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My, isn't somebody fancy today.

This game officially ranks Kirby among such all-time legends as Jesus Christ* and Mary Catherine Gallagher. I know I would be proud.


*Before it was only unofficial.

This video-game is also one of the known few to contain both the words "kibble" and "bits." I'm telling you that now because, after writing the rest of the page and coming back here, I see that I don't otherwise mention it.


Nintendo P'wer, again, declared Kirbisupastah to be actually nine games in one, but from my studies I know two merely require you to press a button one or more times, and of the remaining seven only three will take more than an hour to get through. I'm surprised they didn't increase the count to 10 by including the "stereo" option. Oh, and game number 8 doesn't show up until you've found all sixty treasures in game number 5, The Great Offensive Cave, which you probably won't, so... beh. But it's mostly good, really.

The Kirbsup'sta package addresses my concerns with the previous, those being the lack of special abilities, the non lack of Kirby's entourage and graphics not befitting of the hardware it ultimately runs on. It's a good thing I didn't actually try this until long after it came out (like let's say last year), for I might have risked spoiling my then rapidly declining opinion of Nintendo with it had I experienced it in 1996 when it was new. If I had, it would have been a full year before Kirby's Dream Land 3 reneged on all three cited improvements and set me straight. To think I might never have spent all those hours making Doom levels to lose in a hard drive failure later!

It wasn't until I downloaded and had a look at the game whose title graphic rests atop this page that I realized Kirby is supposed to be a bully and nothing more. So this mean person, (and if the cartoon's description is to be believed, uninvited alien life form) wanders aimlessly across the confederated republics of Dreamland eating some inhabitants and mockingly imitating the others. Even the king is powerless to stop this brutish mongrel. The instruction books and such would have you believe that Kirby fights for the people of Dreamland, but we are never given any evidence that "the people of Dreamland" are anyone else but the ones continually being fought against. My series of realizations came about after viewing the following:

Here we see Khar-Bei, napping as usual, when suddenly all of a

the good Dr. Nablade (being the medical professional who never votes in favor of the sharp part of knives), rushing towards a patient in need, accidentally disrupts the cardboard foliage of the tree our villain rests beside,

disturbing an apple, displacing the nap,

and... that's all.


Kirby considers this the ultimate dishonor and swears revenge, but not before forcefully converting several hundred nearby citizens into explody star shapes. Those scary flower things are afraid, but not of the purple bird sillhouette or even each other.


With all the violent gluttony, cruelty to small creatures of indeterminate species,

piracy and international terrorism, Kirby is very much like Ronald McDonald, except without the corporate sponsorship (Wendy's didn't step in until much later) or jewel obsession.

I have alarmingly few problems with this as a whole. Even if Spring Breeze (which I'm told is not a brand of soap), the rehash of Hal's first game after being demoted to laboratory status lacks certain quirks and the gameplay balance that made the original only just very easy, it is so pretty that I almost forgive it. Also lacking the smoke effects that vaguely resemble backwards dollar signs makes me completely forgive it. However, still here is an overexcited tour through my mental disorder.


Fap fap fap fap fap...


WAH!


Blimp!


Oh, so bubbly.


Bombs!


Stupid, useless background trick!


M-m-mih... muhmuhmuhMINT!


Fat clone!


Oh, so bubby.

And there you have it. But I was talking about


wasn't I? Yes, I was. But now I'm not. Being the only item of these three pages' focus I'd recommend going the minorest bit out of your way to obtain, I have few negative things to say about it, and that's bad for business. Moving on...


(Light background and small letters!)

“Change is good, but only if the change is good.” -me, just now.

Being made in 1997, this was not available until after my subscription to Nintendo Power expired and I didn't bother my mother to renew it. This is unfortunate, for the goals of my writing this, because while through all of 1996 I don't believe I purchased a single thing they gave coverage to, I realize now that's more fun to write about than the games are, and since I'll never have proof anyone besides me has read this, my own amusement is of utmost importance.

Kirby's Dream Land 3, or KDL3, or Merberf, was created during a period in which Nintendo believed that the only way to generate interest in 3D games was to make anything else look like it came from a six-year-old's colouring book. It's not so evident from static images, but just about every object in the game trembles with scribbleness. This way the number of animation frames can be boasted without the artists actually having to draw that many.

