Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 456: Kirby, Part 2

Episode Date: May 23, 2022

Thanks to the generous patronage of Andrew Oliveira, we're continuing our Kirby journey right where we left off in episode 401. This time around, we see the passing of the torch, as series creator Masahiro Sakurai completes his Kirby trilogy and begins working on the Smash Bros. series for the rest of his natural life. The next iteration of Kirby may be a little slower and puzzle-based, but it brings to an end an era of HAL-crafted games before the developer puts the series on the back burner for nearly a decade. On this episode, join Bob Mackey, Henry Gilbert, Stuart Gipp, and Andrew Olivera as the crew continues their examination of a series that's closer to an EGOT than ever before! Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get two full-length exclusive episodes every month, as well as access to 50+ previous bonus episodes, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com/retronauts.

Retronauts is part of the HyperX Podcast Network. Find us in more great shows at podcast.hyperx.com. This week on Retronauts, we talk about the non-biblical superstar. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host for this one, Bob Mackey. And today's topic is Kirby Part 2. We did Kirby Part 1 back in the fall of 2021. And now we're back to talk about the next three Kirby games in the Kirby Pantheon.

And those games are Kirby Superstar, Kirby's Dreamland 3, and Kirby 64, the Crystal Shards. I'm experiencing a real curbasin here in my own personal life. We'll talk more about that later. Before I begin, who is here with me today? Let's first introduce the patron who has sponsored this episode. He also was on the first of Kirby episode. Patron, please let us know who you are and your love of Kirby. Andrew Olivera, and yeah, I mean, I love it enough to fund this, so we are.

And we are now in the wake of the newest Kirby game, so it's a great time to talk about Kirby. Who is our overseas correspondent on the line here? Hello, I am a host and regular talker of crap, Stuart Jip, and I am from the Great Cave Offensive's Inspiration, England. Okay. And who else do we have? Pooh, pooh, pooh! Hey, it's Henry Gilbert. Kirby's pooing all over the place, but it means something different.

And yeah, we're going to be talking about the next three games in the series, and I am taking over for Jeremy on this series, and I never gave my Kirby history, although I did it. Kirby episode back in 2011. The newest game back then was Kirby Mass Attack. That's a really cool game by the way. So play that if you've never played it before. It's a really different Kirby game. But I could tell you

my Kirby story is I had some interest in the character when the Game Boy game came out. A friend's little brother had it for his Game Boy and I played it and I was like, oh, this is kind of simple. It's not as sophisticated as Mario or Sonic. But then Nintendo Power had coverage of Kirby's adventure in the magazine. And I was like, well,

this game looks really cool. It looks even better than Mega Man because you can kind of switch powers on the fly and the level. And it felt very weird to ask for an NES game in 1993 while I was enjoying my Super Nintendo. But I got Kirby's adventure for my birthday that year and I really loved Kirby throughout the 90s. And then I kind of missed out on Kirby because my budget dictated the kinds of games I bought and that's why I became a fan of RPGs because I didn't have a lot of money until kind of shockingly recently. So that's why I became a fan of RPG. So just the idea of paying 50 or 60 bucks for like a eight-hour Kirby game seemed crazy to me. Now it's like the

best idea ever. I love these shorter, easier games. But because of that, I missed about like 15 years of Kirby games. And to be fair, some of those weren't great. There were some okay remakes. There were some things that were farmed out. But now I'm back on board. I'm replaying all the Kirby games. And I'm very, very excited to talk about these three. Although I'm not the biggest fan of two of them, but I still think they're pretty interesting games. So is there anything else we need to any refresher we need to go over before we jump into this kirby discussion again yeah i mean this is recording this after uh playing forgotten land like it again really recalibrated my uh enjoyment enjoyment of kirby like i guess uh it shows you how old the switch

is that they're like okay it's time it's five years in time for a mainline kirby game on a console but except this is the first time a console is not like being buried you know it's still selling outselling everything so just like oh no we have to make another one of these yeah they're going to have to have forgotten land too but but yeah i mean it it reminded me like oh yeah i love this about kirby kirby games are still where it's at and and yeah also i'm i am so happy to be on the second one of these because uh when we i was on the previous one with andrew and we almost got to superstar which is my favorite and i was like ah i want to talk about this but we and we ran out of time so now is is uh henry's time to shun

It is a really good one. And no, you're right. Like, Kirby games almost always close out a console. And we'll talk about, like, two of those on this podcast. But, yeah, like, the Wii had a really late one, like, in 2011 or 2012. The DS had one in 2011, like 3DS had one in, like, 2017 or 2018. Wii U had a late one, too. That one's pretty cool.

But, yeah, this one, I feel like there's going to be at least like three or four more years of Switch viability. So they need to make another forgotten land or something like that. Epic Yarn 3? perhaps or I could go I could go for another rainbow curse that was oh that was a great game I love that one more imagine the claymation graphics on a switch at that point but it doesn't ship with a stylus what are you going to do oh yeah rub your greasy hand all over that you're gonna ruin the screen uh yeah I always forget the switch you can just touch the screen whenever you want and sometimes things will happen to it I never bother except playing the 3D world remake was the last

time I was like oh yeah wait I can do that on this thing yeah but yeah the So we're kind of closing off the Masahiro Sakurai trilogy of Kirby games because there's Kirby's Dreamland, Kirby's Adventure, and Kirby Superstar. He will still be like a producer and he'll direct Kirby's air ride or maybe it's called Kirby Air Ride. But after Kirby's Superstar, he is like the Smash Brothers dude for the rest of time. He will be buried while still working on Smash Brothers. They'll have to take the mouse out of his hand. But this is kind of where he passes the torch to Shinichi Shimamura, and he started with Kirby's Dreamland, too. I don't know if I like his iteration of Kirby as much as Sakurai.

In fact, I know I don't. I don't think they're bad. I think he kind of misunderstands Kirby, and we'll talk more about that later. That's only my personal feeling. But I guess you should kick things off by talking about Kirby's superstar. And this was a very late release for the Super Nintendo. And it was releasing on the cusp of the N64. People were freaking out about the N64.

They were trying to find pre-orders. It'd be coming out that October. And this game released in America in September 20th, 1996. And Andrew, up front, what are your thoughts about this one? Henry says it's his favorite. I think it's an interesting sandbox for different Kirby ideas. And I do like a lot of what's going on here. What do you think, Andrew?

And even Stewart, too, you can jump in. I think that, you know, it's a lot of people's favorites. and, you know, it sort of sets the tone for the mainline Kirby games going forward. I think, you know, it stands on the same level of Link to the Past and Super Metroid where it took what made the NES version great and made it way better, and they're like, okay, so this is what this is going forward. Yeah, it does fall in line with a lot of the 16-bit remix in quotes where Link to the Past is sort of improving on the original Legend of Zelda, and even this game is seeing what they can do

with Kirby's Adventure and even Kirby's Dreamland in a different format with better graphics. Stuart, what do you think about Kirby's Superstar? Well, this is the interesting thing about Kirby is this one used to be my favorite, and then they brought out better Kirby games later, like this string of really amazing Kirby games on the Wii and on the 3DS, etc. But Superstar isn't really any kind of slouch at all. It's, I feel like Nowadays, the mini, the sort of smaller games that are present in it, none of them are really long enough for me to particularly get my teeth into. So it does feel a little kind of fragmented in that respect, but it is meant to be like that. So I can't really criticise it for that.

Like, I really enjoyed Metanites Revenge. I think that's still very original and very cool. But I guess we'll talk about them in detail, rather than get into it now. It's, it's good. I like it. I like Kirby's adventure slightly more because I feel like it's a more complete, coherent experience. and it's incredibly impressive for an NES game as we talked about on the last one.

But Superstar is really great and the DS remake is probably better. Okay, so yeah, I really like Superstar when it came out but it was, I wasn't advanced enough of a gamer to really appreciate what it was doing and all the just how much was packed into it and all the fun that the developers were having. Like the sense of humor and style to it,

I could really appreciate on the Ultra remake for 3DX. and or DS and so when I played that that's when I really realized what I loved about it and it is that what didn't super catch me with the original Kirby games or why I viewed them as little brother games I think as I did detailed them before was that they seemed short they they feel short and if you don't try to 100% and they they are a little short having Kirby Superstar it's like oh especially starting with spring breeze if this is like oh see you thought a Kirby game short yeah this one's like you know 10 minutes tops just like there you zip through it want to play the next one it's also kind of short but

they all add up to uh what is a huge game full of stuff and and on top of that it has so much of the Sakurai design sensibility that as a smash player as well i or as someone who played smash a bunch in the past i also really really love about the style of superstars Yeah, definitely. I can see a lot of Sakurai's future Working Smash Brothers in this game. And I think some of the novelty that's lost maybe in 2022 is that it was once a huge novelty

to be able to finish a video game, even as late as 1996. Like, how many games did you own that you just didn't finish? How many games did you rent that you didn't finish? Some games were too hard or unfair to finish. The fact that there were like six games in here, technically, you can just sit down and finish was like fun and interesting.

like this just was something new and now every game is designed to be finished by anyone except for maybe like elven ring or like bloodborn or whatever but back then it was still like a real novelty and yeah talking about smash brothers henry starting this game it's just like well this menu is basically every sakurai game menu just like different windows of different size like a very fun menu to look at and then we'll talk more about it later but uh the roots of like the fighting game are in this and it's even like he states it in interviews like i can see Smash Brothers control scheme coming out of Kirby's Superstar with every different hat you have and can wear in this game has different moves depending on if you're in the air, if you're guarding, if you're ducking, if you're dashing. And that's why I'm not a huge fan of the next two games because they drop that completely in exchange for, like I guess in theory a more interesting idea, but it's not as fast-paced and technical as what's going on here. Moving on from Kirby's Adventure, where, I mean, as much as I love that game, every single absorbability has one, application more or less in here as you mentioned there are so many that have so many different powers like and some of them even do use commands like down up why to use the the yo-yo to sort of spin

upwards is very powerful move the whole thing with the plasma where you need to keep moving around like you're shuffling your feet to static electricity there's one of the most powerful things in the game there's just a lot in there and combined with the sort of Sakurai style presentation which is very much I don't know what the correct word is maximalist which is very excessive in a good way because it's like how every game has been made to feel

kind of distinctive with its own distinct title screen and music and even I think the huds are quite different in a lot of cases as well it all feels just like a real important package I think in the European release they renamed this Kirby's Fun Pack which kind of sells the fact that it's a set

of individual games a little bit more but it's quite a bad name, Kobe's Fun Pack. You'd think you were getting like a compilation of old existing games or something. Or like just a two pack of something else. It sounds like it's just a load of brand new stuff. It sounds like a collection of like little cereal boxes to me or something. With the naming too, you might accidentally trick people into thinking I get to a series of remakes like Super Mario All-Stars. You know, like that you think it's, I think until I saw some of the commercials I've at the time,

in 96, I maybe thought it was like there's so many Kirby. I mean, it was like there were so many Kirby games on the Game Boy. I maybe thought it was just another remake report. The commercial, it's funny you say that about the overstuffiness of it because that was in America

the play it loud style commercial of a giant pink boy is taken to the hospital because he's overstuffed with too much Kirby, TMK. That's what he's diagnosed with. And you know what? That boy, that was me.

