Review: Kirby's Adventure

At the start of Spring Break I was camping near Globe, Arizona. There I picked up three NES games: The Legend of Zelda, The Adventure of Link, and Kirby's Adventure. Lately I've been playing Kirby.

The game is a Super Mario Bros. style side-scrolling platform game where you can inhale enemies and absorb their powers. For example, if you eat a porcupine, you get spike powers. More difficult foes yield better powers. Another nice feature of Kirby is that you can press UP on the D-pad and float around in the levels... but there are hazards in the air too! Just as in Super Mario Bros., there are secret spots in the levels that can unlock things like mini-games or "Hyper" powerups (much like the star in Super Mario).

Though this game is heavily influenced by Super Mario, I think it has some definite interesting, original things going for it. The ability to float opens a lot of opportunities for cool level designs and challenges. There are a LOT of powers you can acquire, and there are new ones to be found in every new world (set of levels) of the game.

My favorite aspect of Kirby's Adventure is that you can save the game (it autosaves for you in a selected file 1-4). I always felt like there shoould have been a save feature in Super Mario Bros. Interestingly, one of the other games I picked up, The Legend of Zelda, was the first NES to have a save feature.