But I can see why they wouldn't want to. Merberf has some of the least interesting monster beings [at least as created by people that I know can do better] I've ever witnessed. I want to destroy these just to stop being able to look at them.


These have more menacing cuteness than the torso-less mopes being reduced to star fragments by Kirby this time. Even the ones that are the same as before I like less just for accompanying the new ones. Also: No Waddle Doo. Just the lack of that being spelled out anywhere makes the game less fun. (if you have a dial up connection like I do, don't bother waiting for that picture. Just believe me when I tell you that it does depict Waddle Doo.

Despite the title and instruction manual excerpts from the facks for previous games, Kirby now lives in the magical world of Popstar, where one lone moron can get name recognition and salary over their legitimately talented bands and songwriters just for dressing like a whore and/or caterwauling into a microphone (ironically among the many things Kirby can no longer do in this game).

While probably better than McDonald Treasure Land and unquestionably better than Super Wij't, it doesn't elicit unintended amusement out of me quite so well. Since unhelpful supporting characters are integrated into the gameplay rather than running their mouths between levels, I'm forced to intimately work with someone that I'd much rather laugh at from a distance. It would be like if my actions could save people in a burning building, but only if Spiderman held up the ladder and Steve Moraff turned on the hose. Fortunately, that can never happen since Moraff is a fictional character, but this game is very real.

I'm not sure what the stated objective is. Although a black space blob is featured in the introduction, the worst thing it does is make people look at it, and I've seen more Kirby than anyone else today, so who's the real enemy?


Og course! What a fool I've been!
Also along for the teacup ride are kirby's badly drawn weeble friends who additionally have their own badly drawn weeble friends this time. I accept the creature of kirby because i don't know what it's supposed to be and there is no official word on that. If someone were to reveal that kirby is actually supposed to be a bird of some sort or a cat, then I'd have a problem, because there's insufficient resemblance. Und so it should not surprise you to know my disapproval with these amorphous morons. Upon seeing them I realized, the character designer isn't an unusual thinker, just incompetent. Probably incontinent, too.

You see them together on the title screen and they just look like a barrel of laughs, but really, save for a few isolated moments with a certain one in a certain level with a certain power, they're just miserable.

One guess who my least favorite is. "Chuchu," AKA Pinky from Pac-Man AKA Kirby with feet at wrong end seems there for naught but to inspire corny between level animations.


Also, Kirby goes all retardo-eyed while in proximity to it.

The fish and the purple grey not green bird, at least, increase kirby's mobility. However, the lot of them, those two included, otherwise have no purpose other than to limit the skills Kirby may have at any one time. At least a vocational highschool will teach you how to repair a car and give you a pretty diploma. In ksssss, there were several things you could do with each power, and there were at least twelve of them. In this game, however, there are only eight distinct skills, and you will only be able to use it in one way, depending on which cretin accompanies the kirb. While eight times six does equal forty eight (see, the internet is educational), a couple of them are duplicates, several pairs were previously available as one and those which remain are mostly useless. I will be getting to that.

What's worse, is the available talents aren't even that enjoyable. In place of some of the fun to use abilities from the previous game like

Plasma,
Bomb,
Suplex (I guess)
is


Brooooooom!

which offers minimal offensive capabilities and additionally looks really dumb. At least, that's how it is on the ground. Jump into the air, however, and...

Kirby sweeps invisible ground.

However, excepting that, broom exists only to allow nintendo, hal, whoever to implement "secrets" which require its use to find.
In a similarly halfhearted and two-thirdbrained attempt to add depth to an otherwise just kind of good maybe action game, Hal made sure that at some point in every level, kirby must perform a silly task to please the landlord. There are a few which are interesting ("few" meaning "not many"), but the rest are mere annoyances which demand that I continually go half to all-the-way through a place which was boring enough the first time carrying a different item and hoping the cruel overlord will beep in appreciation this time. I wish I could tell you that the goal was to make Kirby act out of kindness, but it's nothing more than artificiality to satiate the stubborn, selfish desires of the zone keepers, so that they give up their heart-shape object, the obtaining of which is Kirby's own stubborn, selfish desire.


