Kirby’s Adventure Review

The year was 1994, the last year that games were released for the NES. Two short years before the N64 was released. Yet Nintendo had one more trick up their sleeves for the NES called Kirby’s Adventure. Starring the lovable pink puffball who had already been in at least two Game Boy games, Kirby’s Adventure was the game to truly show what the NES was capable of in many ways.

I don’t know where to start when talking about the graphics on this game. They’re beautiful, simply beautiful. They put to shame the graphics on many SNES games I have seen. Nintendo truly scraped the bottom of the barrel and took advantage of every iota of graphical capability that the NES had when they created this. Everything is well drawn and detailed, both those things in the foreground, and, in many cases, those things in the background as well.

The same is true of the sound. The sound effects from the Game Boy games are here, but they are updated to compensate for a couple years time and the differences between the systems. The sound effects are very well done in all respects, and the music is done very well also. The only complaint I may have here is that some of the music is borrowed from the Game Boy games, but that is hardly a major problem.

For those of you who have played Kirby’s Dream Land games, consider Kirby’s Adventure to be like Kirby’s Dream Land 2, only without the animal buddies and with a lot more variety in special abilities to steal. You go through levels inhaling and exhaling enemies and/or using their own abilities against them. If you have played either Kirby’s Dream Land, you will be right at home in this game.

For those of you that haven’t had the privilege of playing a Kirby game before, Kirby is the sworn enemy of injustice on his world, so when Kind Dedede split the Star Rod, which is the major source of dream energy for Kirby’s world, Kirby goes to retrieve the pieces. Kirby is not a powerful fighter by default. Originally he fought by inhaling enemies and exhaling them into other enemies, which he still can do, but he later learned how to assimilate the ability of an enemy he swallowed, an ability which is present in this game. He also possesses the ability to fly limitlessly.

There is only one major problem with the gameplay. Even though the game is plenty long for an NES game, with saving done automatically by battery each time a level is beaten or escaped, the actual game itself isn’t particularly difficult. Finding some of the secret switches for bonuses can be tough, but since the game tells you which levels those switches are in by what color the door is after you beat the level, you don’t have to search high and low everywhere.

The low difficulty is a slight problem though. Kirby’s Adventure, although long enough to meet NES length standards, is no Super Mario Bros. 3 in terms of length. However, the relative shortness of it and the carefree lack of difficulty in which this game can be traversed make this a game that a person can play over and over again, and probably will, if only to look at the beautiful graphics.

I highly recommend you get this game, whether you get it for the NES or whether you decided to get the GBA remake of it. My opinion is that the NES version is just as, if not more, fun to play, and probably cheaper. It’s also a better game for its time, and a testament of what the NES was capable of.