It’s not uncommon for really popular shows to be adapted for other countries to suit the sensibilities and cultural norms of the native markets. You’ll often see it with stuff that’s designed to be ephemeral, aired once and forgotten, like game shows or reality tv but it happens all the time with narrative stuff too. Here in the USA we often hear about shows our networks are adapting from hits in other countries but we’ve done our share of exporting, and Gossip Girl is a franchise that’s seen itself translated several times to cultures around the globe. They mostly play it pretty straight, with titles like Gossip Girl: Acapulco or Gossip Girl: Thailand, and the characters and stories closely mirror the original 2007 CW show. This makes the first adaptation, Turkey’s Küçük Sırlar (Little Secrets), notable for how willing it is to deviate from the playbook. From the erasure of Blair from existence to the complete rewrite of Chuck’s character (something the US version absolutely wasn’t afraid to do either, and for good reason – we all remember that pilot), the changes come early and often, crafting a unique identity out of the gate for what is ostensibly an import remake.
I can’t keep that up anymore I’m fucking with you I didn’t watch the Turkish Gossip Girl adaptation I have nothing more to say about Gossip Girl I do not spend a lot of time thinking about a show I sort of half-watched like a year ago.
I DO have some thoughts though about Kirby Super Star which is a pretty sick little game. It’s always hard to go back to games in venerable series without trying to find the moments where they like, Found It, right? Like, the game in which all the little bits of identity coalesce into the thing that gives that series its definitive identity and which all of the following games will follow. And I think playing things from their first entry is teaching me how rarely this happens. There’s no moment in Mario or Zelda where they specifically become Mario and Zelda they just kind of accumulate vibes and then eventually there are enough things behind them that they become in a lot of ways more about calling back to those old things than establishing new ones. Even something like Devil May Cry where I think most people agree 3 really crystallized what we’re doing there, it’s not like DMC1 is not an iconic game that laid that foundation, or that many mechanics in 3 aren’t direct improvements upon innovations made by DMC2. It’s almost always baby steps, is I think all I’m saying here, and that’s been true with Kirby too.
The cool thing about where we’re at at this point on the Kirby Timeline is those games came out pretty well-formed and while there are major mechanical experimentations in all of the early games, hitting such a solid game feel and pleasant core approach to level design early on gives Super Star a freedom to continue the trend of trying stuff out rather than just making a straight Kirby game on the shiny new hardware (and indeed, Kirby games almost never come out on shiny new hardware, a trend that holds when this bad boy hits only a couple months before the N64 in Japan, and the much more Normal Game Dream Land 3 will get its American release first in November 1997, over a year AFTER the new console dropped, and not until the MARCH 98 in Japan what HAPPENED). Super Star’s big gimmick is of course it’s very famous billing as EIGHT GAMES IN ONE which is kind of a tongue in cheek way to sell a game packaged into a menu from which you can select a handful of minigames and a few different campaigns of progressive difficulty, each with its own level design philosophy and often a unique mechanic or set of rules.
That last part is important because I really don’t think Super Star puts its best foot forward, generally speaking. The minigame suite here is unassailably iconic, not a bad thing to say about any of them, adorable, beautiful sprite work, challenging. Gourmet Race is in the weird middle zone of too long and not particularly my jam but you can’t argue with that tune, it’s gourmet race, we all love gourmet race. My real issue was jumping into the meat of the game, which I suppose is actually freeform for the most part but I did it in what feels like the intended order, as going through campaigns by their listed difficulty ratings (and later by the orders you unlock them) also leads you through a really satisfying evolving complexity of the game’s mechanical and design ideas. Doing that, the first one is Spring Breeze which reads as kind of an abridged take on the original Kirby’s Dream Land, which is not particularly exciting as someone who has played a lot of Kirbies over the years and who has been back to this well a lot. But even disregarding that, which I tried very hard to do, sanding a lot of the cool nooks and crannies out of a game that I like quite a lot to offer a glorified tutorial wearing its skin was not a great first impression for me. Dyna Blade is little better as a follow-up, with nothing really to distinguish it mechanically other than the introduction of a Mario 3 style world map and a slight uptick in diffiulty. The world map is kind of pointless, existing really only so you can be surprised when a (again) Mario 3-style miniboss shows up on it, because there are only four real levels here, it’s just not enough content to make anything interesting out of. The idea behind Super Star is to make a bunch of sub-games with distinct identities but two of the five that revolve around the act of Playing Kirby do nothing to distinguish themselves from each other or the Kirby experience at large.
Great Cave Offensive is a real breath of fresh air then; an enormous, entirely freeform, complex tunnel network that kirby must navigate full of enemies, bosses, puzzles, and navigational challenges as you quest for CASH MONEY. The map is littered with treasure chests, each of which contains an item worth some cash value, and you can end your adventure essentially whenever you want, whenever you decide you have enough. Giving the player total control over the mode gives it all a relaxed energy, the only thing stopping you from doing it all and seeing it all is your own patience. I left the cave with maybe two thirds of the treasure on my first run, and that felt Good. I appreciate that the game gave me the agency to make that call on my own time, rather than by imposing something like a time limit or a more linear progression where you just leave with whatever you’ve found by the time you hit an end point.