Kirby the politician avoids stepping on normal flowers to please the non-fire power-granting Big Flower...


but intentionally tramples them to please the ethnic cleansing non-super size-granting Big Mushroom. I can't believe this received a K-A rating. Maybe Nintendo thought children should be more aware of world events.

Also: All of them have eyes. Or nostrils. I prefer not to think about it, either way.

These next two things are so egotistical that they require Kirby to arrange blocks into their shapes.

This yellow thing has no reason to exist. It's just a deformed blob, two eyes (maybe) and a mouth. Kirby is also, but at least does things. This ultra plus sign does no thing but float around in its private cave collecting things which resemble itself.


Scoundrel!


It also has a friend with the same problem but that is upside-down just to be difficult and possibly look dumber. I wish I knew what they were called so that I could make defamatory statements about them more easily at a later date.


This creature -who I named "Broombik" when saving the image, right click it and check the properties if you doubt me- which seems to be a janitor of some sort demands that Kirby clean up some tar-substance to gain access to its happy thing. Forget saving the world from Dark Meator, right? You need to get off work early so you can go smoke the pot or kick the hobos or whatever it is you janitors do when you aren't janiting.


You might think I would consider the fact that Broombik does not switch which ball it holds the sweeping device in when it looks over there to be a redeeming quality, but it's more likely a result of laziness. This fiend made the object programmer flip it and its broom-like-thing apart from each other and switch their placement priorities or something like that, instead of merely flipping a single joined sprite. Where will it stop, Broombik? Know you no life but that of sinful decadence?

There's only a master boss enemy after every six levels. Six long, quickly tiresome levels. In Kirby's second Dream Land (from the page before this one) this was also the case, but 1.) that game was also mediocre and 2.) none of those levels needed to be repeatedly re-entered in attempts to pander to their vain property owners. Even the places with objects to find gave some indication of what needed to be done. What the grimble does this biomechanical screw want?!

Five of the levels require you to play some dopely game-within-the-game with the local fiend instead. I've never liked mini-games, as this practice is known as, but when they only serve to earn extra lives or points that don't do anything I will tolerate or avoid them. However, it's just mean to forbid me from completing the actual game if I don't feel like climbing mount erebus 25 times just to correctly guess which spiked ball made the chirping sound when it landed in an effort to impress the twinkie chef. And that's not even a comical exaggeration (clearly, since it's not funny). I'm just supposed to laugh it all off at the end of the level where they finally release their heart object. Oh yes, ha ha ha, didn't we have such a good time today together.


We'll never forget you, twinkie chef. We don't have the technology.

Some of the graphical effects unrelated to the game artwork they affect are kind of neat, for a Super NES game, but if I wanted impressive-considering-the-circumstances showy stuff, I'd play this instead, and I already have.

A fundamental difference: kss I stop playing because i think i'll get bored by it. kdl3 i stop playing because i AM bored by it. Although a fine sequel to kdl2, Revenge of the Nerds 6 was a fine sequel to Revenge of the Nerds 5, wasn't it.
I don't know, I'm asking you.
I only really like the improved physics of the stone attack and the stupid fish (It reminds me of Kuribo's Shoe). But gosh that's a stupid looking fish.

So that's the end, isn't it? Please? No, not quite. There's also Kirby Pinball Land, Kirby Tilltentumble, Kirby star stacker (stackin' stars), and those are just the ones that I could emulate without having more RAM installed.

I don't want to get into the numerous other tiresome Kirby releases because they are numerous and tiresome. Howevah, TILT N TUMBLE gets special mentioning, not so much because Kirby forgot how to walk again, or that the emulation of the alternate movement method requires use of a mouse, which, as a scholar of game-boys I can tell you most do not have (because that works really badly), but rather the horrified screams of 8-bit agony it emits whenever Kirby is erred in a way that involves what looks to be, since I can't even see the ground, a moderately painful fall. It's a traumatizing experience.


Surgeon General's Warning: Do not, under any circumstances, do the Kirby.