Kirby’s thirst for dance was apparently so important to Sakurai, that the development team went to extra lengths to squeeze it into the limited space the Game Boy afforded. According to Kirby’s Dream Collection, Kirby was created to be “a simple character who could be drawn quickly along with music”. Kirby as a character has an interesting history, himself. Combined with an irresistibly catchy soundtrack, Sakurai and HAL gave Kirby all the visual and audible oomph he needed to succeed. From a pure technological standpoint, Dream Land stood out from other titles on Game Boy and made anyone who looked at it want to play it. The first level alone sees Kirby breezing through packs of different enemies, all performing different actions. It’s also astounding how many characters manage to appear on screen at the same time. Dream Land drips with personality, from its abundance of enemies, unique environments, and ingenious use of texture and pattern. Using only the simple, colorless palette of Game Boy, Sakurai squeezed every bit of detail and animation he could from the system. There’s an often overlooked aspect of Kirby’s Dream Land that contributed to its success, which is just how gorgeous the game looks. (The name Kirby, incidentally, is rumored to have been chosen as a way of honoring a lawyer who had helped Nintendo win a very big legal battle with Universal Studios!). While the name and some other details had to be tweaked, Twinkle‘s core tenets of fun, extreme accessibility, and exploration were already perfect. Whispy wasn’t the only recognizable face, though, as Kirby was largely as players know him now, but with a less cuddly moniker Popopo! It sounded cute, but Nintendo dropped the name Popopo and the character was rechristened Kirby, while the game became Kirby’s Dream Land. Even Whispy Woods can be seen blustering about in the background. Despite the drastically different name, the preliminary work for the title would look very familiar to anyone who’s ever played a Kirby game. developer was still part of the rank and file, at the time, and his response to Nintendo’s new initiative was a title for Game Boy called Twinkle Popo. HAL was a key piece of the puzzle, to be sure, but no piece was more important than Masahiro Sakurai. With the help of HAL Laboratory, Nintendo was going to do exactly that. The only sensible response, it seemed, was to come up with a game that was both easily playable and fun, something that anyone and everyone could enjoy. Still, Nintendo had a sense that there was an audience out there who could never muster the skills to master games like Zelda or Mario. For example, Super Metroid‘s labyrinth of caves and tunnels might have been dense and intricate, but it was navigable, and the more that people played, the easier it became to traverse. Nintendo’s games could be challenging, but the bulk of them maintained a solid balance between toughness and fairness that allowed them to remain very accessible. 3, Super Metroid, A Link to the Past, and many others had been giving gamers headaches for a good, long while. Though not the toughest titles ever released, games like Mario Bros. Not that Nintendo was any stranger to the world of difficult video games. Nintendo, however, came to believe that video games were becoming too tough, and wanted to find a way to level things out. Players would be thrust into a game with zero help beyond what was outlined in the instruction manuals ( remember those?), and that was the status quo for years. What’s hard to believe now, though, is there was a time when video games were much the opposite. It’s this guidance, or handholding, as it’s more derisively referred to by some, that a lot of folks take issue with. Besides the softening of difficulty levels in general, the vast majority of titles today also offer some form of tutorial to help acclimate players to the controls and premise of a given game. If there’s a common complaint amongst gaming’s hardcore community (or seasoned players, as Nintendo likes to call them), it’s that video games have become too easy.
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