And you survive. Yeah, you're talking about the maximalist design of the game. And yeah, I totally forgot about how like

technically complex the different powers are because if you they're not all this complex but you'll get the power and then you can hit pause to see like well here's what you can do.

Sometimes there are like three pages of information as to like every different input you can do and different information about like how the powers work. So yeah, really neat.

Let's talk about the production of this game. So first prototype for the Famicom moved to Super Famicom and had quite a bit of development behind it because during the development of this game Donkey Kong Country came out and it sounded like they basically threw out all the graphics or a lot of the graphics they had so far

to introduce pre-render graphics which are not as garish as what you see in Donkey Kong Country I think on a 4K TV these age much better though you can still tell they were pre-rendered They were used more for the backgrounds and the ground like the terrain rather than the characters is that right the characters look very much like sprites to me

like normal sprites Yes they're very crisp They're very crisp sprites If Kirby was just like kind of like A mushy animated gift blob I wouldn't be into this game Like it should be stated also This is a great looking game

Kirby looks so good Every hat he wears every color he changes I like the smaller face on like initial Kirby But I can live with the bigger face On this just like glowing pink little adorable boy Yes No in every kind of It's the introduction of hats too, so.

Yeah. Yeah, I guess there were no hats in Kirby's adventure. A few of the powers would probably change them colors, I believe, not all of them, but this, everything you do has a different hat on it, basically. No, it's costume design is so great. And also I just love that every power also, talk about menus, like every power you have is then also a thing in the menu on the bottom, like it's, you know, a different outfit or even getting hit.

It's a drawing of Kirby going. out and then he's like in pain like there's just so it has this you know definitely comic book or comic strip sensibility of just like it's even more of the gag comic style humor brought into to kirby which which fits because like he you know design sensibility fits a lot with kids comics of japan that so getting even more of that style in the little drawings of of the other mascots or enemies in there too is a real vibe. Yeah, I think we definitely lost that

when this game got rid of, when this series got rid of UI, as most games did. So you don't get the cool, like, little cartoon picture of Kirby doing something. Or like, when you die, it says whoops or whatever. I forget what he says. And it's also like the mix of a Saccharize Kirby

has so much of like what I love of the mix of extreme cuteness with also like cruel gameplay sensibility. You're almost just like, hey, yeah, we're not taking it easy on you. This samurai matches hard. Like, you better, you better hit this button

right on time, but not too early. Like, yeah, he's, he can be mean, but also have the friendliest, nicest, happy face in the world, right? Right up front. There's a moment this is not, oh, go ahead, Stuart, sorry. Oh, sorry, I was going to say is

I think that something that Sakurai sort of brought forward from this game and his others is the idea that like being overpowered and the game being incredibly unbalanced is fun as hell. I mean you can get your challenge from this game if you want to take on the arena for example

without any copy abilities. You can make your own difficulty but most of the time it's you with a helper who are both absolutely just destroying everything on the screen. Yeah. And they sort of make up for that by throwing in more enemies on the screen than ever and more interesting variants of the bosses. But

I mean this is not particularly difficult in terms of getting to the end they're playing with a partner but that's not really the point it's all about the power fantasy almost oh definitely meta night's revenge sort of feeds into that with the whole running commentary of Kirby systematically destroying the halberd and everyone on it while everyone concretely panics as they realize it's hopeless and they can't possibly stop i feel like in this game there is just enough pushback for it to not be boring but yeah it definitely is a power fantasy it is just fun to rampage through these levels and uh lay waste everything and Like last month, I was so busy, and I wanted to play Eldon Ring, but I did not want to play Eldon Ring at the end of a long day of, like, work.

So I would just play Kirby Triple Deluxe in bed, and just there was just enough pushback for it to be fun, but it was also fun to just destroy everything on the screen easily. And just these games feel fun to play. Like, the feedback to the player is just excellent, and that's the hallmark of a Sakurai game. Make room for huge plays with the HyperX alloy Origin 65 mechanical gaming keyboard and the Pulsefire Haste Wireless Mouse. The Alley Origin 65 has a functionally compact form factor, keeping the arrow keys while ditching the numpad and the F keys. The Pulsefire Haste is the lightest wireless mouse from HyperX, featuring a robust connection and the precision you need to click heads. The Aller Origin 65 and Pulse Fire Haste Wireless, a terrific twosome to keep your setup clean and clutter-free. So in Japan, is this game called Kirby Super Star in Japan, or is it Kirby Super Deluxe in Japan?

I couldn't be no super deluxe. Oh, super deluxe. Okay, so I guess triple deluxe. I guess triple deluxe, the 3DS game is like a play on that. But that, in Japan, it came out in a special, like, wooden box with, like, a burned, like, wood burned logo to signify the quality of the product. That is sick. Everyone wants so bad. Yeah.

What normally comes in those boxes, like treats or cigars or... I definitely think of it as a fancy gift box, yeah, that you get, that you would give to somebody or, you know, like, uh, socks. perhaps is kept in there or liquor but yeah I think I see it is you know a very I imagine it in an old samurai film is like a gift is given to the emperor

or to the shogun in one of those boxes he gets a collection of Kirby games and I believe I was reading interviews and Shigasato It Toy the creator of the mother series he was floating around Hal he's probably you know working on mother at the same time this game was in development that was his idea

I believe and also I believe he he helped name the game. Do you know anything about that Andrew? No. Okay. Yeah, I was reading an interview with Sakurai. I think it was when the SNAS Classic was released and that was like five years ago so it was like, can you believe Kirby's 25? And I think like he

is literally turning 30 the week after we do this podcast, Kirby's Dreamland. No, I just can't believe this S&AS Classic is five. That's ridiculous. Yeah, and I still have an open mind. I I bought that I bought that 20th anniversary

Wee collection and now that's 10 years old now man it's sitting around here somewhere over there it's collecting in value I really wanted that I was really excited about that they never bothered to release it in in the UK so that was fun for me yeah well like didn't

didn't have most of the game all three of the games we're talking about today come out way later in the UK like yeah you got this one six months after us apparently yeah you're asking what happened as Nintendo saw that it was a good compilation and good value and they were just like nixing it they were like now

Maybe you just put the wrong for Kobe's adventure on there and charge 50 quid that would be enough. You'll get it later, you Sega Likers. What happens next is that in development, Sakurai has like three different pillars of mine for, you know, development. Co-op, I believe, was something Miyamoto wanted him to have. Like, Miyamoto always wanted co-op in the Mario series.

He eventually got it, but I don't think it's very good, sorry? Ups and downs, ups and downs. It's more like, it's so adversarial and it makes the game not fun. I'm not a big fan of New Super Mario Bros. You probably know that, though. I think, you know, after 15 years. years in Bowser's Fury they finally got that was the most I've loved co-op ever in a Mario game that was really really fun with with Bowser Jr. helping you out that was a good game okay I didn't know about that

that was the first time I really love it it's a great I played it with my spouse uh me and him had a really good time with it I think I think it's a good spouse game uh for for folks out there try it yourselves if you got a spouse and starting from here all the games basically outside of a few exceptions have co-op where it's like buddy mode or helper mode there are other things you can call this that are more insulting that I won't say that other people have said in the past but yeah

I just like a way for a second player to jump in without a lot of extra friction like it's sort of like almost playing as tales in Sonic 2 where you can help out and stuff but your death does not affect them in any way and how well you're playing does not affect

them in any way I think they don't they want to cause as few arguments as possible on the couch with your friend. I played through almost all of Kirby Star-Eyes with my wife, not a single argument to be had about anyone's skill. Kirby Superstar's co-op mode is, it's insane how

dynamic I find it. Like, everything about it, the way that you throw your inability hat and the screen almost kind of freezes into dramatic style as you throw it at your friend who then catches it and transforms. The fact that when they run out of health, they don't just disappear, they just explode.

They tick over for up to the ages and then they explode. And I think if they... There's something incredibly exciting about that. And I think if they explode by an enemy whose ability they can steal, they'll just turn into that enemy too. It's like,

it's very technically complex, like what can happen with them. And this is the Kirby game. And speaking of co-op, that introduces kissing. I love the kissing. Yeah. Yes.

I love the kissing of sharing of health. I mean, what fun... That's how they call me the Kirby kissing. What a fun, like, what a fun dynamic of like, well, your health is low, mine's in the middle. Like, it's so different from, you know, say all the classic beat-em-ups we remember of like oh the pizza's on the ground i'm getting the

pizza not you like instead so many little brothers were bludging to death over ninja turtle pizzas instead now it's more like i'll take the pizza chew the pizza up and regurgic put the pizza into your mouth you're sharing you're sharing pizza and the health in that way that's what i love or the cur or the spicy curry or whatever you're yeah i think when i rented this at the age at the tender young age of 14 and that happened for the first time i was like wait a minute No, they're not doing this, right? And then it kept happening, and I was like, oh, I guess this is just what this game is.

And the kissing, maybe that's why I don't like Kirby's Dreamland 3 and Kirby 64, no kissing in those games. None that I can find. I tried. Is that pink ball kissing that blue ball? Because if he is, quit kissing that cat. And also, we brought it up before.

