Kirby Super Star is one of those games that took me a few years to “get”. At first, I thought it was simply a mini-game collection whose only real claim to fame was that it introduced Meta Knight (it didn’t). Oh, young A.T.; ye of little knowledge. But could you blame me? After all, the US packaging advertised it as “ 8 games in one!” and this was pretty late SNES release overall, most eyes were on the N64. Not to mention the European was Kirby’s Fun Pak. Furthermore, I was reeled in by the numbering of Dream Lands 1, 2 and 3, I guess I couldn’t help be deceived by those numerals. The thing is, in retrospect I’d consider Kirby Super Star to be "the real Kirby 3”.

Saying that Kirby’s Super Star is a mere mini-game collection really undersells its value. It’s not even an accurate statement: there are nine game modes. A better mindset to approach this game with is that this is one game with 7 different campaigns and two mini-games on the side. The campaigns run on an engine that is essentially a beefed-up version of Kirby’s Adventure: this is the third Kirby game to have the patented Copy Abilities, several ones missing from Dream Land 2 return and many more like Wing, Plasma, Yo-Yo and Mirror are introduced. Notably, Super Star is the first Kirby game to have several functions assigned to each of Kirby’s Copy Abilities making them all, even the seeming simpler ones feel nuanced. Some have directional inputs making Super Star feel like a Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter type fighting game at times, instead of a standard 2D action Nintendo game. Super Star might also be the first Kirby game to introduce the concept of giving Kirby at hat each time he mimics a foe.

As for the platforming game campaigns themselves, they all build up and become increasingly complex. Spring Breeze is a highly abridged, breezy, color remake of Kirby’s Dream Land with the Copy Powers sprinkled in, Dyna-Blade is a simple, short mission to tame the monstrous Phoenix-like Dyna-Blade, Revenge of Meta Knight is an intense race against time to stop Meta Knight’s murderous assault on Dream Land. They all gradually become more difficult, but the game’s great physics moves and controls keep you in there. Although I gotta say, the Great Cave Offensive, the Metroid-like non-linear adventure mode never did much for me and always felt like a slog to get through. I’d much rather play Super Metroid.

The game designers clearly had a lot of fun: there’s plenty of Nintendo in-jokes throw around, Kirby’s gets Link’s cap when he becomes Sword Kirby which has no effect on the quote-unquote gameplay whatsoever, it’s just there for the game makers and player’s amusement; keep a lookout for Mario, Luigi and Birdo, Mr. Saturn from Earthbound, Captain Falcon’s helmet and the Screw Attack, they all make cameos! Super Star would not be the first time a Kirby game would have Nintendo call-backs (ref: Kirby’s Dream Land 3). One of the bosses, Battle Windows is delightfully absurd, it’s design and attack patterns are a lampooning of Japanese RPG tropes.

There’s one complaint I have about the game: I never cared for the way you discard your Copy Abilities. In every other Kirby game, there’s a button (most of the time it’s SELECT) that you can use to discard your Copy Power by turning it into a star that will either disappear or can be used a projectile. In Super Star, the Discard button spits out your copy power and spawns it as an appropriate enemy: Mirror will spawn Si-Mirror, Sword spawns Blade Knight, Fire spawns Burning Leo, Fighter spawns Knuckle Joe and so on and so forth… now this spawned enemy can be controlled by player 2 which is kind of neat, but this can sometimes cause slowdown and in general, it puts the breaks on the process of quickly swapping out powers. This mechanic is an annoyance, but a minor one.

Playing Kirby’s Dream Land, Kirby’s Adventure and then Kirby’s Super Star in succession or at least considering how these games build off of each other will give you perspective about why this one remains such a fan favorite! It’s a Kirby game worth playing, probably the best in the series (except for maybe Adventure) and admirable enough to be revered the way it is. There was a remake for DS which was very good, but I much prefer the SNES version which has been released on Wii Virtual Console, Wii U Virtual Console, Super NES Classic Edition/Mini and Super NES Classics on Switch. There are lots of ways to try it out and you should do so!