of characters, and impressive graphics for the humble Game Boy. It's just that the whole adventure is shorter than Super Mario Land, and Kirby himself is completely lacking the copy ability that made him so famous. 

In this little five-stage romp, you play as Kirby on his quest to get back all of the food that King Dedede stole from Dream Land, although that plot isn't really clear until after you beat the game. Rather than being long, continuous pathways, each stage on your journey to the penguin's castle is broken into rooms connected by doors. They each end in a unique boss fight, with all of the fights repeated in a gauntlet style before the game's final confrontation. While all of the locales looked nice and offered something minimally different in the way of platforming, the magic of Kirby's Dream Land for me was the options players have for how they can tackle each of the levels.

This isn't a terribly difficult game, but thanks to the level design and Kirby's abilities, you often have the chance to decide how hard you want a section of the game to be. The developers seem to intend for you to run along the ground, sucking in enemies and spitting them out at each other in order to clear the way. However, many levels make it fully possible to use Kirby's floating ability to fly over entire level segments, with only the occasional flying enemy to avoid. Kirby's Dream Land also likes to provide you with multiple branching doors every now and then. Choices like that don't tend to lead to much, but the sense of control it offers does make the adventure a little more enjoyable.

Kirby's Dream Land is extremely cute and polished, and it has a lot of potential (obviously), but its short length really starts to hold it back. For a first game, it holds up surprisingly well, but its sequels offer the same general experience, plus so much more. Ultimately, the game is a lot of fun, it's just hard to recommend that you invest in it when it takes just as long to beat as it does to just try it out. However, if you already have a copy available, absolutely run through it at least once. I promise it won't take long.

The game is available for 3DS here (as of 7/30/21): https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/kirbys-dream-land-3ds/

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