Kirby’s Star-Studded Experiment

When Kirby Super Star hit American stores on September 20, 1996, video games were near the dawn of a new era – like, really near. Just nine days later, Kirby’s publisher would release its next-generation console, the Nintendo 64, taking the gaming giant’s titles into the third dimension. But Kirby Super Star was no end-of-console afterthought; it was the 16-bit Super Nintendo’s proper swan song, a sweeping and idiosyncratic blockbuster befitting its increasingly iconic puffy pink protagonist and its young, rising director, Masahiro Sakurai. The SNES would not end with a whimper; it demanded a megaton bang capable of cracking planet Pop Star in half.

Living the Dream Land

Kirby – and his creator – had only emerged on the scene four years earlier with 1992’s Kirby’s Dream Land for the Game Boy. With its five roomy levels and forgiving platforming, Dream Land was pitched to beginners, and they flocked to it in droves. The series’ debut would become one of the handheld console’s ten best-selling games (depending on how you account for dual Pokémon releases). The next year came its NES sequel, 1993’s Kirby’s Adventure. The game added an iconic pink pop to the formerly monochrome mascot and introduced the series’ defining feature: the copy ability, in which Kirby could assume the powers of any foes he consumed. In doing so, Sakurai shared with the writer Akinori Sao in 2017 that he was consciously thinking of his players’ developing relationships with the series: “By adding that, beginners would be able to enjoy simply inhaling and spitting out things, and advanced players would be able to use more hardcore abilities.” The players evolved alongside their ever-evolving avatars.