Screenshots :.
Kirby Superstar Ultra
DS
Matt
22-10-2008
"I wish I could have a pet Kirby"
"It'd be like a little living hoover"
"Might hoover up my cat. Bonus!"
It’s a well-known fact around these parts that I love a good bit of Kirby now and again, so I am plenty sure that you can imagine how an otherwise dreary Thursday morning last week was transformed into a prolonged session of me running around like an idiot when Superstar Ultra plopped through the UltraNinjas letterbox for me to muck about with. Having spent most of last year harping on at Nintendo to give the oafish pink blob’s SNES outing a Virtual Console release, getting to play it on the DS instead is still bloody great.
Superstar Ultra (previously known as Superstar, or… er… Kirby’s Fun Pack for us Europeans) is basically a collection of different Kirby games, with a whole number of platform adventures and some mini games chucked into the mixture for good measure. As you would have presumed, this not only adds a good dollop of longevity to proceedings, but it also adds a decent dose of variety too.
Taking the platform titles aside to focus on first for a second, what you basically have are five games that slowly build up, introducing a new facet of Kirby games as you go. The first, titled ‘Spring Breeze’, is a simple four-level jaunt where you don’t necessarily need to hoover up any enemies and absorb their powers, instead being tasked with simply navigating your way through four pretty standard levels. To be honest it’s more of a training exercise than anything else.
Likewise, the next game is spread over six levels and has some simple puzzles that you can solve by absorbing the right enemy and copying their power, i.e. being able to throw bombs to create a chain reaction that destroys some blocks etc. This also introduces Superstars’ helper system, which allows you to absorb a power and then spit it back out as a little helping chum who’ll toddle around after you attacking any nasties you come across. Other than offering the game a way to allow co-op multiplayer, it doesn’t ever have that much effect on play to be honest other than making it ever-so-slightly easier to battle your way past monsters.
After these couple of games, though, things take a turn for the better and you’re back into the full swing of things in terms of floating about, gobbling up different enemies and using their various powers to find shortcuts, secrets and treasures. You’re always constantly reminded that Kirby games aren’t platformers as such – Kirby can infinitely float along and avoid most pitfalls, and there’re never really any sections that require too much in the way of precision jumping. It’s all about exploring your surroundings and getting different power ups to work in different situations, and it’s still as fun as it always has been.
This does, of course, lead to the conclusion that Kirby is a little easier than it perhaps should be, and that’s something I will give you. Level design rarely breaks out of a canter and bosses are often repeated and easily defeated should you have a power up such as the blade, in which case you can simply stand next to them and mash the attack button repeatedly. On the flipside of this, the game is thus ideal for a portable console as it basically breaks itself down into relatively simple (yet fun) chunks that can be tackled over a period of short plays.
In terms of what DS icing has been added to the SNES cake, there are a couple of little touch-screen multiplayer games to zip through, although none will hold your attention for particularly long despite offering download multiplay action. Eating fruit whilst throwing bombs at other kirbys or taking part in some kind of western shootout is amusing enough a few times through, but generally it holds very little in the way of replayability. On a more technical level, some little rendered cut scenes have been added in to prod the story connecting the single player adventures together, and they’re annoyingly cute.
Saving that, this is pretty much Kirby as you would expect him to be, i.e. pink, cartoony and with breezy float-along tunes happily bouncing along in the background. It’s an enjoyable collection of games that, although not consistently strong or involving, offers a great deal of fun throughout the various games lodged within. It’s been a long time in coming and is certainly not one of the most anticipated titles to make the jump from the SNES, sure, but it represents good value for money and an enjoyable, if relatively easy, compilation of different side-scrolling adventures. Can’t say fairer than that, eh?
Superstar Ultra (previously known as Superstar, or… er… Kirby’s Fun Pack for us Europeans) is basically a collection of different Kirby games, with a whole number of platform adventures and some mini games chucked into the mixture for good measure. As you would have presumed, this not only adds a good dollop of longevity to proceedings, but it also adds a decent dose of variety too.
Taking the platform titles aside to focus on first for a second, what you basically have are five games that slowly build up, introducing a new facet of Kirby games as you go. The first, titled ‘Spring Breeze’, is a simple four-level jaunt where you don’t necessarily need to hoover up any enemies and absorb their powers, instead being tasked with simply navigating your way through four pretty standard levels. To be honest it’s more of a training exercise than anything else.
Likewise, the next game is spread over six levels and has some simple puzzles that you can solve by absorbing the right enemy and copying their power, i.e. being able to throw bombs to create a chain reaction that destroys some blocks etc. This also introduces Superstars’ helper system, which allows you to absorb a power and then spit it back out as a little helping chum who’ll toddle around after you attacking any nasties you come across. Other than offering the game a way to allow co-op multiplayer, it doesn’t ever have that much effect on play to be honest other than making it ever-so-slightly easier to battle your way past monsters.
After these couple of games, though, things take a turn for the better and you’re back into the full swing of things in terms of floating about, gobbling up different enemies and using their various powers to find shortcuts, secrets and treasures. You’re always constantly reminded that Kirby games aren’t platformers as such – Kirby can infinitely float along and avoid most pitfalls, and there’re never really any sections that require too much in the way of precision jumping. It’s all about exploring your surroundings and getting different power ups to work in different situations, and it’s still as fun as it always has been.
This does, of course, lead to the conclusion that Kirby is a little easier than it perhaps should be, and that’s something I will give you. Level design rarely breaks out of a canter and bosses are often repeated and easily defeated should you have a power up such as the blade, in which case you can simply stand next to them and mash the attack button repeatedly. On the flipside of this, the game is thus ideal for a portable console as it basically breaks itself down into relatively simple (yet fun) chunks that can be tackled over a period of short plays.
In terms of what DS icing has been added to the SNES cake, there are a couple of little touch-screen multiplayer games to zip through, although none will hold your attention for particularly long despite offering download multiplay action. Eating fruit whilst throwing bombs at other kirbys or taking part in some kind of western shootout is amusing enough a few times through, but generally it holds very little in the way of replayability. On a more technical level, some little rendered cut scenes have been added in to prod the story connecting the single player adventures together, and they’re annoyingly cute.
Saving that, this is pretty much Kirby as you would expect him to be, i.e. pink, cartoony and with breezy float-along tunes happily bouncing along in the background. It’s an enjoyable collection of games that, although not consistently strong or involving, offers a great deal of fun throughout the various games lodged within. It’s been a long time in coming and is certainly not one of the most anticipated titles to make the jump from the SNES, sure, but it represents good value for money and an enjoyable, if relatively easy, compilation of different side-scrolling adventures. Can’t say fairer than that, eh?
7/10