Kirby Super Star – Review

When I first rented Kirby Super Star back in 1997, I was surprised at how this little gem of gaming could go unnoticed by so many. Sure, the PlayStation, Saturn, and Nintendo 64 were the hot ticket items, but I figured that something this good would be able to get noticed, despite being on “old” hardware. Well, seven years later, and nearly eight years after the game’s release, I was finally able to find a copy to buy, and luckily for me, and hopefully you, this collection of games and mini-games is still immensely entertaining.

There are six types of games at the onset of KSS, with two more being unlocked as you continue to play. Some of these are full-fledged adventures that, in my opinion, could stand on their own as separate games, while others are quick, small games with very little substance to them, like the block-breaking Megaton Punch game. These smaller games are just as fun as the more robust games, but the limiting nature of their gameplay doesn’t lend itself well towards them being entirely separate titles.

With that said, they work very well as interstitial games, probably best played between sessions of the bigger games in this Kirby collection. The full-on games feature the classic Kirby gameplay style of “inhale enemy, blow them out, or get their power”, such a simple description for what can be a relatively complex gameplay system. One of these games is Spring Breeze, aremake of the original Kirby on the Game Boy, and works very well as a modernized adventure for the SNES. Other titles make use of the gameplay, but alter it a bit to include more puzzle-solving elements. Either way, the original gameplay style is used well, and used to an extent that it hasn’t been used since, although Kirby 64 comes pretty close in terms of sheer volume of uses for Kirby’s power.

For me, the Kirby gameplay style is extremely enjoyable. At it’s core, it’s very simple, but you can mix things up a bit by adding your own strategy to the mix. Going after certain powers to absorb rather than others, and using trial and error to figure out which enemies will grant you which power. Also, just finding which power (or powers, as the case may be) that you enjoy the most is a blast. I would have been happy with just the Kirby-gameplay titles included here, but the lesser games, seemingly put in to compliment the bigger games, add a lot of charm to KSS. The Gourmet Race, which uses the regular Kirby gameplay style very well, by having you make use of it to gobble up more food than King DeDeDe and beat him to the finish line, is lots of fun, and is one of my favorite titles included in KSS since it is so simple, and yet is addictive and extremely enjoyable at the same time.

The controls throughout KSS are responsive, which is a Godsend for the traditional Kirby-style games and especially for the timing-based mini-games, which would be pretty much unplayable with shoddy controls. The control schemes throughout are logical and fit the style of gameplay in each title well. The SNES pad does a wonderful job of relaying things when needed, and that allows for more fun to be had, as you don’t have to worry about the controls messing up an otherwise great play session.

Graphically, this is one of the most beautiful 2D games I’ve seen, and (obviously) one of the best-looking SNES games as well. The visual look of every Kirby game is pretty uniform: a rich color palette, great shading where needed, solid black lines around the character sprites, and great animation for everything. The attention to detail in the visuals is striking, as everything seems to have some kind of animation, from leaves and clouds in the background, to the little bits of food in the Gourmet Race mode. This pays off in a big way as it makes KSS on the whole look amazing, and helps it hold up well even when compared to today’s 2D titles. To top it off, HAL Laboratory through in some great background characters in the Megaton Punch section that look amazing. Seeing Mario, Luigi, Birdo and others in the Kirby graphical style is a treat, as is seeing Ryu’s headband around Kirby in that mode.

The audio maintains the high standards set by, well, everything else in KSS. The music is fantastic, with a cheery, upbeat tempo that fits the mood of the games quite well. The music intensifies and takes on a more serious tone during the many boss battles that litter the games, which again, adds to the mood, and creates a very unique atmosphere for the boss battles that help set them apart from the regular battles in the game. The sound effects are great, again, light-hearted stuff throughout, but they always manage to fit the actions pretty well, to the point where I can’t imagine any other effects being used.

The diversity in the gameplay styles, as well as the flat-out enjoyable nature of everything in KSS make it something that can be replayed for quite a while for any number of reasons. You can play it again just to have a quick Megaon Punch game, or opt to go through one of the full-length adventures. Either way, you’ll get an enjoyable experience, which is then added to when you unlock the two hidden games which continue that tradition perfectly. As a little side note, the timing-based mini-games are great for testing your hand-eye coordination, especially the non-Megaton Punch one-on-one “battle” one, whose name escapes me at the moment.

Kirby Super Star does a better job with multiple gameplay styles than most do of just one, and it does it with gusto. For the $20 or so this game runs nowadays, you’ll be able to get a lot of gaming memories, and if you’re a fan of the Kirby games, you’ll adore this little cartridge. Everything in it screams “high-class” thanks to the hard work done on it. It doesn’t look like any shortcuts were taken anywhere with it, and with all of the polish on the game, I’d be surprised if any were. Hopefully, Nintendo will commission some sort of release like this for either the GBA or another system, maybe with another series. I wouldn’t mind seeing one with the Mario Bros. In it, there’s a wealth of material to go on, and it’d sell pretty well to boot. Well, anyway, if you see this title, and enjoy gaming in pretty much anyway, snatch it up.