Revenge of Meta Knight is where things start really firing on all cylinders though, in terms of Ina Appeal Elements. Framed as Meta Knight showing up in his first (only?) truly villainous role in a bid to take over Dream Land, launching his big scary ship from Super Smash Bros. staffed with a crew of lovable henchmen who provide color commentary while Kirby infiltrates the craft and dismantles it from within, there’s a much more overt and playful twisting of the presentation to this sub-game than offered previously in the collection. It’s the one that most takes advantage of how discrete all the separate modes are, working its cute narrative into every part of it; the little guys yapping in ever-increasing anxiety as you ruin their plan not only characterizes them and their surly boss but occasionally offers you direction on where precisely to go and context on what exactly Kirby is doing; the urgency of the mission is communicated by the big gimmick of the time limits imposed on each stage, formalized as segment of the ship or parts of the world Kirby is ejected into. It’s here in the level design too – different bits of the ship are variously convoluted and cramped, or spacious and windswept, or full of elevators that lead to rooms approximating living spaces, and enemy types and puzzles are placed thoughtfully to evoke a facsimile of something that might make sense to be where it is. It’s the most cohesive package in the game, a real tour de force.
If there’s less to say about Milky Way Wishes, it’s not because of a lack of quality, only more of an adherence to formula. You could almost hold up a sign that says THE REAL KIRBY STARTS here when you load it up, with its traditional story structure, themed levels set on individual planets, goofy last minute climax with an unexpected shift in tone and scale. The gimmick here, though, is a GOOD GIMMICK: rather than copying powers from swallowed enemies, Kirby must find powers hidden throughout each level, and once they have them you have them permanently, and can equip them whenever you want. It completely changes your relationship with copy abilities and lets the game flex a bit about how fleshed out they are – when Kirby has an ability permanently there’s a lot more safety and application to be found in fucking around, and in Super Star many old abilities with similar elements have been combined and everything here is fleshed out to have multiple inputs that put them on par with any decent beat ‘em up game of its day. They really sing here, some of them are well hidden (I finished the game missing five), and the gentle ramping of the difficulty curve reaches a gentle climax that felt perfectly tuned to me, even if I wish we’d gotten here a little sooner.
The depth on display is highlighted by the final unlockable mode, a boss rush arena which like lmao bro literally every single thing about smash bros is straight lifted from kirby like I know those games are made by all these Kirby guys but it’s so funny to go fill in these gaps years later and I’m STILL finding shit actually Kirby stuff it’s incredible. Put the portal gun in Darksiders, fuck yeah.
I do ultimately think that Super Star is a mixed bag, with two full misses, two strong successes, and great cave offensive kind of hanging out being obviously very cool but not really My Jam, and I’m still walking away from it so impressed. The early going was ominous but the more the game leans into what makes it unique the more successful it is. This is often the case, I think! The cool thing about Kirby games is they’re basically guaranteed to be a solid good time no matter what but it’s always nice to be pleasantly surprised.
I can’t keep that up anymore I’m fucking with you I didn’t watch the Turkish Gossip Girl adaptation I have nothing more to say about Gossip Girl I do not spend a lot of time thinking about a show I sort of half-watched like a year ago.
I DO have some thoughts though about Kirby Super Star which is a pretty sick little game. It’s always hard to go back to games in venerable series without trying to find the moments where they like, Found It, right? Like, the game in which all the little bits of identity coalesce into the thing that gives that series its definitive identity and which all of the following games will follow. And I think playing things from their first entry is teaching me how rarely this happens. There’s no moment in Mario or Zelda where they specifically become Mario and Zelda they just kind of accumulate vibes and then eventually there are enough things behind them that they become in a lot of ways more about calling back to those old things than establishing new ones. Even something like Devil May Cry where I think most people agree 3 really crystallized what we’re doing there, it’s not like DMC1 is not an iconic game that laid that foundation, or that many mechanics in 3 aren’t direct improvements upon innovations made by DMC2. It’s almost always baby steps, is I think all I’m saying here, and that’s been true with Kirby too.
The cool thing about where we’re at at this point on the Kirby Timeline is those games came out pretty well-formed and while there are major mechanical experimentations in all of the early games, hitting such a solid game feel and pleasant core approach to level design early on gives Super Star a freedom to continue the trend of trying stuff out rather than just making a straight Kirby game on the shiny new hardware (and indeed, Kirby games almost never come out on shiny new hardware, a trend that holds when this bad boy hits only a couple months before the N64 in Japan, and the much more Normal Game Dream Land 3 will get its American release first in November 1997, over a year AFTER the new console dropped, and not until the MARCH 98 in Japan what HAPPENED). Super Star’s big gimmick is of course it’s very famous billing as EIGHT GAMES IN ONE which is kind of a tongue in cheek way to sell a game packaged into a menu from which you can select a handful of minigames and a few different campaigns of progressive difficulty, each with its own level design philosophy and often a unique mechanic or set of rules.
