Kirby's Dream Land (GB)

[Jorpho]

How so? Kirby 2 doesn't play much at all like Kirby 3 or 64... I mean, beyond that they're both Kirby games of course. It doesn't have those games' slow pace, and the gameplay is somewhat different as well.

Kirby 2 is still my favorite game in the series, it's got the best level designs and gameplay of the whole series... such an amazing game. Kirby 64, on the other hand, is the one I found the most disappointing, of the ones I've played; I really had high hopes for it, after Kirby 2 (I didn't have a NES or SNES then so I hadn't played those ones), but it was quite thoroughly underwhelming. Kirby feels really slow in that game, it's just glacially paced. It's also very easy, as expected, except the challenge -- going back to try to get the three crystal shards in every level -- is a complete pain. Some require getting a power in one level, not getting hit until you beat it, and then going to some other level and using the power at some point in that stage (again, without losing the power). Obviously, unless you use a guide to tell you what powers you need where, this is really annoying. I never finished getting all the shards, the game just wasn't fun enough.

I don't see how you can call Kirby 2 anything but slow-paced. And while it doesn't have three crystal shards in every level, the challenge of tracking down the one special rainbow drop in each level is just as tedious and involves just as much trial and error, says I.

(Really, one of my biggest criticisms of Kirby 2 was the misguided decision to use a particular musical theme for each animal friend. Some of the worlds actually have pretty nice music, but you're pretty much stuck listening to the same three themes over and over again.)

But last year at Anime Banzai I did pick up a copy of Donkey Kong Country returns for the Game Boy Color, and that counts for something, right?

(Psst, only the Wii game was called Donkey Kong Country Returns. Let's not confuse things.)