This is the game's packaging, which I absolutely adore. I love the Kirby 20th anniversary logo and the assortment of different Kirbys from various games. This is just the outer package box. The game comes in a completely different case with it's own unique look.
Ta-da! Nice, huh? The box art is similar to the Japanese box art for Kirby Super Star, or Kirby's Fun Pack as it was called to my fellow gamers in Europe. Logos of all the game's are surrounding Kirby and his anniversary number.
The game disc, showing Kirby's friends and foes along with the 20th anniversary logo. Lovely.
The booklet that comes with this collection. It has more pages than the booklet found in Super Mario All-Stars Limited Edition and it's more detailed. There's info on every single game in the Kirby series, not just Kirby's platform exploits. You can also see some sketches and artwork that's gone unreleased until now. Page 25 contains storyboard sketches for the intro to Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. Forgive the lack of quality for that above image.
And here's the soundtrack disc that comes with this wonderful anthology game. There are a total of 45 tracks on this baby, making up over and hour's worth of music. Unlike the soundtrack CD in Super Mario All-Stars Limited Edition, all of the tracks here are music. No sound effects to be found here, folks. Of the 20 plus games Kirby's been in over the years, the disc covers music from sixteen of Kirby's adventures. There's the ever catchy Green Greens theme (Kirby's Dream Land), Vegetable Valley (Kirby's Adventure), Iceberg Ocean (Kirby's Dream Course), Planet Popstar (Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards), Havoc aboard the Halbred (Kirby Super Star), Cookie Country (Kirby's Return to Dream Land) and many, many more. There's also three arranged tracks and they sound fantastic. Even better, you can actually watch the HAL staff perform one of arranged songs on the disc! I'd seen this on YouTube, but I had no clue the performance would be included here.
The interactive timeline called Kirby's Hirstory lets you watch video clips of the numerous Kirby titles as well as listing things that happened throughout the years such as the final Harry Potter book being released in 2007. There's something of particular interest in the 2002 section of the timeline. I didn't know about the inclusion of three episodes from the 2002 anime series, Kirby Right Back at Ya! That's right, three full episodes are contained here. The three episodes presented are episode 1, Kirby Comes to Cappy Town, episode 60, Crusade of the Blade, and episode 72, Waddle While You Work. I've only watched the first episode, but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. This series was dubbed by 4Kids but this is actually one of their better dubs. Like Pikachu, Kirby's original Japanese voice is left untouched. There's no option to watch it in Japanese with English subtitles, but I don't mind because I don't think the dub is bad and I'm just happy that such a thoughtful bonus was included. Now I've got that theme song stuck in my head.
I was wondering what controller some of the games would use. You generally need the Classic Controller when playing SNES or N64 games but all of the games can be played with either the Wii Remote, GameCube or Classic Controller.
My guess is that Nintendo realized they screwed up in the extras department when they released Super Mario All-Stars Limited Edition. Kirby's Dream Collection seems like an apology for that. I've been so enthralled by the extra content here that it's taken me hours to get around to the games. In fact I haven't even played any of them yet! Would some more games have been nice? Sure, but it's hard to fault this collection when clearly, so much heart and effort went into it. Kirby's Dream Collection lives up to it's name.
2 comments:
Looks good, hope they hurry up and release it here.
I also hope it gets a release in your neck of the woods. The wiki article on the game has a TBA for a release date in Europe.
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