Kirby’s back, and he’s angry! Who wouldn’t be after getting crapped on by Crapcom’s Amazing Mirror and Squeak Squad. Join Kirby in his angriest adventure yet in Kirby’s Super Star Ultra — a remake of Kirby Super Star on the SNES. This isn’t a brand new game, but it does offer many surprises for veteran players. The chance of the original appearing on virtual console is slim, but if I’m wrong, this review will provide sufficient information for both versions.
As always, Kirby tortures his foes to death by eating them, stripping the flesh from their bones, then spit out their corpse/eat their brains to gain their fighting abilities. These abilities are no longer limited to a single attack. Kirby gains a brand new set of moves to massacre his foes. For example, if you gain Suplex, you can break someone’s spine with a back breaker; or smash their face in; or repeatedly stomp the living snot out of them. Out of the 19 different abilities, each of them provides at least 4 or 5 different moves giving you a grand total of… *counts fingers* …a lot!
Great Cave Offensive’s new background.
If that wasn’t enough, Kirby can saw open his enemies’ skull, and replace the brain with a mind control chip; transforming it to a helper. This helper can be controlled by the computer, or by a friend with local wireless play. Even without a friend, the computer helper will fearlessly attack anything in sight with little regard for their own safety. This helper has the same moves as whatever you just ate, and has his own life bar. You can share food, so there’s no fighting over that single slice of pizza anymore! The helpers are technically invincible, because once they run out of health, they can touch a completely different enemy (those with special powers) and transform into it; or Kirby can turn it back into an item, eat it, then call back the helper with full health again. It’s a fun game to play by yourself, but even better with a friend.
If there’s one thing that hampered the gameplay in the original, it’s the slowdown when the action and violence gets too intense. This graphical issue doesn’t exist in KSSU. Not only that, but original’s unique blend of pre-rendered and hand-drawn sprites have all received a face lift. There might be the occasional background that looks inferior to the SNES, but they are very rare. All the cinemas have been redone with CGI, and there’s plenty of them. Some might cry foul, but I like them. The little stage intros in Spring Breeze are intact in their original form.
My favorite new mini-game.
If you’re afraid that this game won’t last very long, fear not. This game is packed with lots of great content. I’d say about 6 hours of game for me. This is coming from someone who knows the original SNES game like the back of his hands. Finding all the treasures in Great Cave Offensive could easily take a newbie a few hours. Although it’s labeled as having multiple games in one package, you can also look at it as different stages of one whole game. It might have been acceptable back in the old days, but even by the late NES cycle, huge levels with multiple stages weren’t rare. You can call KSSU multiple games in one, or various level with some slightly altered play styles, it doesn’t matter.
Let’s take a quick look at everything this game has to offer. You have to beat some of them in order to unlock others.
Spring Breeze, DynaBlade, and Revenge of Meta Knight play like regular platformers. Unleash Kirby’s rage and plow through the stages, then savagely beat the bosses until they cry. I swear, when I first saw the ending of DynaBlade years ago, I thought Kirby was trying to push the nest off a cliff to kill them all.
Kirby’s pissed off.
Great Cave Offensive has excellent replay value. Kirby follows the footsteps of the greatest explorers of our time in a wondrous new land. That means genocide, and looting its treasures — all 60 of them. Many of the treasures requires you to use the different abilities to solve some puzzles, while others are just cleverly hidden. This is what Amazing Mirror was striving to be, and failed — miserably — to be. It’s shorter than Amazing Mirror, yet packed with more secrets, action, and puzzles. I like to erase my file and replay this to collect everything after suffering from Kirby violence withdrawal.
Milky Way Wishes’ level structure is the same as the others, but the core gameplay is a bit different. Kirby can no longer gain the abilities of the enemies he eats. He must locate these abilities to collect them all. Once you have them, you can call upon any power/helper anytime. There’s also a very cool side scrolling shooter stage towards the end.
Gourmet Race is the ultimate way to eat and lose weight.
Gourmet Race isn’t a full game, yet it’s much deeper than a mini-game. Your goal is to race against King Dedede in 3 relatively lengthy levels as you try to scarf up as much food as possible along the way. There are no enemies or bosses to fight, but still lots of fun. This is the only game that doesn’t support multiplayer.
These 6 games make up the bulk of the original package, along with a few mini-games. Ultra adds 2 new modes, mini-games, and various ways to tackle the arena. I don’t want to spoil too much for the veteran players, but you will get to see at least 6-8 brand new bosses and other surprises. The 2 new games alone take up at least an hour each.
Completing this package is an incredible soundtrack that sets the tone for the relentless violence. The music can bring about feeling of exploring new land; or tell a tale of Meta Knight and his crew’s brave stand against the ferocious pink harbinger of death. Just listening to the satisfying chops as the enemy is disemboweled makes me gitty like a schoolgirl.
Not even years in anger management can stop Nintendo’s angry mascot. Kirby’s Super Star was the angriest game on the SNES, but Kirby only gets angrier in this new DS remake. You too will be angry if you miss out on this wonderful game!
Kirby’s angry that my review is too long.
Graphics: 89%
Pros: Colorful graphics with a unique blend of CG and hand-drawn sprites.
Cons: Some might not like the new CG intros. One or two backgrounds doesn’t look as good as the original.
Gameplay: 85%
Pros: Lots of fun ways to kill, plus multiplayer capabilities.
Cons: Still too easy.
Sound: 92%
Pros: One of the most underrated soundtracks of all time.
Cons: The music is a bit on the quiet side.
Controls: 95%
Pros: Excellent controls for all the cool moves you can pull off.
Cons: Switching the buttons can throw off people who spent many hours with the original.
Story: 80%
Pros: A story that encompasses a war between the sun and the moon.
Cons: Watching poor Meta Knight’s gang heroically fight to the bitter end against Kirby, only to be massacred.
Recommendation: Kirby and platformer fans will love this. Gamers too insecure about themselves should stay away — I mean, Kirby kills and he’s angry!
Overall: 90% Awesometastic
[…] Full review here […]
Why did you switched the angry Kirby box? This one look good too of course.
The first one was just a placeholder. I didn’t have time to make one, so I found one on google. This one is made by me.