My latest musical obsession (when I’m not subjecting myself to the 10-hour version of the “He-Man Hey Yeah Yeah” song), is a pair of videos by a music compilation channel on YouTube. The first one, appropriately titled “30 minutes of kirby music to make you feel better” is a collection of bright and cheerful tracks from a variety of Kirby games, classic and current (though it leaves out some of the latest games to avoid the litigious arm of Nintendo), that absolutely lives up to its name. The second one is the sequel to that first, wonderful video, titled “45 minutes of kirby music to make you feel even better” which also absolutely lives up to its name. There’s a lot of familiar tracks in this second one, showcasing songs by the same name that had been updated or changed for newer games, along with a collection of new ones as well. The channel can get away with these videos because it is not monetized and exists solely to create these compilations of video game music according to a central theme. There are a lot of channels out there like this one, but this one takes it all a little step further. Rather than just posting a static image, there’s a little animation of Kirby wearing headphones and bopping along to the music on the first one and, on the second one, fifteen minutes of bright and happy comments from the first video showcasing just how warmly this collection of music was received. The bright and cheerful music the compiler chose for these videos is enhanced by the cheerful and friendly nature of the comments they selected for this video and, for the most part (more so than any other video I’ve ever seen on YouTube), further enhanced by the bright and cheerful comments below the video.
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Kirby’s Return To Kirby’s Dream Land
Yesterday, I wrote about my return to one of the first video games I ever played and the first game I ever owned as I played Kirby’s Dreamland via the Game Boy add-on to my Nintendo Online subscription. After playing that a couple times, and in the time I could spare from playing Chained Echoes (a wonderful game you absolutely should play), I’ve been playing through Kirby’s Return to Dream Land: Deluxe. It doesn’t quite hit the same, emotionally (probably due to the lack of nostalgia), but it has the warm, pleasant, and upbeat vibe that I’ve come to associate with pretty much every Kirby game. I have only played a couple hours, so far–just enough time to really get a feel for what the game brings to the table–but that’s enough for me to be excited to continue playing. Not because I expect this game to be some kind of masterpiece, but because it has a fun, relatively simple gameplay loop and embraces being exactly what it is in a way that few game franchises ever seem to.
Continue readingMy Return To Kirby’s Dream Land
One of the latest Nintendo Online subscription perks added after the latest Nintendo Direct in February is a collection of Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. As someone who first got their start on a good old Game Boy Pocket, I was looking forward to indulging in a bit of nostalgia, especially because the games are all fairly short and quick to play (by today’s standards, especially). Opening it up after it finished download was like finding my collection of Game Boy games that vanished when I was nine or ten. All of my earliest gaming memories, save Pokémon, were staring back at me from my TV. I had a difficult time picking what to play first but eventually settled on Kirby’s Dream Land. As I launched the game and started playing pretty much immediately, I felt a level of familiarity I hadn’t expected. After all, it has been over two decades since I last played the game.
Continue readingComplicated Recollections of Kirby 64
As a small festive gift for myself, I decided to purchase the expansion pass to my Nintendo Online subscription. I already had the only DLC in the pack for a game I own, thanks to my hefty playtime on Animal Crossing, but I was excited by the idea of playing a bunch of my favorite Nintendo 64 games without needing to do my usual amount of coaxing, constant saving, and sacrificing to the Nintengods required to use my old, dusty, beat-up N64. I haven’t looked at it the same since that time I was playing through Paper Mario, got all the way through a save-less dungeon and boss fight combo, and then had the game crash/N64 shut off AS I WAS OPENING THE SAVE SCREEN TO SELECT A FILE TO SAVE TO. Definitely not still mad about that one. The only classic the expansion pass is missing that I feel a hankering to replay is Donkey Kong 64 and I’m used to ignoring that one since my old copy of the game doesn’t seem to work very well.
Continue readingI Just Love Kirby Games So Much
I beat the main portion of Kirby and the Forgotten Land over the weekend. The game has stayed just as enjoyable throughout as it was at the start, which is pretty great considering how many games I play that feel like the beginning got way more work than the end. There’s a “post-game” section to play through that I’m spending my time on these days, but it doesn’t really feel like it’s “post” anything. It feels like the final act of the game, despite it being pretty clearly the post-game section (all but named as such by the NPCs in the game), and there isn’t all the much new content, so I can’t really argue with it being called that.
Continue readingKirby And The Forgotten Land Is Perfect
A new Kirby game came out last week. Kirby and The Forgotten Land tells the story of what would happen if Kirby and his fellow Popstar residents got sucked through a strange rift into a world that vaguely resembles our own (in proportion and technology) perhaps a thousand years after all Humans vanished from it. Being a completionist with very little time to play video games over the past few days, I’ve only gotten to the second area, so there is likely more to the story than I’ve found before writing this. That said, the story of a Kirby game is never the reason you play it. They’re all basically the same: something bad happens, Kirby and Co. team up to save the day, and evil forces are thwarted. A story frequently told entirely without words, relying entirely on cutscenes, music, and good facial expressions to tell the story.
Continue readingWatching The Hype Train Pass Me By (Except for Kirby Games, Apparently)
I am not a great follower of video game news. I find hype of all sorts odious when it is manufactured to create a buzz for something that does not yet exist in the hands of the audience, and that seems to be almost the entirety of video game marketing these days. As a result, I’ve grown accustomed to finding out about the release of games I’ve been anticipating in the last week or two before their release. Most of my friends even know not to include me in their hype events or discussions unless there’s something concrete for us to discuss like a release date, an actual gameplay trailer, or a demo. I’ve made my peace with living on my back foot like this, to finding out about games sometimes long after they’ve released, and I feel now that it isn’t a bad way to live.
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