Kirby Super Star Ultra is pretty good. A unique approach with it's anthology-based structure and this allowed it to come up with some pretty creative modes in the form of Great Cave Offensive and Milky Way Wishes and both modes kinda make me wonder how a Kirby Metroidvania would work. There's some foundations here for that.

Then there's Meta Knight's Revenge, which was an enjoyable high-speed mode. I actually came quite close to running out of time in some parts. Speaking of high-speed, Gourmet Race is a classic. I did play that one in the original and i feel it controls better here?

Spring Breeze and Dyna Blade are fairly standard Kirby adventures. The former is just a remake of Kirby's Dream Land. So fun but nothing to write home about.

Ultra did add some new modes, mainly Revenge of the King and Meta Knight Ultra. While Revenge of the King is a good "hard mode" version of Spring Breeze (and even introduced Masked Dedede, this whole time i was being gaslit to think that was a Triple Deluxe thing), Meta Knight Ultra is fun at first but it's just redoing the original modes (minus Gourmet Race and Great Cave) as Meta Knight. The only difference is you fight Galacta Knight at the end but honestly i would've preferred it if it was more original.

As a whole, Super Star Ultra is very fun and i wouldn't mind if they did something like this again. Maybe now that the series has fully gone 3D, they could do a "3D Super Star" or something.

Truth be told I’ve never been as big a fan of the Superstar formula as I wanted to be—the anthology structure is certainly unique, but I’ve always felt it left the experience as a whole feeling a tad disjointed. Each minigame is fun on its own, but most just don’t get the space or time to feel as fleshed out as I’d like them to be. That being said, I still enjoyed Superstar, and the same can more or less be said for this remake.

Superstar Ultra is a pretty straightforward translation of the SNES original: it’s got all the games you remember, and they play more or less how you remember them. Spring Breeze and Dyna Blade offer truncated (if basic) classic Kirby adventures. The Great Cave Offensive is a bit more inspired: a more robust, exploratory journey that’s always been a personal favorite for my collection-obsessed lizard brain. Return of Meta Knight is probably the best-realized game of the original roster, a fast, high-octane action movie parody full of frenetic combat and charming dialogue. Gourmet Race and the microgames all provide brief, almost Warioware-esque reprieves. And then to cap it all off you get Milky Way Wishes, which I think is actually kind of a confusing mess but the Marx fight is really cool so yeah sure whatever!

Any changes Ultra makes to that core lineup are minimal, mostly in the form of small but welcome optimizations. A more zoomed out screen, a better English translation, some more informative UI elements (a huge help in TGCO actually). The presentation has also been updated, although that’s something I’m more mixed on. I quite like the GBA/DS Kirby aesthetic, but it is a real shame to see one of the more distinct and vibrant Kirby games reimagined in this “house style”. The sprites looks great in their own right, but I do find myself missing the off-model charm of the original, particularly in the backgrounds and these crunchy 3D-rendered cutscenes.

Probably the change I’m most fond of is the fact that hey, we’re on the DS now! I always struggled with Superstar’s 8-in-one structure but it really does make so much more sense on a handheld, especially one as geared towards short, on-the-go play sessions as the original DS. It’s a great game to play in between other tasks when you got like 15-30 minutes to kill, something that was a lot harder to do when the game was straddled to a home console you had to hook up to a CRT (or in my case, a Wii to a monitor).

As far as the new modes go, they’re nice, harmless additions but ones I’m not terribly impressed by. I have no interest in boss rushes so I didn’t bother with any of the three arenas and I felt myself going through the motions with Metaknightmare. Revenge of the King was a genuine treat though, a great synthesis of everything that worked in the main games, all capped off by an instantly iconic boss fight. Probably my favorite experience on the cartridge. The new touchscreen microgames are nice as well, it’s something they basically had to do considering the game and the hardware but they got a lot more going on than I expected.

All in all, Superstar Ultra is a pretty appealing package. Is it better than Superstar? I dunno, probably? Not by a lot but I suppose it’s a bit more finely-tuned where it counts. It’s still not my favorite in the series, but I can’t ever have a truly bad time playing Kirby. A real nice one

It's almost insane how hard they nailed almost every aspect of this game. Kirby Super Star Ultra introduced the backbone of every modern Kirby game, you know how these games go. You have your silly little extra minigames, a boss rush, and of course a main story mode (or multiple story modes in this games case) and a mode where you speedrun through all the main level themes as a guy who is most likely not Kirby.