So the first pillar was co-op. Miyamoto wanted co-op. He couldn't make it work at Mario Brothers, so he eventually tried. I think even like Mario 64 was like, yeah, it's going to be a Mario and Luigi. game with a split screen way too ambitious for what they were trying to do so they got rid of that

fighting game moves we talked about that in which a lot of the abilities most of them have like an up B attack a down B attack a dashing attack there's guarding in this game guarding works just like a dozen Smash Brothers very the prototype for what we'll see in Smash Brothers is happening here

and it's surprising how many things you can do with these characters I think you can even ride your buddies in this game I think so yeah when they'll when that taking on Wheely, there's a whole exciting dramatic escape sequence using that towards the end of one of the games as well. Yes, you know, Smash Brothers, its gameplay doesn't make sense if you're just thinking like

somebody designed a fighting game from the ground up saying, I'm making a fighting game. But if you just see it as the natural extension of what Sakurai was having fun with, with a platformer that's getting more and more fighting game elements, and then he just makes it inverse and have it be a fighting game with platformer elements like then the game playing smash makes so much more sense i really love the smash brother series love of kirby because you know who makes it and in the newest game well new it's now like four years old but still uh it's like all the nintendo characters were turned to stone but the most powerful one survived and that's kirby so you don't play as mario in that in the story mode you start as kirby the most important

Nintendo character to exist. No, I love that he... To me, that would be it. Oh, well, they're all gone. We've still got Kirby. No big loss. I mean, in the special thing, every time there was a new guest character

of like, but what does Kirby look like? What does Kirby look like when he eats the new guest character? Like, yeah, it's... Sakurai worked hard to make sure his special boy is still special to him. You know, like, that's also... There's some people that they have their thing that made him a big hit, and they'd be like, I can work on other stuff. I don't care as much about that.

old thing. But no, it's, I like that you can tell he still loves Kirby very, very much. And you can hear Sakurai's voice in this game. He would eventually voice King Day Day in later games. But he is the guy that has the final, the final power up of the mic. You do it two times. It's the one where he goes, Chesto, which is, I guess, saying like, ha, yeah, or something like that. I guess that's what the localization is, but they didn't change it. That's like, that's like Miss Piggy going, Hey, yeah. Basically. There's a,

there's an example of a legit funny joke in a video game is Kirby growing a Mohican, a Mohawk, excuse me, not a mannequin, a Mohawk and screaming chesto. That's hilarious. Yeah, I like how all three of the attacks with the microphone are like a different version of Kirby doing a different thing. Like one is like a cheer, like he's in a baseball game or something. That is so the Sakurai sensibility to have just like, you know, if you drew one funny cool scream animation of like what's a funny thing of okay let's draw a funny drawing of

or make a funny sprite of kirby shouting into a microphone but then they're like no we want three different versions for different levels of intensity let's up it every time and and to even get you it works in the like comedy rules of three that you're like okay cute little kirby then he gets louder and then he turns into a punk rock superstar just screaming on the screen and they give it to you so early in spring breeze that you get to like play around with it and get used to the joke so you really appreciate it's like oh this is an awesome power up i can't wait to get it the next time and and see what it can do and take half the life bar of the boss when i when i face them all it was was that whole it's the whole maximus thing of like what you said uh having about there being

three different sounds and three different sprites completely unnecessary detail but it's like when you get the stone power up and you can turn into about 10 different types of rock there's no reason for that some of them appears so rarely like you'll get one that's like the thinker I think maybe or like a human statue will come out you'll get one that's a statue of the friends from Dreamland too I think

all that sort of thing there's no need for it he just throws it in because it would be fun and it is and it's things like that that make games memorable and loved forever yeah I mean in the great cave offensive like you're literally digging more and more just to find more of those secrets because you're like well that was a funny

joke in here I have to find every other like weird reference that he stuck in this thing. I'm sure there's got to be some other crazy thing I'm missing that got hidden in here. If I just keep trying, I bet I'll uncover it. When I played that, and we'll talk more about that later, but when I played it and I found Mr. Saturn, I thought, other people know about Earthbound. I didn't know that Hal helped make Earthbound. I just thought like, oh, somebody else knows about this game, except for me.

They're referencing this game. And then I lost my mind even more when I found out that Ness was in the first Smash Brothers. But speaking of sound in this game, this is. is also a very timely, so we're recording this in the wake of Kirby in the Forgotten World. And also, Kirby won a Grammy or somebody covering a Kirby song won a Grammy, the 8-bit big band

group. They won the Grammy for Best Arrangement Instrumental or Acapella song for the rearrangement of Meta Nights Revenge. You can find it on YouTube. It's great. So Kirby covers are now winning Grammy. So the Grammys now mean something again, at least to me. That's amazing. Man,

I didn't know. I missed that news in all the Grammy news, man. That's great. And one last thing about development, apparently there was going to be something called Cagero Mansion in this game, like another variation of Kirby, and that we have later variations in this series where, I'm sorry, in Superstar, where it's like you, I believe one of them is you selects your powers once you obtain them, sort of like an Mega Man style. And this would be the opposite of that in that you have no powers. So you have to get abilities from objects Because your mouth is sealed shut So some slight body horror going on there

But apparently that was one of the games That didn't make the cuts That's the opposite of mouthful mode Yes yes It's mouth less mode And stop making dirty jokes about that people Kirby's an innocent little youth He's a carefree youth like a spring breeze

We've had to hear for three dang decades Although yeah yeah he sucks We get it Yeah yeah But yeah we talk talked about this before. We can talk a little more, more about it now, but the gameplay in the series, we have the helper mechanic. It's very neat in that if you have a power, you can hit the A button to basically pop out a version of that enemy you just swallowed, and it will fight alongside of you. And the computer can control that or another player can control it. And again, that's like a way to make the game even easier and even more effortless if you want to, because even though the AI is pretty stupid, they will still just destroy anything in its path. And often, they'll end up taking care of the boss for you without you doing much in return.

So that's very neat too. And it's so easy to get more of these helpers. And I believe you can turn them back into the power up and then eat the power up and then turn back into their power again. So it's very technical. And in Kirby Streamland 3, it gets even more technical. I think it's maybe a little too much.

But just enough here to swallow. L.O.L. I understand. I know what I said. So Kirby can block, which is something I never do in this game. And I forget you can. But yeah, you're telling me now, I would only block to charge up the spark because you can hold R and match the D-pad to do it really quickly. Some pro tips there from Stuart Jep. Enjoy.

And yeah, some of the, like maybe a few of the hats incorporate blocking into their move set, but most of the time it's a Kirby game. You really don't need to block. Maybe if you're trying to do like a no-hit run or something, I don't know, but it's there if you want it. And yeah, so much variation on all of these different things you saw in Kirby's adventure.

Down attacks, up attack. dashing attacks, you know, charging attacks. Sakurai loves fighting games and he's incorporating these moves into a much simpler version in Kirby. You're not doing quarter circle forwards. You're not doing like 360 turns on your D-pad, shredding your thumb up. It's just up and down. And that's what happens in Smash Brothers. It's very, very effortless.

Are some fighting game fans would say too simple and baby? They're wrong. Let's talk about the different iterations of Kirby. Again, to me, this feel like the different iterations of Kirby. It feels like, I mean, they spent a long time developing this, but it feels like how they made Kirby's Dreamland, they made Kirby's adventure, they're making these like side projects like Kirby's, the Kirby's dream course and Kirby's pinball land. They're like, okay, what else can we do with Kirby? And this is them just trying a lot while not really committing too much to anything. And maybe that makes it not my favorite Kirby game.

Like I want to see a commitment to an idea, but enough of these stick around for long enough to not wear out the welcome. So, you know, it's a fun experience overall. one of these short games you know this was in the console era where like arcades are not as healthy they they can't make they can't make a game as short as spring breeze and sell that or as as as the metadai uh game like and so they've many games you just got to stuff them all into one game like this or else you can't you can't sell them as a singular game like they uh could do with you know the kirby fighting mini game thing they just sell that as a digital download now but they that wasn't the they didn't have that opportunity that yeah there's no there's no marketplace for a very

short game they were all packaged in like 30 to 50 bucks but spring breeze is basically just an even shorter version of kirby's dreamland which was a very short game to begin with uh they remove the castle lolo low lolo stage so you don't get to fight lolo and la la la and uh you have abilities as well uh which i guess they were going to exclude and make it play more like the game boy game but they didn't So it's just like playing Kirby's Dreamland, except you have abilities, and it is very, very easy. Spring Breeze is evocative of just the kind of experience. And if you want to sit down and play Kirby game for 10 minutes and have a full experience,

it's right here. And it's a real trick if you came into the game thinking like, if you are one of the people who thought this is for your dumb little brother, these Kirby games, these aren't for me. And you start with Spring Breeze, then you're like, yeah, see? This is the current, which is what I thought Kirby was. these don't challenge you at all and I think it

it lulls you into a false sense of security for the other games that come after it if you're like well that's so easy I'm going to start up gourmet race when you get to Milky Way wishes you'll be eating your words but not much to say about this it is just like a

loose remake and uh very cute yeah it's very cute and it's a good way to just jump into this game any thoughts on this one Andrew have any feelings about spring breeze in general No, it's just tutorial at most. Yeah, it's a nice way to dip your toe into the Kirby world. I do love when the game asks you, have you played a Kirby game before?

