Pink Puff of Happiness – My Favourite Kirby Games

Everyone thinks that Grogu is the cutest thing in the world but for me, it’s always been Kirby. The adorable little pink puffball who can float, inhale enemies, and keep Popstar safe.

I don’t care what you say, Kirby will always be the cutest creature in the fictional world and that brings me to the topic of this blog post. I never played a ton of Kirby games but the ones that I have are full of memories for me.

Kirby games always have such a lighthearted feel to them but that doesn’t mean they are devoid of challenge or darker moments in the story. In this post I’ll be talking about my favourite Kirby games starting with:

Kirby Air Ride

This was my first Kirby game and admittedly I am not really into racing games but this game is one of those in the genre that anyone can get into. The controls are straightforward and there are additional challenges that come with the racing aspect.

It also has a great soundtrack and it is probably one of the first Nintendo games, other than Pokemon, that made me realize my love for game OSTs.

What else can I say? There’s a lot of great vehicles to choose from and when you select one they each get a brief summary. Personally, my favourites are the ones that are great for flying like the Shadow Star and Flight Warp Star, the latter is only available to use in free-run mode. Speaking of modes, there are three fun modes to play.

Air Ride is your classic racing mode where you can gain copy abilities to impede your opponents’ progression. Many of the courses have their own unique obstacles, there’s not a single one I don’t like with a great score and environment.

Top Ride is, that’s right, a top-down racing mode where there are only two types of vehicles you use. No copy abilities but there are so many items that spawn that you can use to gain the lead or stall your opponents. My favourite course would have to be the light one.

Then there’s my favourite mode City Trial where you ride around the city to power up your vehicle’s stats before competing in a randomized stadium event. Sometimes you’ll be given hints to what it might be. You can also swap your vehicle for a better one and what I liked the most was the events that would occur in the city. Some can be used to my advantage like this giant UFO that would fly over the city. I would get on top of it because there would be items there!

Another great thing about this mode is that you can sometimes find pieces of a legendary machine. I swear if I could have anything from the Kirby universe or the Nintendo universe in general, it would be the Dragoon! Yes I have so many memories with this game, I played it for hours as a kid and wish Nintendo would port it to the Switch or make a sequel.

Kirby Superstar Ultra

In this fun game, there are so many different mini-game modes to play and each of them offer a different challenge. This would be the first Kirby game I played that introduced me to the basics of Kirby games.

It’s hard to say which modes I liked and disliked, like Spring Breeze was a great way to introduce me to the gameplay and Revenge of the King was like the former but longer, and with tougher enemies. Milky Way Wishes had the most story to it with the battle between the sun and moon and Marx’s secret plot to trick Kirby into summoning Nova so that he could control Popstar.

But the best mode for me was MetaKnightmare Ultra where I could replay almost all the other modes but as Meta Knight! The Kirby universe is full of so many charming characters and Meta Knight is no exception. It makes me wish I didn’t skip Planet Robobot because it apparently had MetaKnightmare 2 or something like that.

I could never beat the arenas in this game but it was something I could live without back then.

Kirby Triple Deluxe

I think this game had the biggest story. Though it doesn’t really kick in until your reach the final boss level. But I loved the soundtrack in this game and how I can jump from the foreground to the background.

Some of the stages and bosses were really challenging because of this and other factors that sometimes kept causing me to drop my copy ability too often even if I still had more than 50% health left. I didn’t understand why the final world also made me re-battle all of the bosses from the previous worlds I had already defeated but no matter.

I tried to imagine what Queen Sectonia’s palace looked like in layout, was the jewelled section the actual palace itself where all the people of Floralia were imprisoned? I was always suspicious of that flower bud at the top of the Dreamstalk.

When she merged herself with the Dreamstalk and turned into a giant flower monster that really turned the tide of things. But seeing King Dedede and Kirby put their rivalry aside was heartfelt to see, especially when the former came to rescue the latter.

Dedede also gets his own mode in this game which is basically a harder mode of the original story mode. I found it harder than Meta Knightmare actually.

As for the Hypernova ability. There were some times when it was cool and when it was crazy like swallowing giant eels in this one level but still, I loved the game and managed to get all the sun stones the last time I played.

I’m also pretty solid with Kirby in the Super Smash Bros games but I don’t seem to make a lot of use of his copy abilities there. I spend more time using his hammer move or turning into stone.

And those are the Kirby games as of right now that I enjoyed the most, I am currently playing Star Allies on my Switch, it’s fun but other than the new features prevalent to the game’s theme, most of the gameplay hasn’t changed from Triple Deluxe. I also hope to try Forgotten Land afterwards and then Dream Buffet when it is out. I know there are tons of other Kirby games that came before these three but hey everyone starts somewhere!

What are your favourite Kirby games?

👽Emily