That last part is important because I really don’t think Super Star puts its best foot forward, generally speaking. The minigame suite here is unassailably iconic, not a bad thing to say about any of them, adorable, beautiful sprite work, challenging. Gourmet Race is in the weird middle zone of too long and not particularly my jam but you can’t argue with that tune, it’s gourmet race, we all love gourmet race. My real issue was jumping into the meat of the game, which I suppose is actually freeform for the most part but I did it in what feels like the intended order, as going through campaigns by their listed difficulty ratings (and later by the orders you unlock them) also leads you through a really satisfying evolving complexity of the game’s mechanical and design ideas. Doing that, the first one is Spring Breeze which reads as kind of an abridged take on the original Kirby’s Dream Land, which is not particularly exciting as someone who has played a lot of Kirbies over the years and who has been back to this well a lot. But even disregarding that, which I tried very hard to do, sanding a lot of the cool nooks and crannies out of a game that I like quite a lot to offer a glorified tutorial wearing its skin was not a great first impression for me. Dyna Blade is little better as a follow-up, with nothing really to distinguish it mechanically other than the introduction of a Mario 3 style world map and a slight uptick in diffiulty. The world map is kind of pointless, existing really only so you can be surprised when a (again) Mario 3-style miniboss shows up on it, because there are only four real levels here, it’s just not enough content to make anything interesting out of. The idea behind Super Star is to make a bunch of sub-games with distinct identities but two of the five that revolve around the act of Playing Kirby do nothing to distinguish themselves from each other or the Kirby experience at large.
Great Cave Offensive is a real breath of fresh air then; an enormous, entirely freeform, complex tunnel network that kirby must navigate full of enemies, bosses, puzzles, and navigational challenges as you quest for CASH MONEY. The map is littered with treasure chests, each of which contains an item worth some cash value, and you can end your adventure essentially whenever you want, whenever you decide you have enough. Giving the player total control over the mode gives it all a relaxed energy, the only thing stopping you from doing it all and seeing it all is your own patience. I left the cave with maybe two thirds of the treasure on my first run, and that felt Good. I appreciate that the game gave me the agency to make that call on my own time, rather than by imposing something like a time limit or a more linear progression where you just leave with whatever you’ve found by the time you hit an end point.
Revenge of Meta Knight is where things start really firing on all cylinders though, in terms of Ina Appeal Elements. Framed as Meta Knight showing up in his first (only?) truly villainous role in a bid to take over Dream Land, launching his big scary ship from Super Smash Bros. staffed with a crew of lovable henchmen who provide color commentary while Kirby infiltrates the craft and dismantles it from within, there’s a much more overt and playful twisting of the presentation to this sub-game than offered previously in the collection. It’s the one that most takes advantage of how discrete all the separate modes are, working its cute narrative into every part of it; the little guys yapping in ever-increasing anxiety as you ruin their plan not only characterizes them and their surly boss but occasionally offers you direction on where precisely to go and context on what exactly Kirby is doing; the urgency of the mission is communicated by the big gimmick of the time limits imposed on each stage, formalized as segment of the ship or parts of the world Kirby is ejected into. It’s here in the level design too – different bits of the ship are variously convoluted and cramped, or spacious and windswept, or full of elevators that lead to rooms approximating living spaces, and enemy types and puzzles are placed thoughtfully to evoke a facsimile of something that might make sense to be where it is. It’s the most cohesive package in the game, a real tour de force.
If there’s less to say about Milky Way Wishes, it’s not because of a lack of quality, only more of an adherence to formula. You could almost hold up a sign that says THE REAL KIRBY STARTS here when you load it up, with its traditional story structure, themed levels set on individual planets, goofy last minute climax with an unexpected shift in tone and scale. The gimmick here, though, is a GOOD GIMMICK: rather than copying powers from swallowed enemies, Kirby must find powers hidden throughout each level, and once they have them you have them permanently, and can equip them whenever you want. It completely changes your relationship with copy abilities and lets the game flex a bit about how fleshed out they are – when Kirby has an ability permanently there’s a lot more safety and application to be found in fucking around, and in Super Star many old abilities with similar elements have been combined and everything here is fleshed out to have multiple inputs that put them on par with any decent beat ‘em up game of its day. They really sing here, some of them are well hidden (I finished the game missing five), and the gentle ramping of the difficulty curve reaches a gentle climax that felt perfectly tuned to me, even if I wish we’d gotten here a little sooner.
The depth on display is highlighted by the final unlockable mode, a boss rush arena which like lmao bro literally every single thing about smash bros is straight lifted from kirby like I know those games are made by all these Kirby guys but it’s so funny to go fill in these gaps years later and I’m STILL finding shit actually Kirby stuff it’s incredible. Put the portal gun in Darksiders, fuck yeah.
I do ultimately think that Super Star is a mixed bag, with two full misses, two strong successes, and great cave offensive kind of hanging out being obviously very cool but not really My Jam, and I’m still walking away from it so impressed. The early going was ominous but the more the game leans into what makes it unique the more successful it is. This is often the case, I think! The cool thing about Kirby games is they’re basically guaranteed to be a solid good time no matter what but it’s always nice to be pleasantly surprised.
poyfuh
1 year ago