And like, yes or no, like just didn't. That's also, too, for 1996, when they were stamping out a lot of the specifically Japanese, like, cultural markers in Nintendo video games, Kirby retains more than most. like and that includes even on the it's like circle or X on yes or no for the have you played a Kirby game before I prefer that actually one thing they cut out okay your answer doesn't matter yeah yes exactly I like I like you can skip the tutorial and like I was reading about things they change in localization and one thing is like when um you get the have you played a Kirby game before like do you want to learn about the copyability thing it's like two halves of Kirby come together in Japan that was like the the trainee driver symbol

like the driver and training symbol it's like it's like a it's like a Chevron that's like one half is green one half is yellow and it comes together so it's not like two halves of a living creature coming together it's like the Chevron so there you have it I have to say it slightly annoys me that even if you select

no it still shows you the controls but that's the most minor nitpick imaginable that is true hey it's baby steps in 1996 I still hate that some games don't let you opt out of the tutorial. I love it even so clearly goes like this is the controller it's that great thing in your hand

like yeah at fact I hate this is like the third time I'm bringing up Eldon Ring but I love how Elden Ring makes the tutorial seem like a trap. It's very similar games. Jumped out in this cave to learn things like no no yeah I was sure it was it was tricking me man I didn't

try I was I was used to a meaner Souls game but let's talk about Dinablaid so this is a bird based experience The story is that Dinablaid is ruining the crops of Dreamland. And it wraps up with Kirby defeating Dinna Blade, seeing all she was doing was trying to feed her chicks. And then Kirby, the good guy that he is at the end, spoilers, he nurses these chicks while she recovers from her Kirby-based injuries. So it's a very, very sweet ending.

Often Kirby has good intentions, but often he has the wrong target in mind. So he's like a single track of mine. It's usually involving food. in the end he's usually somebody's friend you know that's what's that's what's always nice other than other than d-to-d-d which it's like yeah well that guy's a jerk you know and the gameplay is um in terms of i mean it's like spring breeze in terms of you know general kirby left to right collecting things eating things gaining powers there's uh the world map and andrew i forget on this one are there alternate paths in dinablaid because in kirby's adventure

the only secrets in the game were alternate paths that would open up other levels of Is that happening in Dina Blade or is that a later one of these? No, Dina Blade has two. Okay. So it carries that over from Kirby's Adventure. And you know what? They're not that hard to find, but it's still like a little something extra to make this one more complex than Spring Breeze. And, yeah, there's a goal game, the only one in Superstar, and it's the typical one you'd expect in that instead of the lowering and raising cloud that you usually see, it's a cannon that will launch you up to the top.

and I don't know if they were thinking of getting rid of this in Kirby but there would be one of these in every game afterwards like you finish the game you finish a level and here's a little mini game to play to see if you can get a one-up or more stars or a magic tomato or whatever and it was an adventure also where you would bounce up on the cloud

and whatnot. Right, right. It's a specific level. Yeah, I forget if it was in Dreamland but I love just like the little fun mini game at the end of the level that gives you a reward if you have good timing folks I like stopping meters what can I say so we have a few more

and we're gonna speed through these a little faster because we have a few more games to cover but there's I just want to say real quick I think this is where you know Kirby canonically got the ability to share food okay yeah that's right that's my head cannon anyway

Andy teaches uh sorry I'm watching the end video uh the end footage here like he also teaches them to fly like he goes in the air and he's using his puffer power to teach the birds to fly. He not only saves him, shares their food, but he also helps them fly. They're simple, but I like the

little cute endings on these. But we have Gourmet race. Is it? Oh, go ahead, sir. Sorry, I was going to say, is it spring breeze that ends with Kirby turning into a hot air balloon and carrying DEDY's castle over the world dropping all the sweets down on it? That's one of the best things I've ever seen in my entire. I think so. And, actually,

we'll talk more about, is it Day Day or DDD? Somebody help me out here. I think it's DDD. Okay. Because I based that on the guy saying king d d d d d okay i i will trust the smash brothers announcer although i have day day day in my head but it's funny to see like uh after this game

he becomes just like another fun friend they're really reluctant to make him into the villain and if he is the villain it's like well he was being manipulated by like dark matter or whatever so uh day day day one of the last times he'll actually be a true villain in the series in spring breeze he's a villain in forgotten land but that's that's like an alternate DDD so it doesn't count I guess I love fighting him in the

oh no wait no he's your friend in that as well never mind just you're completely right I also just love the bet at the end of spring breeze I also love as a pro wrestling fan the wrestling ring and all the characters in the background too like it's really cool they managed to get in Nintendo characters

probably didn't ask the most permission fleshed out from the ring and the game boy version of Kobe's Dreamland they just it just made so much cooler looking it's a great little detail. I love it. It's a great little final boss fight.

But gourmet race, it plays out a lot like the Sonic 2 multiplayer challenges, and that it's like you're on the top, someone else is on the bottom, you're racing to the end, you've got to collect food. And this introduces like one of the more classic Kirby songs you hear in a lot of stuff. So it comes from this. I think the song is just called Gourmet Race, I'm guessing. But that's it. It's like one of the, I think, three mini-stabes.

games that aren't like full like platform experiences in this game i'm still not good at that game i played it last night i was like all right let's see if i've gotten any better no i'm just no no good at gourmet race it's surprisingly hard it's pretty quite difficult i think a lot of it is uh memorization just like you have to know what's coming up next that's why i hate about sonic games also yeah yeah it's it's very sonic like in that way uh the great cave offensive so this is all about collecting things I feel like this could have been flushed out into a better experience I think it's kind of neat the way it is but there's no sense of where you are overall on this journey

and it's like sometimes I'm like oh I can't go back there now I didn't know that if this had a super Metroid style map or something could be kind of neat but as it is it's just a different interpretation of Kirby oh Stuart sorry would it be fair to say they kind of did flesh it out for Kirby and the Amazing Mirror on the Game Boy Advance which always felt to me like an expansion of this game

which was the full Metroidvania style Kirby I mean even though the map was an absolute nightmare but at least there was a map I guess Yeah I think they were working from this idea But I also I didn't play a lot of that game But I heard that it was also not the best execution Of this kind of you know It could be a lot better

Contiguous world yeah But this game It also feels like what would be the future For Smash Brothers in that It's almost like a museum of Nintendo history In that you have like Like I said there's like the Mr. Saturn from Earthbound and like I think Ness has had is probably in it too.

There's things from F0 and there's things from unreleased games in America like Mario Mario. You can do the famous bucket, everybody. Remember the bucket? But yeah, it's just a tour of Nintendo history and like playing this in 96. I was like, wow, it's cool to see these things recognize that I thought were only important to me. Now we've got a podcast about it, but 96 way different. Now we're buried in trivia. And same with, yeah, I mean, too, this was like ahead of its time in giving a crap about this stuff.

or letting Nintendo celebrate itself. I think Nintendo was less about that then. But I guess a couple of years before this was the Mario All-Stars, I suppose. That's true. Now all those children are old and they want to talk about it. Old, old, old. We all want to talk about Ness's Head now. But, yeah, that's the Great Cave Offensive.

And moving on to Revenge of Meta Night, it's like before I had barely seen anime, but I got real anime vibes from this when I sat down to play at 20, whatever years ago in that you are fighting the Kirby villain meta night and you're on his battleship you're often knocked off of it and have to make your way back on to it but the cool thing

about this is that as you're playing there is often like a commentary over your gameplay by the villains who go from being very confident in destroying you to just freaking out and how their portraits change

yeah how their portraits change over the course of the game this little mini-game is very, very fun and cute. And like a surprising amount of dialogue for a Kirby game who typically saves, usually saves all their dialogue for the final, like, very weird boss you fight at the end. But here it's all kind of sprinkled throughout the game and it's a very fun anime style experience.

I love that the anime style, and the speed of it too, like it's faster. I mean, it fits too because Metonite is such an anime rival character, you know, like that's what he was invented. to be, which is what I love about him. And, yeah, also that it can't be done. I forgot that until preparing for this. That it doesn't unlock until after you've done the Dina Blade one because you save the bird and the bird is key to the Mennonite storyline.

Right. Does the bird show up to save you at the end? I forget. It's been a lot since I played this one. I think it flies you back onto the Hullbird at one point. They shoot down Dina Blade. That's right. That's one of the things that made me think that maybe the form.

main line games here are all all rules somehow basically one game kind of a bit because of those little connections like I think Milky Way wishes has some throwback stuff as well well and Dinna Blade also

ends with like a to be continued on the credit or on the end screen like that's so cool too yeah I mean it's it is like the extreme drama of it and also like the Revenge of Medanite logo is such a great logo like it looks like it

looks like it was it's like a ninja guide for NES style logo like it's an NES intense logo Yeah, yeah I love how everything has a different logo It's not just like plain text and like a menu It's just like everything like different sizes To indicate sort of like the scope of the game too

But that's Revenge of Meta Night A very fun little experience And then the biggest and most challenging one On the cart is Milky Way wishes The Sun and the Moon are fighting And this is all about A new character named Marks Who will make appearances in the future

this is an anti-Marxist game by the way people and so basically the way this works is that Kirby in this game you can't copy abilities by inhaling enemies it's more like Mega Man in that you have to not defeat bosses

to get the abilities but find these items and you then once you have the item associated with that ability you go into your menu and you select it. I think it's an interesting variation I just didn't like it that much because basically once I got the hammer I was like well I'm done. I don't need to find anything else.

I'm not crazy about the way it front loads the first level, which is an ordeal. It's like a maze of identical rooms. You just go through the sort of different seasons over and over with almost no sense of adventure or design.

And that's like the first level. It's just this going through doors into rooms that look exactly the same. And you have to basically memorize the way through it. I don't enjoy door mazes very much. Is that the... One of the right at the beginning of the game was not a great move, in my opinion.

Is that the one where the seasons change when you go through the doors? Yeah, yeah, the seasons change when you get the frozen water. And it's a cool idea. It's not horrible or anything. It's just, I don't think it's the best first level. Because at that point, it would be nice to sort of, you've been strict to all your powers. So I suppose maybe it makes more sense than giving the enemy gauntlet, which you can't handle. But, yeah, I'm not always and crazy about it.

Yeah, I like the finale of that game is amazing. It is. Yeah, I like the idea of the seasons changing, but it's not the best execution of it. And I believe this, the end of this one, like the end of a lot of Kirby games, is a schmup. It's a shooter. And I feel so bad for Hal because Kirby games started releasing just around the time shooters were dead. I feel like out of all the Kirby games they made, all the Kirby variations they made, they couldn't make a shooter. And I think they've always wanted to because there's always like a shoot-em-up stage in every Kirby game.

And I know they want to do this, but they just can't find a way to do it. And in Mass Attack It's one of the best mini games as well There's like a fairly full-featured three-level schmuck in there You can play if memory serves to be cool I think there's even like an RPG in Mass Attack as well Now there's an RPG boss battle in Serbia Zimistar Yeah that is very cool

And it's another one of those moments When I was a kid playing this thinking Other people know about these things Where you have like the battle windows of an RPG If there's a few boss fights in this game that are like that And when it's your turn to attack, the enemy leaves the box and you can attack them and then jumps back in and it says how many hit points you've done.

