The fifth release in the 3D Classics series has arrived, and for the first time we're getting a full adventure game with some real meat to it --
Kirby's Adventure, the swansong of Nintendo's original 8-bit Entertainment System. Compared to
Excitebike,
Xevious,
TwinBee and
Urban Champion -- a five-track racer, two early '80s arcade shooters and a worthless street brawler -- Kirby's Adventure seems worthy of a thumbs-up immediately. But let's dig deeper down into it, to examine in earnest what's being offered here.
Kirby's Adventure is a side-scrolling platformer starring Nintendo's pink powderpuff in his second-ever outing as a hero. His first game,
Kirby's Dream Land, was a Game Boy platformer that introduced most of his defining mechanics -- his power to inhale foes with vacuum-suction breath, puff himself up with air to fly around and more -- and it's recently been made available for download in the 3DS eShop itself if you want to go back and try it. Dream Land stopped short of completing Kirby's character, though, because it wasn't until here in Adventure that he gained the power to steal other powers from his foes.
Suck up a fire-breathing bad guy? Kirby starts breathing fire himself. Eat a dude wielding a sword? Kirby gets his own blade to brandish. And so on and so forth -- you know how it works, because this mechanic is the one that Kirby has gone on to be defined by through the past 20 years. He even steals other
Nintendo characters' powers in the Smash Bros. games. Copying powers
is Kirby.
And so it's always fun to go back and see the genesis of that most critical aspect of his character here in Adventure. Beyond that, though, this game is just pure fun besides -- beautifully crafted levels, fun boss battles, a wealth of hidden areas and a dynamic overworld map screen that is still serving as the template for modern Kirby sequels all round this game out as one of the best the NES ever had to offer.
Nothing about the appeal of the game design is any different here in 2011, so let's just move this discussion along to the one element that is altered -- the visual presentation. As a 3D Classics remake, this new version of Kirby's Adventure has had its 8-bit NES graphics upgraded with the addition of stereoscopic depth. If you keep the system's Depth Slider pushed down to the Off position, the game looks entirely unchanged from its NES source material -- it's just windowed on the left and right (and just a bit on the top and bottom) with a frame to fill the extra 3DS screen real estate.
Pushing the Slider up activates an interesting layer separation between the old-school elements, though. Kirby and other character sprites pop out the most toward the player, along with the foreground platforms. The background layers then get pushed back a bit, while a new darkening effect is applied to the layer furthest back in the distance -- helping to sell the effect