Milky Way Wishes: A Kirby Super Star Tribute

In 2011, the impossible happened: Duke Nukem Forever was finally released. The first time I'd read about that game, I believe I was 16 or 17 years old. I don't think a game has ever had such a long development cycle. But after so many delays and cancellations, the game was finally released. What does that have to do with a Kirby album? Milky Way Wishes: A Kirby Super Star Tribute, an OverClocked Remix soundtrack was first announced eight years ago. On March 11, 2013 this album was at long last released. I would have mentioned this sooner, but I just found out about it because as was the case with Duke Nukem Forever, I thought this album to be dead and buried. This is another one of those times where I was so happy to have been wrong.

On the album's homepage, the director's share their thoughts and memories on piecing together this soundtrack. It turns out Arek the Absolute went through eight hard drive crashes, which resulted in the loss of some of the album material and greatly set the project back. There was also originally going to be a Flash storybook to go along with the album, but this was ultimately and unfortunately scrapped. So Milky Way Wishes is missing some music and that Flash storybook that probably would have all kinds of awesome. But Milky Way Wishes is still bursting at the seems with wonderful music and a whole lot of heart. Even with the loss of some goods, Milky Way Wishes is a fine album that any fan of OverClocked Remix arrangements and Kirby fans would do well to download.

As the name suggests, Milky Way Wishes is a tribute album to the SNES game Kirby Super Star, one of my and many fan's all-time favorite Kirby games. It's no secret that the game had some of the best music that the SNES sound chip could produce so if any game was worthy of getting an album tribute, it's Kirby Super Star. It's 2 discs and 23 tracks of arrange Kirby music goodness.

Contributing sound artists consist of Sixto Sounds, halc, PROTO-DOME, Insert Rupee, OverCoat and Ergosonic to name a few. Kirby no Nozomi (Milky Way Wishes) is the opening track of disc 1 is a lovely slow arrangement of the title theme of, you guessed it, Milky Way wishes and is an exceptional way to kick off the music. Welcome to the Galaxy (Milky Way Wishes Map) gives us our first dose of music with a healthy does of chiptune flavor, something I've come to love from the last few releases of OverClocked Remix albums. Much of  the tracks on this album are infused with some chiptunes and you won't catch me complaining. The Milky Way Wishes sub game had what is in my opinion, one of the best staff roll themes ever and Ergosonic's A Reminiscence (Staff Roll), which happens to be the final track of disc 1 does the original source track so much justice. It could easily be the best track on this album.

Moving on to disc 2, A Green Green Dedede (Great King Dedede's Theme, GREEN GREENS) combines two of everyone's favorite Kirby themes into a a rave tastic tune with some chiptune overtones. Considering both Green Greens and Dedede's Theme were originally chiptunes, I guess that kinda makes things come full circle. If we learned anything from Kirby's Return to Dream Land it's that heavy metal themes have a place in the Kirby world of music. The Savior of Dream Land (Coliseum Battle) is Sitxo Sounds sol contribution to this album and if you've heard his other OCR submitted tracks, you know your ears are going to be rocked clean off. Some people may take issues with So Easy (Great King Dedede's Theme), a rap version of Dream Land's self proclaimed king's theme with a heavy supply of  F-bombs but I myself found it pretty amusing. The last track, Ska Buffet (All You Can Eat: Dirt Version) is another track that isn't exactly family friendly and may not be what fans were expecting from a Gourmet Race remix.

There's a plethora of sexy artwork to go along with this album. More than 90 pieces of art are included when you download this album including pop art and sketches. From the looks of things, it seems like a lot of this art was going to be part of the ill-fated Flash storybook. The book may have died but at least the artwork work, or a great deal of it lives on. It's nice to look at all this artwork as you listen to the album.

As is the case with every ORC alum, Milky Way Wishes: A Kirby Super Star Tribute is totally free. It took a long time, and the finished product wasn't what the director's originally intended but what we got is a fine Kirby fan album and really, why nitpick about what isn't there when what we do have is this great?

Milky Way Wishes: A Kirby Super Star Tribute