And then Kirby levels up when you defeat the boss and he levels up in all these point categories that you don't actually have. It's very adorable. But again, I was like, other people know about RPGs, not knowing that hell put together earthbound. So, yeah.

No, there's the person that I come through, I don't think Milky Way wishes, the Milky Way wasn't my favorite either but it is like the densest thing in the game it's the closest if if you were to take one out and sell it as a game by itself like I would guess that would be the one that could do it but yeah and and also the when you be Milky Way wishes you get the biggest truest credits and they even design special Kirby's for the credits like when it gets to chief programmer it's a it's a Kirby in front of a computer or when it's for Saccharine director

it's Kirby with a director head on and the like you know the cut the clapboard the whiteboard thing for filmmaking I want to play as the director Kirby you need like these different Kirby's in the game any thoughts about this one Andrew we're going to wrap up our Kirby's

superstar discussion pretty soon yeah this one actually is my favorite of all of them I mean story wise it's the best written I think and you know the powers where you find them, it all makes sense as, you know, considering their environments. I think, you know, not to open something we were talking about before recording, but Milky Way wishes sort of fixes the problem of disrespecting your time when you're trying to solve a complex puzzle involving powers and having to restart the level repeatedly.

I think mixing the ability to keep your powers and have that puzzle-focused gameplay would be a good mix. Oh, you know what? You're totally right about that because when we get to the next two games, the thing that annoying me the most was, okay, leave the stage, get this power, come back, and then make sure you don't lose it

before you get to this one point. And yeah, that's my biggest problem with the Dark Matter trilogy is a lot of the gameplay is patted out. through that and even Mario wasn't above that some of the new Super Mario

those games are like go back to the stage get this power up hold on to it if you want to be little Mario to get this last

secret you better just to not get hit the whole way or go back to three worlds and get the little mushroom I think we're better

than that as a people but just some other though I wasn't crazy about Milky Way wishes it's all worth it for the final boss

for me because Kerber's Adventure was the first one that had the final boss be a kind of I mean in there it's more of a Saturday morning sort of dark nightmare kind of abomination sort of thing

but here it just goes full crazy space cosmic like Mark slicing himself in half to open a black hole all these kind of insane effects going on while he's doing his horrible laughing all time

and it's just all of it's just utterly it just feels so climatic and so cool but then even then you was the arena in the SNES version sorry excuse me the SNES version that's you've been the version is the arena in that or was that only in the DS I don't remember I think there's there's the there's the combat I mean there's the yeah there's the other versusy things in there but maybe the arena was just for ultra and I played three these back to back and there are arenas and some of them sorry Andrew yeah Andrew Superstar had arena

The remake had an even More difficult one And you know It's been This is the first time the arena Has really taken shape In adventure There was like a boss rush mode

But this is like You know where you have like a lobby That you go into in between rounds And what not And can heal or get different powers This is where the true copy begins And there are a few I mean

it says what like eight games and one some of these are games in quotes because it's like well this isn't a game this is something I played in between stages and Kirby's adventure like Megaton Punch again it's it's more stopping meters I'm a fan of this and you're facing off opponents to I think it's like three meters you're stopping in order to punch through some bricks on the ground to have the the heaviest punch and I love when it cuts away after you punch a show how much of the planet you've destroyed yes so good yeah just more about showing off just the cosmic power of Kirby

and also there's a variation of the quick draw game in Kirby's Adventure it's Samurai Kirby I like Cowboys more than Samurai but it's still fun and I like how like we were talking about

with the mic power up every time you do the quick draw on this is a different weapon yeah it's a different like comedy weapon so it's just a different gig as somebody who loves sprites and cartoony cute sprites that

you know that don't exist anymore to know how many more were drawn for this game than were necessary just to make somebody go like ha look at that that's a different drawing oh you did that thing I didn't expect that yeah like just I oh yeah the pie did a face

yeah yeah it's fun like these mini games stress me out sometimes though if I'm not playing it to move on to another stage I just feel like we're just going to this on its own to play it as its own experience but Andrew we have to move on to the next game are there any of the powers

want to highlight that are featured in a Kirby Superstar? I know in the past episode, you talked a lot about the different powers that were featured in those games. Well, I mean, like Stewart already mentioned, Yo-Yo and Plasma are like the two best ones. But I got a shout out to cook because cook is just so funny. I like how, I don't know if it happens in this game, but when I was playing Star Allies, when you get the cook power up, you also cook your friends, but then they jump out of the pot and they're okay. So you not only cook all the enemies on screen. been there for flavoring.

Yeah, yeah. I thought I'd soak. I can't see the cook power without thinking of the original Smash Brothers Broad trailer where Mario is like screaming in abject agony is his whole alive.

His hands are up like this. Yeah, I love it. That is a classic. Yeah, that is great. But yeah, that is... I'm quite partial to the bird power personally because flying around as a bird is always fun.

Yeah, yeah. And I think this game, I forget if Kirby Dreamland 2 did this, but it made flying a lot easier in that before you'd have to hit up, but this one you can just keep hitting the jump button and you inflate and start flying around. Yeah, I do like that change.

It's sort of like making Scroo go easier in the Game Boy Ducktails. Though I know, Bob, you're against the auto swallow that was added to forgotten lands. I'm telling you, people, turn off the auto swallow. It's so satisfying to hit that button and just, like, pop the power down. It's great.

That's all I'm saying about that. The Hardcore Gaming 101 podcast is on a mission to rank the top games of all time. I like the idea that when Bruce Wayne gets angry, he switches to the Batman voice. Why do you have this a problem making boomerangs shaped like a bat? You mean like Batman? Not like Batman. Just make it for me. Bruce Wayne.

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or ask us questions. Two High Labs and the Nasty Labs podcast. We're legally the best. Let's move on to Let's move on to Kirby's Dreamland 3 A very late release for the Super Nintendo. I rented this thinking there's a new Super Nintendo game, okay, I have a PlayStation. I'm about to finish Final Fantasy 7 but here's Kirby

November 7th, sorry November 2797 in the United States in March of 98 in Japan and is this correct? Never in Europe Yeah, take that, Stuart. Yes, Stuart. You were robbed of this game. You know what? I'm okay with not getting this one. It's all good. Yeah, I this and the next one are of a pair

and not my favorite Kirby experiences although I did so I like I really played through these for the first time I I dabbled in this and I probably played through the first out of stages when I read this and I was like it's not as you know fast and snappy as I like but there's some cool stuff happening in this so apparently the last first party game for the SNES in the United States and it uses the SA1 ship although to my eyes there's not a lot of heavy lifting going on maybe it's using that chip to like just have more sprites or more complicated sprites but there's not a lot of effects because this is a lot of two years after Yoshi's Island and starting here we can see like the path to epic yarn really where it's like let's try out different things it was never a realistic art style but it's like let's go for something and they're going for something here

it looks better on an SDTV obviously but it's like a sketchy look and like the characters are always like undulating and moving and like the colors on their bodies are moving like they're animated it's really neat so it looks stunning I think yeah I hadn't I hadn't touch his game in a very long time until turning on the switch last night again and and playing it

I was reminded why what I didn't like about especially after playing superstar again because I was like ah this this went back into baby town a little bit to me it felt it felt easier it felt more more for kids but but then as I played it I really Yoshi's Island is my favorite super NES game and stylistically the color and softness of the design. Like it's not exactly copying the look of Yoshis Island, but it does have that cran kind of sensibility. Like it feels a little like a coloring book and the softness and

understatedness of the character models really get to me. And of course, I love Kirby. Kirby with Powers is my prefer Kirby, but him having big animal friends. I also do love. And they're all adorable. I don't think it's as successful as Yoshi's Island, but also Yoshi's Island. was in development for like five years so they had a lot more time to tinker with that but yeah

pixel like pastel like cran art style just take a look at a screenshot or hey it's on your switch if you want to play it as a superstar if you have a Nintendo online and yeah this game my own thoughts about it are this and the next game I feel like the same

interpretation of the same kind of ideas maybe a slightly different but I feel like Superstar, it's just so snappy, it's just so fun to control Kirby. This game and the next one are just a little slower, a little pokeyer, and the puzzles in terms of the things you need to find in the levels, they're not as elegant as I want. And it took a lot of, you know, looking up solutions to things when I just kind of got stumped.

And that's, that's not what I'm going to Kirby to. I played through Kirby Triple Deluxe recently, and it's like, okay, there are three things to find in this stage. often I'll leave with two but when I jump back in it's like oh it's over there okay I'm good it was never the case with this game if I miss something I was like all right I have to go to game facts because oh I have to leave the stage on the bird

because the other thing wants to see the bird okay sure that's what really frustrated me about this do you have any thoughts about like the puzzly nature of this Andrew yeah I mean like I said with the whole Milky Way wishes thing you know it really disrespects your time but I do appreciate

the more puzzly aspects of Kirby in this you know series of dreamland games especially when you add the complexity of the additional animals so now you have six different animal friends each interacting with powers differently the nations are just ridiculous yeah the addition so kirby's dreamland two had three animal friends this one adds three and then you can combine your animal friend with the power that you currently have for a new power for a lot of fun and often funny

different attacks and it feels like a lot of this does feel like it's trolling the player though because when I was playing through this

just trying out every different kind of combination a lot of the attacks just feel like well this is funny and this is funny to watch

but it's absolutely useless so I feel like a lot of them are not meant to be used just like oh yeah if I combine the cat with this

it's kind of funny but I'm absolutely never taking this into a level it's just kind of fun to watch and to know and you can appreciate the craft

that they actually bother like well if we're going to have the animal friends and power-ups then you were going to have to design multiple sprites for every combo of those things like if you've if you've got the umbrella and you're with the fish like it's got to look like this you have to animate like that that level of work and dedication to it i i really appreciate that i think there's a lot about this game that is laudable but i find to actually play as a experience to play I find it very lacking I think the slowness is a big deal

