Gaming Target - Game Boy: Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland

Written by Tim McGrew on January 15, 2003

Review: He looks like a giant pink marshmallow that eats everything.

Despite its beautiful look and interesting game play mechanics, Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland is not a new game. In fact, the game was originally released on the Nintendo Entertainment System nearly fifteen years ago. However, players new to the series or to the character will find that the game is highly entertaining for platform and action fans alike.

Kirby, basically a giant marshmallow shaped puff-ball, lives in a world known as Dreamland. In Dreamland, a certain evil nemesis, known as King Dedede, probably the most non-threatening villain in gaming history, has stolen the Rod of Dreams. Unfortunately, the citizens of Dreamland can't dream as long as the rod is in King Dedede's hands. It's your job as Kirby to venture through a number of varied worlds defeating bosses and sub bosses while acquiring pieces of the Rod of Dreams. Eventually you reassemble it and return it to the people of Dreamland. The story is more of an excuse for the game than anything else, but that's hardly anything worth complaining about.

Kirby is quite similar to the earlier side scrolling Mario games that are being re-released on the GBA. Kirby can fly, swim, and swallow his enemies and spit them out or, interestingly enough, swallow them and absorb their abilities. Absorbing enemies is probably the largest draw of Kirby since there are a vast number of enemies that will afford Kirby new abilities unique to certain levels that can easily be carried into other levels and combined with other abilities. Swallowing an enemy with a sword just isn't enough when you can take that sword and add flame abilities to it, both increasing its attack power and its severity. Plus, after boss battles, players can absorb the bosses and their unique abilities that range from a giant hammer to a super hero like air jump attack. The number of abilities is surprisingly high and adds heaps to the overall product.

The levels in the game are straightforward but players trying to complete the game for 100% will find that they are far more complicated and require certain abilities in order to reach secret areas to acquire even more abilities. The variety of level design, much like the variety of weapons, is also very high. Certain levels look like soft candy and icing while others look just like standard rocks and cliffs, but the levels are designed around a dreamscape so the creators used this fact to create very original designs.

New to this particular version of the game are the multiplayer features that owe thanks to the GBA's link cable abilities. For starters, using a single cart, players can participate in four player action across three separate mini games. The first mini game is known as Bomb Rally in which players use skillets to hit a bomb back and forth before it hits them and explodes. Another mode is known as Quick-Draw and it pits two players opposite one another in a Japanese stand off, waiting for a red exclamation point to appear before slamming their thumb down on the A-button and attacking the other person first. It's basically just a test of reflexes, but it's still fun for a few rounds. The last game in the single cart multiplayer series is known as Air Grind. In Air Grind, four players compete on a rainbow like pole where grinding smooth surfaces with your star board speeds you up while grinding harsh metal surfaces slows you down. Players who grind as closely as possible to the rough spots are rewarded with an even bigger boost of speed hurling them to the finish line much more quickly.

If you happen to have three friends and all of you have GBA's and each a copy of the Kirby game, you can cooperatively move through the single player levels attacking enemies and absorbing different abilities. The ability to move through these worlds as a team is highly entertaining as the four of you can team up and destroy bosses in an instant and attack each other for different abilities. However, the game's difficulty, which is already incredibly easy, drops considerably when there are four unstoppable Kirby's moving throughout the level.

The most obvious upgrade to this original NES title is the graphical enhancements. From the looks of it, players would be hard pressed to find the similarities between the two since the entire game looks to be on par with all of the current efforts and games being released on the GBA. The sprites for each enemy have been meticulously redrawn and reanimated to give each character that much more life then they had on the NES. The biggest improvement is Kirby himself who now looks about a billion times better now than he did on the NES. Subtle graphical nuances and additions to Kirby are of particular importance as they draw players in just that much more. For example, Kirby now wears a snorkel when he jumps into water and he also features different types of hats for the abilities he absorbs so you can differentiate between them without having to use the ability in the game.

The backgrounds also look quite good and are layered on top of each other to create a nice scrolling effect as you float, run, dash, or swim. It's not as impressive as say Metroid Fusion or even Yoshi's Island, but it's still beautiful nonetheless. Still, players will be having far more fun just trouncing enemies with spikes and ice shots as opposed to staring at the unique and creative backgrounds. The sound has also been retooled and one of the most notable additions is the fact that Kirby has just a tiny bit of voice not present in the NES game. Sometimes he'll scream out a tiny УYay!Ф which is a welcome addition since it happens so infrequently. Plus, the overall sound package has been fixed up and a few more midi instruments are present for the level music that remains surprisingly faithful to the original game. With such an excellent sound package and so many graphical upgrades, it's hard to tell that this game was originally released on the NES. Nintendo did a great job when they went back to improve this title and my respect goes to them for that.