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One of my most favoritest games, and indeed the Super Nintendo game I’ve gone back to the most often (with Super Mario World<\/strong> coming in close second), is Kirby Super Star<\/strong>. If you aren’t from North America, you may know it as “Kirby’s Fun Pak” or maybe even “Hoshi no Kirby Super Deluxe”, but it’s always been Kirby Super Star to me.<\/p>\n Released in 1996, I absorbed as much of the game as possible through Nintendo Power, and made damn sure that my parents knew that I had<\/em> to own this game. It was featured in the August ’96 issue (#87), and I’m pretty sure that was the most excruciating month of my parents’ lives, because I was nothing short of obsessed with the game and the idea of getting it for my birthday. Unfortunately, being\u00a0nine years old, I probably didn’t\u00a0understand the concept of release dates, and it actually released almost two weeks after<\/em> my birthday. I don’t recall exactly how or when I finally obtained it, but I’ll assume that I saved all the birthday money I got that year for it.<\/p>\n Anyway, I have a frothing love for this game that will never be quelled, and even though I have the updated DS port, Kirby Super Star Ultra<\/b>, I’ve only ever played through it once and always go back to the SNES original to get my fix. Why? I don’t know. The remake is absolutely better, and even more jam-packed with Kirby goodness, but the original has a strange, nostalgic appeal that I simply cannot deny.<\/p>\n The greatest tragedy of this website here is that in the 10+ years I\u2019ve been running it, I\u2019ve never played proper tribute to the game. So that\u2019s what I intend to do. I could simply go the modern route and do a video Let\u2019s Play of it, but I\u2019m kind of tired of doing those at the moment. Also I\u2019ve lent my PS2 controller to a friend and would have to play with the keyboard. And you don\u2019t want to hear me bangin\u2019 on the keys throughout a whole video series, now do you? (I\u2019ll probably do it one day but that day is not today.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Writing about being excited about cameo appearances in video games is pretty low-hanging fruit, and frankly, that\u2019s why I\u2019ve relegated this entry to the bottom of the list. But the fact of the matter is that pretty much all gamers will do it. People going nuts about seeing Link and Samus in Super Mario RPG<\/b>? The highly-treasured Nintendo objects in Animal Crossing<\/b>? Heads asploding all over the world when Mega Man was announced as a fighter in the newest Smash Bros game? I\u2019m sure at least one of these must ring a bell for you.<\/p>\n Kirby Super Star is mostly a celebration of Kirby, natch, but HAL did find time to sneak away a few characters and objects from other Nintendo series. One is even so well hidden<\/a> that I had a bowel movement of shock when I saw it while playing through the game to get screengrabs for this article. While the cameos\u00a0are sprinkled around the game pretty liberally, a pretty sizeable chunk of the treasures in The Great Cave Offensive are plucked from other Nintendo properties. Going in descending order we have:<\/p>\n I won\u2019t try to sugar-coat it; this one is from an entirely retrospective point of view. See, ever since Nightmare in Dream Land<\/b>, the boxarts for the various Kirby games have had a single recurring major difference between the Japanese and American art: over here, Kirby is given an angry expression. It\u2019s a pretty common thing to happen apparently, but Kirby is the one who they named the trope<\/a> for, and that says a lot.<\/p>\n Mostly, I guess it\u2019s because Nintendo of America assumes that nobody is going to buy a game with an adorable pink blob on the cover, and that all they can to is try to make that blob a little more hardcore. And I guess it\u2019s a legitimate concern, because I\u2019ve even got an applicable anecdote!<\/p>\n For some reason the boxart for the remake bucked this trend and featured a happy Kirby. One Christmas season while working at Toys R Us, I was confronted by a woman looking to buy a DS game for her son. I showed her Kirby Super Star Ultra, and heaped on the praise about how much I enjoyed it when I was her son\u2019s age and how it was still one of my favourite games. She just stared at me in disbelief the whole time and replied \u201cThat really doesn\u2019t look like something an eight-year-old boy would like.\u201d<\/p>\n Would angry eyes really have helped? We will never know.<\/p>\n Kirby Super Star came along a few years before the angry eyes trend began, and I think that what I like most about looking back on the cheery cover is that it reminds me of a time where everything was more innocent and simple. A time when video games were still a pretty niche thing and all you needed for mass-market appeal was to have the word \u201cNintendo\u201d stamped on your product. Of course, American boxarts of Japanese games have been given the angrifying treatment since the dawn of video games, but that\u2019s just not the kind of thing your typical ten-year-old is going to notice. All ten-year-old Ryan knew is that this was going to be a sweet game regardless of what was on the box.<\/p>\n Kirby\u2019s Super Star claims to contain eight games in one cartridge, but the sneaky truth is that there are actually nine games! Or perhaps only seven depending on how you look at it, since two of them could be considered mini-games at best. Either way, the box is lying to you.<\/p>\n One of those games is Samurai Kirby, which is a spiffed-up version of the quick draw bonus game from Kirby\u2019s Adventure<\/b>. Basically you just press the button as soon as the prompt flashes on the screen and if you\u2019re too slow you lose. It sucks, is the most blunt way to put it.<\/p>\n The other mini-game is Megaton Punch, and as you may assume from the name, it is friggin\u2019 awesome in every way. The goal of the game is to build up enough punch power to generate a punch that\u2019s better than your opponent\u2019s. This is done by pressing the button with the correct timing to three different meters. Truthfully it\u2019s a pretty shallow game, but you\u2019ve gotta consider the experience<\/i>.<\/p>\n What makes it great is the effect of the punches. You and your opponent don\u2019t punch each other, but rather a stack of stones, as one might use to demonstrate a rather strong karate chop. But if you time you button presses well, you\u2019ll vaporize the stone slabs, break open the competition stage, and send a crack down through the center of Popstar. That\u2019s right; this is a mini-game where the ultimate victory is to punch a planet in half<\/i>. How is that not awesome? How did it rate so low on my list?<\/p>\n Also Kirby blows kisses at the spectators before the game begins. Fantastic.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.torrentialequilibrium.net\/images\/kss10\/kss1007.png\")
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<\/a>10. Cameo Treasures<\/span><\/h1>\n\n
<\/p>\n<\/a>9. No Angry Eyes Kirby<\/span><\/h1>\n<\/p>\n<\/a>8. Megaton Punch<\/span><\/h1>\n