like even at things be just slower than you are in say Kobe's adventure the levels felt very long I thought and to get to the end of a level and find that you've missed the condition for the item that you need to see the good ending is a real bummer like I don't enjoy that kind of I mean it's Kobe superstar you have a similar level

of say different skill variation probably fewer skills than you do in Kobe's Dream Man 3 overall but every single one of them is enormous fun to use and has loads of different applications and in Dreamland 3 it will be like to get this secret you need to use this item on the block

that has a picture of the item on it so go and get it or it'll be like you need to fulfil some arcane some arcane conditions and you know what I think that's fun I like the idea of having puzzles that are that esoteric in a game that tickles my sort of dizzy ivories you know I rather like that

but in practice I'd rather play almost any of the Kirby platformers over this one to be honest it's just not for me I respect it but when you have a Kirby game we're fighting the bosses isn't fun then that's a Kirby game

that's not for me unfortunately yeah yeah the special conditions to finish each stage so you can finish a stage normally but if you want to get the good ending and play the final bits you have to get the special condition often it'll be somewhat straightforward

like we'll finish this mini game you found but often the only clue is indicated by like the picture associated with the level so it's like one of them is a mushroom and it's like oh these mushrooms I've seen the level I can't step on them because if I step on one the mushroom at the end of the stage

won't be happy and won't give me the little thing I need and sometimes it'll be like a picture of like the female equivalence or the male equivalent of one of your animal friends it's like well I need to take that animal friend to the end because the other version of it wants to see the animal friend heteronormitivity

exactly but that that's kind of the gimmick here and along with the combination of the powers which I think the next game does in a less fun way but this one is neat it's also like very technical where it involves like so many buttons where I was forgetting like okay how do I do this again because it's like

you use the A button to spit out GUI if you want your pal GUI along for the ride and that's how the second player can play Yeah GUI is so weird I like that he looks like shit like that's kind of what I like about GUI Yeah, no, I agree with that. It's like this horrible little millhouse character who follows you around.

It is the end. It's the millhouse version of Kirby. Yeah, it's like, bleh. Isn't that fun? Kirby loves fishing with gooey. Yeah, you hit a button to spit out gooey, but there's also like, you have to, like, if I'm riding the hamster and I see another power, I've got to, like, hit the select button to spit out the power, and then, and then, like, suck it up and then swallow it with the

hamster. It's pretty complex to the point where I was like, okay do I need to jump off this thing do I need to get on it it's a lot to think about it maybe just like one one thing too many for a Kirby game but I like the ambition in terms of the combination of powers and what you can do with them

maybe that too is why I bounced off it because like that that complexity I in Superstar I felt like the the density of ideas was so clear that it got me working on a higher level but and reaching the game there but when this is such a soft style and just so like it felt like a return to form of the of the

game boy ones that then finding out like no this actually is like almost a riddle at times of how how to yeah truly beat it i i wasn't ready for that level of engagement and yeah it's also like at the end of it's like oh but you didn't do this one thing uh come on like i i i much prefer you know i'm thinking forgotten lands all the time but i do like in forgotten lands where you know what if you see there's a duck in other ducks and maybe five ducks will follow you to their mommy then you get an extra thing but you didn't the game won't go like yeah beat it you didn't get all the duckies it's a lot more elegant in terms of like signaling to the player uh sorry Stuart I was just going to say plus crucially forgotten land literally tells you what to do yeah if you get to end of a level it

will unlock another yeah it'll least what the condition is I like in in forgotten land it's Question marks at the start, and if you discovered in your first play-through, then, hey, you're pretty cool. But at the end of it, of the level, it's like, all right, we're just going to tell you the three other things if you didn't do it. And you play it again right now, if you want to, if you're going to feel like you won't get into heaven if this isn't 100%. That's what I believe. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that just shows you where we've come in 25 years where I think like around 97 when this game is coming out, there is an anxiety by the developers like, is this game long enough? If games are getting longer and longer, people expect a certain amount of playtime.

So if you buy this game for $60 in 1997, maybe you don't mind going back to a level six times to figure out where the hidden thing is. I feel like maybe that was their mentality for this in the next game, especially. It's like there's nothing on the N64. What else are you going to play in the year 2000? You tell me, buddy, Beetle racing adventure? Any favorites of yours, Andrew, when it comes to the combination of the animal powers in Kirby? I like, I believe it's the cat that like pushes Kirby around like you're cleaning like a Japanese floor in that very Japanese way where you're like running along the ground with a rag. I'm sure it's hell on your back.

I've never tried it. You know, it doesn't look so fun for anime school, high schoolers to clean their classroom that way. But yeah. Yeah, I mean, a lot of them are just really nonsensical. So it's kind of hard to pick a favorite that, you know, either it's going to be useful or it's just completely sort of way. wacky um i do like the uh combination of pitch the bird and the spark power to make him like a little remote control bird that's amazing that's cool um yeah but the cleaning ability overall i think is is pretty neat especially how it gets incorporated into the puzzles can i shout out the fish

plus the um uh needle because it's horrifying yes actually spikes come out the side of the fish The character of the animal friends and how they relate to Kirby is very funny because it looks like a lot of the things you're doing with the fish are hurting it because the fish you're just sticking out of its mouth. You have the spark when you electrocute it. Yeah. The light bulb, Kirby, electrocuting the fish is very funny. And you're always hurting their feelings too whenever you choose an animal friend out of the group,

all the other ones just instantly said. Yeah, they're either said. I think the cat is even like outraged. Like, what? You didn't choose me? Yeah, like the way Kirby interacts with the animals is funny because it's like, I believe the cats was kind of like resting on him like he's a yoga ball. And I love just the idol animation of Kirby with like choochoo on his head because he's just like, ah, head massage. He seems like very soothed by having this pink blob on his head.

And like I think he's annoyed by having like the green bird or maybe the owl on his head. Just like this is not comfortable. Like so even like with no power equipped just how the animal friends just sit with Kirby, he has a different relationship with all of them. and it's very funny and cute and basically everything except for the gameplay is great and that's real crucial unfortunately

like and there's a high opinion I think there's a high bar Stewart because of Sakurai and what he did with Superstar in the first two games where I played a bunch so I played a bit of Dreamland 2 I think it plays a bit faster

than the next two games in this trilogy by this director but this one and the next one are just a little too pokey for me I got to the end of both of them but by the end I was like these levels are very long and I'm not even going to try to get these secrets on my own I'm just going to go into the level

with the fact telling me okay go here or bring this power into the level but it was cool to see a Kirby game in 97 when the Super Nintendo had long been dead really anything else before we move on to Kirby 64 Andrew anything else we need to cover about this this game not really I mean I mean it does continue the quote-unquote dark matter saga here where you find zero as the secret final boss

that actually emits the dark matter creature things Yeah this game also ends with like a little shooter stage Although I don't think it's if I recall correctly You're not like zooming left to right You're like kind of flying around a boss And shooting at it the giant eyeball boss I think that's correct It's more like the fight at the end of Star Allies

I think we avoid Termina where it's a tiny bit more star foxish is that fantasy? I don't recall. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, this is like the giant one-eye dark matter guy is going to be a variance on that kind of design are going to be the bosses in the Dark Matter trilogy. Let's move on to Kirby 64, the Crystal Shards, because it's the year 2000.

PS2 is about to come out, but hey, you bought the Nintendo 64, and you got to play something, and they made a Kirby game for you, which is just all right. In terms of the amount I like these games, like, superstar is like way up here, and then a little bit of a downgrade for. Kirby's Dreamland 3 and then a bit of a steeper downgrade for this one because I don't think they had a lot of know-how with this hardware and this was their first time making a Kirby game in 3D although it plays like a 2D game it doesn't have the same like fun feedback of other Kirby games it's just like even as something as simple as like I love in the other games where you turn to the stone instantly like snap you just fall to the ground and this one it's so slow and clumsy like you turn to the stone So slowly, and then the game is just like, well, you were probably the stone when you hit the button, so we'll just kill this enemy next to you. It's not, it's like so swimmy and not as snappy as I expect. And I think that's because of the hardware and they're in expertise with it.

Yeah, which is shocking because it's, you know, four years into the existence. It's released right before the fourth year of the N64 being around. So you would think they know what they're doing by there. like it's i i am not a big fan of yoshi's story it really disappointed me but on some level i was like well it's you know it's relatively new in the n64 lifespan but uh in when this game came out i was not as ready to be as forgiving for a kirby game like this and on top of that i was like i was so used to kirby games being like so cute in the two d style and at this point they could not copy that in

3D. Like I'd say I really love the 3D look of Kirby in the Wii U generation but Forgot Lands is the first time truly a 3D Kirby game has felt like as cute to me as a classic 2D Kirby

but that's just my taste I was looking at what Hal made on the N64 before this and it's a Pokemon Stadium which is just like a turn-based fighting game and the rules are already laid out for you. Well, it's just somebody else's game, and it's just letting you watch the fights in a different way. So, yeah.

Not a lot to figure out there. There's Pokemon Snap, which is just on rails, so you don't really have to figure out, like, traversal for a character. A good, though. I had a nice time. Yeah, it's not bad, and I hear that remake's good. I haven't played it, though. And then, yeah, there's not a whole lot between that, but one of the games they worked on for the N64 after this, or probably during production, is Mother 3. And apparently, they were having problems with the hardware then.

So I don't think, like, Hal really knew how to work this hardware, and it's very apparent in this where N64 games aren't pretty ever, but this feels especially below what I expect from Hal in terms of a Kirby game. And that could point to problems with development. Andrew, what are your thoughts on this one? I think it kind of can be forgiven for a lot of reasons. You know, it was originally supposed to be for the 64D. That didn't pan out. They had to make a lot of development changes. They obviously had a lot going on with, you know, Mother 3 and other games they were working on.

