¹ Interestingly, the in-game copyright year for the Japanese version of the game is 1995. This most likely means the game was completed by then and the release was delayed until 1996.

² A bit of personal bias in this statement 😉

³ Interestingly, Kirby’s Adventure was also a game very late into the Famicom’s life cycle. The Super Famicom had come out in 1990.

⁴ “Unluckily,” Sakurai had to direct Kirby’s Air Ride (which is another one of my favourites) in 2003, which he cites was the biggest reason was his departure.

⁵ Even more so than present day… Kirby’s Epic Yarn broke my soul, to be honest.

⁶ Kirby is always angry in North America

⁷ As much as I would love to link the source for this, 1up.com is now dead, and there are no other saved versions of the interview. Here’s the site I took the excerpt from: Link.

⁸ Spoilers, but Kirby’s Dreamland got remastered twice. More on that later; unless you read footnotes at the end, in which case you already know.

⁹ And surprisingly, this remake recreates most of the game that functions properly! I’m looking at you, Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix.

¹⁰ It’s interesting to note that some things were dropped during the transition: the second level of the game (Named Castle Lololo) was removed entirely, and the bosses replaced the original boss of the third level.

¹¹ The helper for the Wheel ability lets you ride him. It’s the coolest thing ever.

¹² Especially for Sakurai, who’s notorious for being a perfectionist. See development stories around the Super Smash Bros. games.

¹³ As mentioned before, the original game had five stages. It also boasted an “Extra Mode” that ramped up the difficulty. If you finished that too, they ended up giving you full access to the health variables for Kirby and enemies to make the game as hard as you wanted.

¹⁴ The secret areas don’t provide too many rewards; they’re just filled with various copy abilities that you can go back to fetch at anytime.

¹⁵ Perhaps at the cost of Dyna Blade?

¹⁶ Well, other than the intro cutscene…

¹⁷ Kind of? It’s very similar to the Bowser fight at the end of Super Mario World where he can move in the Z-axis.

¹⁸ I’m sorry I’m gushing on about this particular sub-game so much, I really like it if you couldn’t tell already.

¹⁹ I couldn’t find any concrete sources for this, but I’m pretty sure the name was heavily inspired from “HAL Laboratory.”

²⁰ I hope I’m not the only one when I say the moment Dyna Blade showed up I almost crapped my pants because I thought I had to fight her again…

²¹ Floria is basically Click Clock Wood from Banjo-Kazooie

²² Well, you do unlock the sound test after you beat The Arena so I’m not lying.

²³ Don’t worry, we’re only 4400 words in.

²⁴ Did you know that his wife is the designer for these menus? They met while working on Kirby Air Ride and I believe she’s worked on the menu UI for all his games since.

²⁵ I’m travelling to Japan for half of April, so the May issue will most likely be delayed until mid-month.