The way Super Star differs from the modern Kirby game is the fact that instead of just having one main story mode there's around 4 different campaigns for you to enjoy. We have a remake Kirby's Dreamland, Great Cave Offensive which is Kirby's first stab at a metroidvania, Milky Way Wishes which has you unlocking all your copy abilities by finding them in levels for you to be able to pick any copy ability at anytime, you can also pick any stage you want to play first in Milky Way which adds some spice to a replay, and of course there's Dynoblade. Just a somewhat normal kirby romp where he beats the shit out of a giant bird mom at the end. Oh I also forgot about Revenge of Metaknight which is much more storybased than the other gamemodes. And to top it all off after you finish up the main gamemodes Ultra adds 2 more extra game modes to end each playthrough with a bang.

I feel like gushing about how cool Revenge of the King and Revenge of Metaknight is. Kirby storytelling here is at its peak in my opinion. There’s no reading boss descriptions (which is cool I admit) or Miiverse posts to piece together what’s happening here, here the characters narrate over your gameplay and react to what you’re actually doing in game. You get to see the Halberd’s crew freak out over the fact Kirby (who is just a little man mind you) is dismantling and attacking the ship at it’s seams, or see King Dedede get more and more desperate as Kirby invades his castle. It’s a nice way to keep the player engaged in what’s going on with the plot while also keeping the pacing of the gameplay going. Also the duels with Dedede and Meta Knight at the end of both of their respective campaigns is peak Kirby.

Onto Great Cave Offensive, basically Kirby falls into a treasure filled mine and it’s up to you to escape, and hopefully snag every goody you see along the way. It’s just a fun little collectaton/metroidvania type thing filled with numerous fun references to other Nintendo franchises which I don’t see how anyone can say no to, I mean hey Kirby somehow picks up Falchion and Mr.Saturn, that’s pretty cool! Not much to say about it really, it’s just cool seeing money go up and getting shiny collectibles.

Finally I gotta talk about Milky Way Wishes. Marx is an absolutely little silly little guy, and easily one of the best Kirby antagonists and personally is the true start of Kirby fighting lovecraftian demons. Tackling levels out of order is a blast, especially since it also affects the order of copy abilities you can obtain, and therefore how you tackle enemies and bosses. Copy abilities in this game are sick, for Kirby’s first shot at giving every copy a unique moveset they completely knocked every copy ability out of the park. All of them are a blast to use. They should bring back the gimmick of unlocking copy abilities by finding them and then being able to pick whichever one you need at a given moment, but I’m not exactly left disappointed with how Milky Way execute the concept as this mode is still a complete blast even to this day.

I think that wraps up my thoughts on this game. I’ve 100%’d twice and it’s definitely a standout Kirby title next to Planet Robobot and the like. As always the bosses are bangers and the music even more so. Play this game sometime you won’t regret it!

I played a few Kirby titles growing up and this is one that I'd always heard was beloved but always ended up eluding me. I'm glad I finally decided to give it a shot because it's a lot of fun. Milky Way Wishes, Revenge of the King, Revenge of Meta Knight, and Meta Knightmare Ultra are my personal highlights here, though most of the games are pretty fun! I think the only ones I struggle to enjoy are the boss rushes, but that's because I'm not a fan of boss rushes in most titles. I'll cut them some slack there; they deserve a place in the game.

My DS nostalgia game. A refined 2D platforming experience that I enjoyed as a kid and love now. SSU is what video games should look and sound like to me. As glamorous as Great Cave’s Crystal Area and as foreign and euphoric as Milky Way Wishes’ Halfmoon. This game is ever so welcoming but rewards perseverance and practice like nothing similar I’ve experienced. The Arenas are difficult and I could not beat them by myself and although that makes me feel somewhat inept, the DS nostalgia in me is ecstatic to be able to give my DS to someone else and let them have a try too. SSU unites.

This game, along with the DS Lite it was bundled with, was pre-owned by the son of a family friend. I instantly fell in love with it, and played it to completion several times; this included beating Helper to Hero with every character, and speedrunning The Arena and The True Arena, with my final best times of 06:58:67 and 04:39:94, respectively. Kirby Super Star was already an excellent game, but the remake turned it into a masterpiece, and a must-play for any Kirby fan or DS owner. Should I return to this game, it will not be on the original hardware.