The Kirby series is a bit of an odd companion to the rest of Nintendo’s library of first-party titles, though it remains a welcome one. Kirby is known more for its colorful style and emphasizing atmosphere and charm over difficulty, with few exceptions. It has always been a series Nintendo has not been afraid to try new things with, and it always seems to work out in his favor.
Much like Mario’s 25th anniversary, Kirby’s 20th is being celebrated on the Wii with a collector’s edition containing six main series titles. While many of the included titles are essentially carbon copies of their original versions, and many are available on the Virtual Console, the one change for the Collection is that all of them require only the Wii Remote, with no attachments to play. (Also supported are the Classic Controller and the GameCube controller.)
The Collection includes the six classic Kirby games: Kirby’s Dream Land (Game Boy), Kirby’s Dream Land 2 (Game Boy), Kirby’s Adventure (NES), Kirby Super Star (SNES), Kirby’s Dream Land 3 (SNES) and Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (N64). In addition, an interactive museum is included, showing Kirby’s history, as well as set of challenge stages to test your skill.
The challenge stages feel a lot like Kirby’s Return to Dream Land, the most recent title in the series, also on Wii. In a departure from Kirby’s usual style, the challenge stages offer a decent challenge to complete, especially with the highest rating.
The box includes a full-color history book and soundtrack covering the entire series. The book is a bit small, made to fit beside a standard Wii case, though it contains many useful facts and information about the Kirby series, characters and all of the games. It is more than just an art book, and contains a lot of information about the development of the series both in North America and Japan. The soundtrack contains 45 tracks, with a few selections from each game. The full track list, and a description of where each track occurs in the game, is shown in the back of the history book.
The Collection itself is very quick to navigate, though requires a reset to return to the menu once a game has been loaded.
Though more games could have been included, I think the choices they made here contain the best Kirby has to offer outside of Return to Dream Land. This collection is a must-have for any Kirby fan, old or new.
Pros: The best of Kirby, great extras for the price
Cons: Unable to return to the menu once a game is launched
