Reviews of Kirby’s Dream Land, Gem Gem, Cosmo Tank & Super Robot Pinball.
Game Boy Game Boy Game Boy Crammer Game Boy Game Boy Game Boy Crammer My name is Ray Larabie, and I’m talking to you from Nagoya, Japan. Welcome to episode 24 of Game Boy Crammer. Today I’ll be reviewing Kirby’s Dream Land, Jam Jam, Cosmo Tank, and Super Robot Pinball. Let’s start the show!
Kirby’s Dream Land was released everywhere in 1992. In Japan, it was called Hoshino Kirby, or Kirby’s Star. Kirby is a murderous pink alien creature from the planet Popstar in a specific area called Dream Land.
He’s pliable, stretchy, and he sucks. Well, literally, he sucks in air and blows himself up. There are lots of Kirby games, and this was the very first Kirby game. Kirby was released by HAL Laboratories, and as I mentioned before, in another review, if you see HAL on the game, you buy it right away, because everything HAL makes is great.
Now, on the box art, it shows Kirby as being white. I guess they hadn’t established what color he was, but in the Japanese version, he was pink. This came just before Kirby’s Adventure showed up on the NES the next year. If you played a lot of other Kirby games, like Kirby’s Epic Yarn and Wii, you’re probably used to the idea that when Kirby inhales an enemy and then chomps down on it, he will inherit the abilities of that enemy. If a guy’s threatening you with a sword, you can inhale him, chomp down, and now you have a sword ability.
Well, you don’t have that in this one. All you do is you suck things up and you spit them out. There’s no slide move or anything like that, but you can suck in air and float above anything, which was really kind of unique at the time. Back then, there was kind of a formula for platform games, and this was one of the first ones where you could kind of breeze your way through. You know, you could take your time and challenge yourself and try to get a lot of points, but there are parts of this game where you can just float over big chunks of a level. You have a health meter in this game and you have multiple lives.
There are only five levels in this game, however, they’re pretty long levels and fairly complex. You have doors that you can go in and access bonus rooms and stuff like that. You move around with your control pad or you just push up to fly, and to drop to a lower floor, you don’t have to hit jump or anything, you just drop down. The B button lets you inhale, or if you hit it again, it will exhale that object, spit it out.
The A button is jump or swim, and that’s it. The controls are very simple, very intuitive. At the end of each level, you’ll fight a boss. After that, you will catch a star and go on to the next level. People say Kirby games are too easy. This game comes with an extra game. On the title screen, you hold up, A, and select at the same time, and it’ll say, extra game. Start that, and it’s hard. Hold down, select, and B, and you go into configuration mode. This will let you add extra levels to your health meter and extra lives.
Then enter the extra game, and then get your butt kicked. It’s by no means the hardest game ever on extra mode, but it’s a challenging game. There’s no save game and no passwords. This is the kind of game you can sit down and play. You know, if you’re really rushing through it, you can probably finish it in about 20-25 minutes, or take your time. Even if you’re taking your time, it won’t take you more than an hour to play. But the final boss will give you a tip so you don’t have to learn the hard way. The boss will use a hammer, which creates stars, and it’ll actually do like a body slam thing, and that’ll create stars. You want to suck in those stars and use that to defeat him.
It’s a pretty simple game, but a great start to the series. Kirby’s Adventure on the NES is definitely more challenging and much more complicated, and it was re-released in 2002 on the GBA as Kirby Nightmare in Dream Land. If you have a 3DS in the store, you can buy the original Kirby’s Dream Land for Game Boy. You can also buy a 3D version of Kirby’s Adventure, which is a lot of fun. Kirby’s Dream Land is really great on the Super Game Boy. It’s got this really cool backdrop, and it’s pink.
I’m going to say this is an essential game to have on the Game Boy. It’s like Super Mario Land, it’s like Tetris, it’s just one of those ones that you kind of have to have. The Japanese version is very common, and I see it for two or three bucks usually. There’s no reason not to get the Japanese version of this game, because there’s not a lot of reading to do, and it’s all in English anyway. If you want Kirby’s Dream Land, look for DMG-KY or search for DMG-KYJ if you’re looking for the Japanese version.
Note: The transcription program choked on a commercial I guess, so I’ll have to try this one some other time.