Dream Land is under siege again! Our hero, Kirby, returns to instigate a rescue. King Dedede is snatching Dream Land’s food supply, but he’s not the only one! Dyna Blade, Meta Knight and many other villains are on the loose and wreaking havoc across the country.
Use any of Kirby’s amazing powers to create a “helper” to aid you in battle. Or have a friend join you in a two-player action taking control of Kirby’s helper. Help Kirby work on EIGHT challenging games full of action and adventure. Enter the fray in Spring Breeze, take part in a foot race against King Dedede in Gourmet Race and face a winged warrior in Dyna Blade.
Tune up your reaction skills on Megaton Punch and Samurai Kirby, then fight your way through Great Cave Offensive, Revenge of Meta Knight, and Milky Way Wishes. Every game is different AND some extra special surprises await you!
The game:
It’s the classic Kirby game and more in 8 great games! The gameplay is both fun and challenging at times. Everyone will enjoy controlling Kirby in Dreamland and beyond. You make your way by swallowing Kirby’s enemies and then using them as projectiles or you can steal his powers if the enemy you swallowed has one. There are many enemies with powers, so you won’t always have the same powers over and over again.
The powers you get also do more than one thing, for example: if you acquire the lightning ability, you can shoot the lightning regularly, charge it up for a powerful blast, grab an enemy and shoot him and make these blue dots pop out of the wand hurting to enemies. When you have a power, you can also create a helper based on the power you have. The companion will help you on your quest and can be controlled by AI or a friend of yours can control it instead.
You can also find powers and tap them to get them in some places instead of absorbing and swallowing enemies. Kirby can fly, if you didn’t know and if you want you can fly over things. When you are underwater, you can use certain powers, but otherwise you have a special attack underwater.
The levels are fun and the enemies are well thought out. The bosses are great, they range from easy to very difficult and provide a good challenge and are fun at the same time. When Kirby stops flying, he spits out a cloud of dust, which is capable of wounding enemies. Kirby can also slide when running to hurt enemies.
Here’s a rundown of the Kirby Superstar games featured in the instruction booklet …
Spring Breeze – King DeDeDe has stolen all the food in Dreamland and once again it’s up to Kirby to stop him. Spring Breeze is a simple but fun way to introduce new players to the world of Kirby. With Kirby’s classic formula of swallowing enemies and stealing their powers, you fight your way through the 4 stages that you must overcome. Each one contains a boss that you must fight with. It’s not a challenge for most gamers, but it’s a good way to sit back and have fun with the classic Kirby.
Dyna Blade – A giant bird named Dyna Blade is terrorizing the earth and guess who is ready to stop it. Yes, that’s right, Kirby is! Offering more levels, which will pose a greater challenge for players than Spring Breeze, Dyna Blade is a much larger Kirby game contained in Kirby Superstar. There are also some secrets, which I will let you find on your own.
Gourmet Race – After climbing a very high mountain to get the precious food found at the top, Kirby discovers that King DeDeDe is also on the mountain and intends to take all the food with him. Kirby and King DeDeDe decide to make a race collecting food to see who gets everything. Basically you race King DeDeDe all the way in the stages and collect the food while you’re at it. You can also play against the clock to try to beat your best times.
Great Cave Offensive – During a picnic, Kirby falls into a hole and discovers a gigantic cave rumored to have millions of dollars in treasure. Kirby must go through the cave and collect all the treasure. Well, you don’t have to collect it all, but if you want 100% in your game file, you have to collect it all. The Great Cave Offensive poses a challenge for even the most skilled players because some treasures can be quite difficult to find and acquire.
Return of MetaKnight – The evil MetaKnight and his crew set out to conquer the land of dreams with their gigantic flying ship. Naturally, Kirby jumps on the warp star and heads for action. Revenge of MetaKnight can be challenging for people and has a great story. It also uses the classic Kirby formula but many surprises and challenges await you.
Milky Way Wishes: The sun and the moon are fighting, making the days and nights in Dreamland mingle. Guide Kirby through many different planets in an attempt to get things back to normal. Instead of the classic swallow and copy powers, Milky Way Wishes is different. You find the powers and then you have acquired them permanently. You can then switch between different powers anytime you want and this concept puts a fun new spin on Kirby’s action. Milky Way Wishes is extremely fun and quite difficult at times as well.
Megaton Punch – This minigame is quite entertaining but also quite easy. You can play with 1 or 2 players and select a level for yourself. You first set up Kirby’s power meter by pressing any button when the power meter is full, then you press any button again when the two cursors flying around meet exactly to form one, and finally you press any button when the swinging pendulum is inside the ring. . Now you have your score and if it is higher than your opponents, you win. It’s that easy.
Samurai Kirby: like the other minigames, you select the number of players and the level of difficulty in Samurai Kirby. This game is a reflex test and requires you to press any button as soon as you see “!”. Whoever presses it first wins. Do not press any button prematurely because you will be disqualified if you do it too quickly. Samurai Kirby offers many challenges and fun.
Graphics:
Kirby, one of the best on a SNES, has never looked better before. Most of the enemies look very nice and well detailed. The food you use to restore Kirby’s health is also very good. The backgrounds are simply amazing and show the fascinating world of Dreamland well. All the movements on the screen look excellent; Kirby’s and the enemies. The small cut scenes are almost perfect and very well detailed. Kirby Superstar is one of the best games in terms of graphics on the SNES.
Sound quality:
Everyone loves listening to Kirby’s music, right? It is pleasant to the ears and flows well with the game. Some stages may have mediocre music, but most are simply the best. The sounds are great too, blending in with the actions cleanly and almost perfectly. If you hit something with a certain power, the sound you imagine will be heard will be heard. When you go invincible you get great fast paced music and who could forget Kirby’s dance music. Everyone loves Kirby’s dance, or so I think.
Game controls:
The Kirby Superstar controls are really good and easy to learn. He uses the D-Pad to move Kirby and he can double tap the D-Pad to the right or left to sprint. You can also press up on the D-Pad to enter a door and press down for Kirby to sit or crouch. While pressing down and B at the same time, the star warrior will glide. Pressing the B button will make Kirby jump while pressing it continuously will make Kirby fly.
Your flight time is infinite so don’t worry about falling. The Y button is probably the most important in the entire game, as it causes Kirby to swallow enemies, which you can then spit on other enemies or use to acquire an ability. The Y button can also be used to fire air bullets while flying and use the water gun underwater. When you have a power, you can use the A button to create a helper, and if you have no power, you can use the A button to get rid of the helper.
The L and R buttons protect Kirby from most, but not all, enemies and obstacles. Start pauses the game and if you want to reset it, you just have to press the Start, Select, L and R buttons simultaneously. You can also use the A button to teleport to Kirby or self-destruct if you’re the helper and can’t get too far away from Kirby, but this isn’t a big deal.
The repeat value:
With eight games in one plus minigames, you’ll be playing Kirby Superstar for a long time. Collecting all the treasure in Great Cave Offensive and all the powers in Milky Way Wishes will take a while. If you have a second player as a helper, you will be playing these games over and over again simply for the fun of the multiplayer feature.
Final thoughts:
That’s Kirby Super Star in a nutshell. I highly recommend this game to anyone who owns an SNES, and I’m really disappointed that we never saw a port for GBA or anything like that, but hey. They took the good from the first Kirby game, added a few more minigames, set about finding all the secrets to getting the actual ending, and made it two-player. What more could you want?
Even with the release of Kirby Crystal Shards for the N64, I still think this is the best of Kirby games. This one did everything perfectly, however the first one was even more innovative. If anyone ever gets a chance, they should give this game a try, they surely won’t regret it!