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The Games We Played: Star Surfing with Kirby of the Stars

by Omar (@siegarettes)

Every year I get a new Kirby adventure may not be a good one, but every year with one is definitely a little better than it was. This year I was lucky enough to have both brand new adventures and revisit old ones. And what beautiful little adventures they were.

The year led with Planet Robobot, a game that I was bound to enjoy, as it combined the excellent framework set up by Triple Deluxe with MECHS. After stealing a ride from the mechanical forces set on industrializing Pop Star, Kirby is now ready to rampage in the Robobot Armor. It’s not entirely unlike the Ride Armors from the Megaman X games, allowing you to inflict big damage, but also to get places you couldn’t access before by pummeling the environment. Best of all, the Robobot Armor can use Kirby’s signature copy ability, transforming into new forms and providing tons of neat new gimmicks. 

Whether it’s swinging a giant sword, sending out remote control bombs, or transforming into a jet for shoot-em-up sections, each gimmick continued to surprise me and laugh in joy as I witnessed both the unique designs and puzzles. Even after so many years of playing the series, it’s amazing to see how the animations and small details can give me such a sense of childish joy. Learning, for instance, that the stickers you collect during stages could be put on your mech, had me giddy with excitement, running to show my partner. 

Sharing Kirby’s adventures has always been a big part of the series appeal to me. I’ve spent so much of the series alongside a sibling or partner, either taking on obstacles together, or just sharing the surprises along the way. So I was glad I was able to revisit some of the older titles and share them with my partner. Triple Deluxe proved to be a treat here, as I was a bit slow making my way through Robobot, and my partner wanted something similar to play while I caught up to her (I get a little salty when someone else gets ahead of me). Hearing someone else’s exclamations as they made their way through was almost as fun as playing it again for the first time. The use of 3D in particular never stopped being fun.

Even better was when we were able to get another person along for the ride. I played a lot of the original Wii this year, and so i came back to Return to Dreamland, this time with two other people to help me get through the adventure. The co-op there was probably the finest since Kirby Superstar, and having two other people to help knock down bosses, or just to jump off the heads of and make chaos, turned it into a raucous party. 

I’m finally making time to revisit all these adventures, slowly but surely, and to catch up on the ones that I missed. I’m playing through them from the beginning, with my partner even, and in the process of recording playthroughs I’ve already been surprised all over again.  Like Taiko, it gives me something to laugh at, to see joy in. I’m always happy, and grateful, for that, and HAL Lab’s little adventurer is starting to feel like a real friend because of it.