Hello there,
I thought I'd pop in here and try my hand at doing some writing about video games. It has been something I've wanted to do for a long while. But I have trouble organizing my thoughts into a form that eloquently communicates my opinion on paper. In fact, I've been musing over what to write here for the past five minutes and came to a realization. I have a lot of things I feel like saying, but I can't think of a way to connect these individual thoughts into a cohesive article.
Nevertheless, I do want to give it a go while also doing something that I hope you will find entertaining. As a gamer, I enjoy visiting many websites and listening to podcasts like 1up's Retronauts and Giant Bomb's Bombcast. I'm also a fan of the Quick Look videos that are posted on Giant Bomb, as I feel that they give me a good impression of what a first time player of each game might think or experience. After watching their recent marathon run of Super Nintendo games, I thought about revisiting some of the games in my collection and sharing my feelings about them, past and present. In an effort to do that, I figured it'd be fun to record my thoughts down in video form as I played through a small portion of these games. After recording the videos, I'll write down a bit more about what I recall from my childhood and what I think about these games today.
I'll start with Kirby Super Star as that's the first cartridge I grabbed out of my shoebox of games.
[embed:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d1UW1M8pEw]
Aside from being a cute platforming game, I remember Kirby Super Star as a fun, non-threatening cooperative game. I'm not referring to the graphics alone when I say that because the second player character is never in any real danger. Player 2 does have a life bar that can be refilled with food, but death is only a hindrance for the person playing as Kirby. The partner character can always spawn again if player one has a power equipped and doesn't mind tossing it to get an extra pair of hands. This worked out great when I used to play the game with my sister, as it gave her the opportunity to enjoy the game without feeling the stress associated with losing. I guess this could be seen as a precursor to a system like New Super Mario Bros' bubbling mechanic.
I called Kirby Super Star a "minigame collection" a few times in my video, but that label is inaccurate. They're more like vignettes about Kirby with each offering a wrinkle on top of the standard platforming. For example, The Great Cave Offensive offers a treasure hunt in a large, interconnected space, while Revenge of Metaknight has you racing against the clock to defeat one of Kirby's archrivals. The game even throws in a side scrolling shooter in Milky Way Wishes, the longest of these games. I appreciated this mix of variety back then, and this format is something I'd like to see come back.
If you're interested in checking this game out today, you can try getting a used SNES cart from eBay or pick up a copy of Kirby Super Star Ultra for the Nintendo DS. The DS game touches up the graphics a bit while adding a few more game modes to try out. Either way, you get to experience one of the better games in the Kirby series.