But I think hardware-wise, too, you know, they couldn't flex their muscles like they could with the previous two games with making it as beautiful as they wanted to be. And textures on the N64 are just awful anyway. So I think maybe what we see in the lack of speed and performance is because they're trying to do what they can. with actual polygons in lieu of textures but who's to say yeah I feel like they're screwed from the beginning on an N64 with Kirby because you're like oh shit he's a ball you know how many polygons that is

we got to render a ball because Kirby is not a 2D sprite he's not like the cannon balls you see in Mario 64 they have to convincingly render a round character and already it's like well that's half our polygons we can fit on the screen what do we do now I can consider that yeah what made him a simple, more simple 2D Sprite to make, because he's just a, a circle who is one major color. Meanwhile, you have like, yeah, a sphere, a sphere that has to convincingly jump around. I mean, that probably too, I think it's to its benefit that the game is a 2.5D thing.

I'm glad they didn't try to make their answer to Banjo Cizui or Mario 64 because they, they can barely get 2.5D. to work in this thing if they had an actual like fully open world for kirby to jump around in yeah i i think that was at least i'm understanding their their limits to go with 2.5d i'm i was sad to to not like i only rented this game then and it was i was reading the online stuff about it but i was one of those uh at that point very into the n64 scene and i it was my system i picked it for the console war so i was paying attention to And then this game was rumored forever, like it was, it was shown for a very long time at the space world. It'd be just like, okay, another space world, another Kirby 64.

Is this a game ever going to come out? Same with Super Mario RPG 2. I remember, I think of these two is similar games because they would get shown together for years with little movement towards a release. A lot of it points to a rushed release because, like you said, Andrew, it was a really. originally designed for this drive, didn't come out for this drive. Wasn't like one of eight games to come out for that. And even as late as E3, 1999, somebody had a video of someone videotaping Nintendo's booth and they were videotaping Kirby 64 and like half the footage for the Kirby 64 trailer was

Kirby and Smash Brothers. So they were like, we don't even have enough to show you in an E3 trailer. Maybe it just looks so bad we can't show you what we want to show you. But yeah, it feels rushed. and a lot of what's missing in the game is seen up front which is very disappointing because on the title screen

it's like here are all your pals Waddle D this is like the rehabilitation of all of your enemy friends so Waddle D is a pal now Adeline is now like a human character and she's the artist by the way I don't like when humans are in Kirby or humanoid things

because we got Adeline we also have Ribbon the Fairy anything looks like a human I don't want in this world that's my that's my philosophy it's what I really hate about right back at you the cartoon series, man, hanging out with too many humanoids in that.

We'll talk about that, I think, maybe in our next episode, it's coming up. But, yeah, so on the title screen, Waddle D, Adeline, King Day, Day, Day, Day. They're there, and then they're at the end of every stage, just waiting for you to have a picnic, and they were meant to be playable, and as were the animal friends. So, yeah, that element of the game that's missing is just kind of taunting you, where it's like, yeah, there's four people on the screen. I got four controller ports. Yo, Goober, where's the Day Day Day?

when can I play as him yeah you know wow it's so obvious when you see that picnic stage and yeah it is this should have been a four-player game that was the best insane yeah yeah and and

I guess if it sucks then they shouldn't have done then it's good they didn't do it because if it would have played worse then I guess kind of would have made it even slower Stewart sorry they didn't get to be playable until Star allies where they just crammed everyone in basically so that was nice of them to I guess

remember that this game exists in a way. That's true. You know, someone has to and I'm glad that they did. Star Allies is really fun and it has this scrapped idea where it's just like, you can play as Kirby and three of anybody you want basically, even like past the

extra characters from old games. If you buy the game now, you can get like all the other extra characters unlocked. Like all your friends from Squeak Squad, they're here. Hooray. And yeah, this Crystal Shards game, it brought me down to just because like I've you know it felt like her Kirby wasn't equal to he him getting a crummy game by 2000 it

felt like oh this guy he's not on the same level as the other Nintendo stars to me anymore I felt bad for I pitied the little guy uh though I was still having a good time on the game boy with the side games you know and around the same time but yeah I I just remember and then uh if I had known uh would I've learned from Andrew's notes about the evangelical alien influence. In the year 2000, I would have been more excited to play this game and would have played it to the end just to see that basically an angel you fight at the end of the game. The problem for me with 64, and this probably seems quite shallow, so I'm going to explain it briefly. I'm not, I don't think graphics are more important than gameplay, but I do think

they are important. Like, not necessarily it has to look amazing, but the visuals have to fit what you're playing. Otherwise, you get this disconnect. It doesn't work. And I think Kirby 64 is hideous. I think it looks so fast. I honestly find it difficult to enjoy. We're being... You're never going to see anything interesting looking or cool looking. It's all going to look like this. We're being polite, but I think hideous is a good description. And especially, I'm playing on the Wii U, they make it like darker so I don't get a seizure or something.

So it looks even muddier and worse. Yeah, but it's just like... I don't get to see it as much. That's a good thing. I played about three hours of this yesterday just to power through to the end for this podcast. It's like, by the end, I felt kind of sick. Just like, do I, do I have cataracts? What's happening? Yeah, there were some N64 games that left me feel that way. I feel like mischief makers, which I think is a better game than this, but I remember it leaving me going like, I played too long. I need to look at this ceiling for a bit. But also, like, Kirby seems just like

sick and lethargic in this game because he doesn't move that fast. And this is like the first game where it's like, Kirby can't fly that much anymore, kids. Kirby needs to sit down for a bit. just a minute guys Kirby I'll catch up with you exactly that's just some whino that's not Kirby but yeah it just I don't know Andrew

like he's not fun to control and what I associate with Kirby games like even if they're not as challenging as I like in a game it's just so much fun to sit down and like slide around with Kirby and have him jump off of things and like in previous games I think in Superstar

like Sakurai made it so like if you landed on enemies you would hurt them and in this game like no that's not true at all if you land on enemies you're hurt I feel like Kirby's more vulnerable and ever

which at least some very frustrating things which is surprising for a Kirby game to be frustrating it's very odd I think it's interesting that we've talked this long about the game and haven't mentioned

the gimmick at all which suggests that it's left almost no impression on us which is the combining different abilities to create new abilities thing which is only in this game I believe and maybe a squeak squad

Unless we did mention it And I blinked it No we didn't mention it I think we might have mentioned it In the Kirby's Dreamland 3 discussion But it's sort of like that But you don't get like cool sprites And fun animals to play with

Instead it's basically You swallow an ability You can hit the L button And spit it back out and hold it as a star And if you throw that star into an enemy It'll change into a combo star With your previous power And that enemy's power

You can also suck up an enemy And spit at another enemy I believe to get the combo power as well but much like in Kirby's Dreamland 3, it's all about combining powers. But in this one, I feel like, again, like, I think inelegant is a good word for a lot of things that happen in this game. It's pretty inelegance. In that, it's hard to execute sometimes because it's like, okay, I've got the ice power. I want to throw it at the bomb guy.

You throw the power, but guess what, his bomb hits it. It's gone. You don't have it anymore. Now go back and get the ice power again. I'll go ahead, Stuart. It's a 2D game that's not truly 2D. say when you're throwing something it might go above or below an enemy even like it's not i think it has that clanoa thing where the level kind of curves around sometimes so it's not

entirely precise but it's but though it's not as like controlled in its camera as clonella is so it it's can be even more frustrating yeah and i think that was sprites as well clano i think that was two-d sprites at the first one anyway so yeah yeah it's um it's interesting i i feel like they Nintendo just needed a game and this game was having development problems and they just said make what you can of it get it out for summer of 2000 it just has like

generally an unfinished quality and just by the end of the game it's like in the last of the levels the first level and the last set of levels is just like the first level again but with different colors and I'm like what are you doing? Just don't do this to me you're a Kirby game

I mean as far as a release calendar in a fiscal year it did the job that happened, you know, the previous two systems as well of like that Miyamoto took his A team to work on the launch games for the system that comes out the next year. And so or the year before that. And so you got to spackle it over with some Kirby. Like you count on how like how make us a Kirby to come out in 2000 because the other guys are working on the next system. And so this is one of the worst, they still had to put it out, but it was one of their lower things.

I think they just didn't know what they handled the transition to 3D worse than most did. I mean, I guess in the N64 generation, Metroid handled it worse because it just didn't come out. They're like, nope, next system, skipping this one. It just can't happen. And there wouldn't be a 3D Kirby game again until, I guess, Air Ride. probably counts, but what is the next true 3D Kirby game? Is it a nightmare? I'm sorry.

I canceled GameCube one. Is it, is it the Wii one? Oh, return to Dream. Is that the, that was a 2D one? I mean, with three. It's basically forgotten land. Okay. Yeah, that, yeah, there was a 3D1 plan for the GameCube that got canceled.

That might actually have been 2D, don't know what I think about it. Sorry, I wasn't specific enough. I meant like a 2D Kirby game with 3D graphics because I think this was it, and they didn't do it again until a decade later on the Wii with Return to Dreamland. I think that might have been it. Now, yeah, I think, and then on the

3DS then, it usually it pretty much was all polygons. Like, it was the end of the 2D sprites were dead once more by the time. In the 3DS. Having just played triple deluxe and Star Allies, it's like, oh, those

games feel like the Sakurai 2D games. They're just a snappy, but they just couldn't make it work with this hardware. and their expertise and with this kind of a rushed and unfinished project. Triple Deluxe rules hard

and so after playing it now that you've reminded me of it I hate Crystal Shards even more. I'm like, oh man, that's Triple Deluxe. That's the 3D2.5B game. It's maybe, like, mildly controversial. I think that Kirby is actually in its golden age now and has been for close to a decade.

Because ever since Return to Dreamland came out, I really don't think they've made a bad one or even one that's less than great. And when forgotten land came out, it's not my favorite, Kirby. There are things about it I don't like. But it is awesome. It's a great game.

And it makes me think if the sequel to Forgotten Land is as good as Planet Robobot was compared to Triple Deluxe, which I loved anyway, the way we're in for an all-timer, my dear friends. Yeah, yeah, I think. The best is yet to come. I think so. And I want to know what Andrew's thoughts on this are, because my own thoughts are like, I think I fell out of Kirby, not just because of my income, but in the 2000s, Kirby games, this really kicked off a kind of a darker era, but there were quality things.

Like, I think the best things that came out of the 2000s were Nightmare and Dreamland and the DS remake of Triple Delah, sorry, the DX remake of Superstar. But there's the amazing mirror, there's Squeak Squad. Those are, those are not made by hell. Maybe there's some supervision, but I believe those are farmed out to different companies. Sakurai is too busy with Smash Brothers to really do a lot of Kirby work. But it does feel like you said, Stuart, maybe return to Dreamland for the way. we was the kicking off of like the new better era of Kirby and

they finally found all I was going to say is canvas curse was great that was a bit of an outlier for me that was the one that pulled me back that was the one that pulled me back because I I didn't have anything else to play on the DS and it had gotten marked down and I was like okay the reviews are kind of good

and yeah that was when I finally it was the first stylist driven game that I actually like for real just loved like yeah and that was made by how well I guess it was small enough that they could easily pump that out for the for the DS but it did seem like yeah the the the aughts

were the dark days of Kirby I guess he was popular because he had an anime for the first time yeah but I mean hey it was for like five year olds I know they should have been aiming it at 21 year old exactly I wanted the edgy Kirby anime but yeah yeah I think this is a great time but yeah we were just dumping all over Kirby 64 if you were a kid and you like this

let me know because as a near 40 year old playing this I was just like oh I had no interest in this for a reason Andrew are we being fair what are your thoughts on this one before we wrap up like Kirby 64 you know I knew this before this episode I would have to try and defend this game

and it's a difficult one to defend you know I already mentioned all the development issues and you know when I was replaying this game I found it easier to sort of put my mindset back in the days of that 2D to 3D transition where you have that weird evolution of okay well how to do this and I don't think they get

enough credit for yeah this isn't a great game but they made the right choice to try and keep Kirby 2D because going to 3D would have been so much worse. I mean, if you look at how the game mechanics work, you'd have to sacrifice something no matter what to make it fully 3D. Like Mega Man with Legends sacrifice the platforming. Even Mario 64 sacrificed the ability to shoot fireballs. Like that sort of like shooting mechanic, which is just similar to inhaling Kirby.

it just doesn't play well and you know castelvania symphony at night got a lot of credit for staying 2d and then you see it move into 3d and each successive one is just slightly better you know moving from 64 to lament of innocence to lords of shadow like they're all not very good each one's a little bit better than the last and you know i think kirby just knew what it had to do from the beginning for this segment of games is just keeping it 2D and you know Sega still hasn't learned that with Sonic where Generations is the best you know sorry I know I'm going to get a lot of hate but there's a Sonic fan Generations 50% of it is like the best 3D Sonic game and the rest all just not that the Sonic Leica has looked on no I like the 2D stuff in generations

I also like I also like Castlevania 64 say what are you going to do sick oh sick no you're Right. If we put ourselves back in the year 2000 and being like super online, super into games, really starting to get into like the retro scene, which is like, what would I play 10 years ago? That's retro. But yeah, like the 2D was just like, oh, yuck, are you kidding me? You're making a 2D game.

Everything is 3D now in the future. And by sticking to their roots, it was a gutsy move. I think they were allowed to do it because like the N64 just needed games. Yeah. And they couldn't sink any more development time to this. But yeah, it was rare to see a 2D game. to the point where, like, a magazine would be like, oh, a 2D game, interesting, Klanoa,

Sympath. These are just, oh, the Tumba, these are just weird experiences now. Everything should be in 3D. But, hey, it's a throwback to the ancient days of 1990. You know, and Rare was pumping out the 3D platformers so much that it's like Kirby. I would hate for them to have to try to follow that kind of model because I don't think Hal could do it, you know, they'd never end.

And rather, if the market demanded, if the, if they had to release something like for the portfolio of Nintendo, then I'm glad they at least stuck to 2.5D-ish for that instead of trying to flush away everything that people love about a mainline Kirby game just to fit 3D like that. you know it wasn't it wasn't a gex situation or a bubsy situation or whatever where they're just like we have to be 3D let's who cares how it plays it must be 3D like as is in full 3D movements yeah so we ended up with a megamane x8 situation then it could have been a mega man x7 situation yeah and i'm sure this was viewed as like a baby game for being in 2d in the year 2000 when i was playing it i was like this is the most difficult kirby game and i'm getting very frustrated by some of these levels and that's not like I don't think a lot of that was intentional but I was like wow this is a difficult game for a Kirby game but hey I I appreciate the neon genesis Evangelian stuff in it

like O2 O O looking like an angel just straight up just one of the angels from I believe episode 23 it's I like that there are some Evangelionian fans Yeah that was removed from the game

turned into a cactus yeah like I should point out that the the Dark Matter trilogy was directed by Shinichi Shimamura who had been at house since the early 90s and it worked on almost all the Kirby games up until then I don't know if I agree with his vision for the series and he hasn't not been credited with anything since the year 2002 so maybe he left out of shame for disappointing me personally

but that's that's the guy who was behind it and a strong worded letter to it's like I don't I'm just going to send this letter to Japan and hope somebody gets it but I think the guy who's in charge of the games and I think he's directed like the most recent like three or four like Sakurai whoever

found a the right person I think it's like Shinya Kumazaki I believe that is the person who has been directing the more recent games yeah he is he is the one and I think they found the right

person yeah since since Superstar Ultra he has has been the director and then general director. So I think under his reign, Kirby has really, really thrived. And I think Shimamura was trying to turn it into a game. It really wasn't. But for the sake of making a longer experience, and I understand the pressure there.

So I hope he's doing well. I don't know where he is right now. Anything else we need to cover? That was Kirby Part 2. I'm kind of surprised we got an entire episode out of three games, but these are three very interesting games. Even the ones that are lesser are still fun to talk about, just to remember. where we were when they were released.

Any final thoughts from you, Andrew? Anything we need to talk about to cover about these three? And any thoughts about the future of this Kirby podcast series? Where are we going to be heading next? Well, I think the big takeaway is, you know, gameplay-wise and design-wise aside, I think everyone can agree that the music is just always awesome in every game. Yeah, I'm with you a lot.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I didn't call it the music outside of the first game, really, but it's all really good. even on the N64, there's still some good songs they pump out of that thing. No, I... I'm looking forward to the next one where we're covering ones that, you know, are necessarily as touched by Hal. And quite frankly, are not really ones that I'm huge fan of, but... Oh, that's exciting.

Yep, there'll be your time to shine, story. I'm so excited. And I promise you, we will talk about the anime, because one of these games was released hastily because they're like, There's an anime out. We need a Kirby game. Repackage adventure. Yeah. Well, you know, Bob, you said you're surprised how long it's up for us to talk about three games.

But really, it's more like 10 games than one. That's true. What a bargain. And this episode is quite a bargain for all of you out there if you're a patron. But yes, that's another episode of Retronaut. Before I wrap up, Andrew, you'll be back very soon for part three. But is there anything else you want to promote? Do you want people to find you online?

Let us know. No, I don't really do anything. So, you know, I will say everything that you guys do with, you know, Talking Simpsons, What a Cartoon, and even Stort with Animani Chat and ArtsHolvania. All that stuff is really great. And if anyone listening has not dipped into any of those other podcasts, you're missing out. Oh, thank you so much. I will gladly take extra plugs for myself. Yes, yeah.

We really appreciate it. Me too. And thanks to you, Andrew, for a great topic. I'm glad to be cruising through these games very slowly because back when I did this in 2011, it's like, let's just do everyone in one episode, breathlessly, breathlessly. But yeah, this has been another episode of Retronauts. This is part of the HyperX podcast network, and we're also supported by all the great fans and patrons out there at Patreon.com slash Retronauts. If you want to support the show and get all these episodes one week at a time and ad free,

please sign up at the $3 level at patreon.com slash retronauts. But buddy, there is also a $5 level. when you sign it for that, you get your early access, but also you get two full-length bonus episodes every month, and we've been doing this for over two years now, so there's now 50-plus full-length bonus episodes that you have not heard, if you're not a patron, at the $5 level at patreon.com slash retronauts,

and there is also a weekly column and podcasts by contributor Diamond Fight. You can hear that at the $5 level as well at patreon.com slash retronauts. Stewart, how about you? You are a retronauts contributor, I know you've got other stuff happening. Please let us know about that.

Oh, yes. I'd like to also plug one of a cartoon and talking. No, I'm joking. No, you can't take it back. They are great. Thank you. Yeah, anime chat, I suppose,

is currently my other main podcast, which is sort of a rip-off the Talking Simpsons. Sorry. But it's going through every single episode of Animaniacs. Now, the secret is, I hate Animaniacs.

I think it sucks. However, recently, I have come to slightly like it. So, as you can see, there's been a character development as it went on that. I also do a podcast called The Dillcast where we review every single Dill book comic ever made

and slowly go insane because it's the worst thing ever. You can listen to that, that's a lot of fun. It's mostly just an excuse to talk complete garbage, but you know, that's a laugh. And you can find me on Twitter at Stupacabra, but I don't recommend it because I tweet every single thought I ever have

and they're all awful. Yeah, writing on Retronauts and Nintendo Life and I do some Retronauts etches myself, usually UK gaming focused and with lots and lots of rambling. I want to see you chart the decline of Scott Adams' mental faculties on your podcast over time.

Okay, if we can stop charted the decline of our own mental faculties while we're trying to read his terrible comment. But yeah. And Henry, how about you? Well, everybody said it already, but yes, me and Bob also host a bunch of podcasts. Talking Simpsons and what a cartoon chief among them. Talking Simpsons, we go through every episode

of The Simpsons. In Chronological Order, We're in season 13, but also season 3 right now. And what a cartoon. Once a month, we cover an animated series, super duper in depth. Coming up soon, I think if you're a fan of Beast Wars, I think you'll have a good time on our podcast network as well. At patreon.com slash talking Simpsons, you get tons of extras of us covering King of the Hill, Futurama, The Critic, Batman, the animated series, Mission Hill,

and I dare say we have gone fully looney-tuned. because we did the edit isn't done yet i'd say it's at least six and a half hours long one podcast about roger rabbit so uh who framed roger rabbit just that movie not even all the side stuff with roger rabbit just that that's a second podcast yeah so coming very soon so you can only hear that in full if you go to patreon dot com slash talking simpson to sign up and hey follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. And as for me, I've been your host for this one, Bob Mackey.

You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo, but that's it for us. This week, we'll see you again very soon for another episode of Retronauts. Take care. Thank you.