A Cute Game But Impossible To Beat - Kirby’s Dream Land
Written: Aug 23 '05
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fun to play, cute characters, great for all ages.
Cons: No way to save a game or get a code to continue, not very colorful.
The Bottom Line: A nice way to kill some time but you better have fresh batteries in your GameBoy if you plan on completing the game.
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| Freak369's Full Review: Nintendo Kirby's Dream Land |
When I hit the local video game store one of the first things I look for is Dr. Mario for GameBoy. I fell in love with the game years ago and lost the cartridge that I owned. When I saw “Kirby’s Dream Land” for $3.00 I couldn’t pass it up. I’d never played the game but for three dollars I just couldn’t pass up getting it. I figured that it would be along the lines of one of the Mario Brothers games - none of which I am very good at - but the clerk there told me that it was pretty easy to play and didn’t require a lot of skill to beat the bosses at the end of the levels. There was a reason that this was on sale for three dollars - there is no way to save a game or even get a code so you can pick up and start playing from a certain point when you shut it off. This means that if you want to beat it you have to play non-stop until you complete the game; this is something that will never, ever happen for me folks.
Kirby’s Dream Land
You are playing as Kirby, a very cute pink blob that has to complete missions to make it to Mount DeDeDe to rescue all the food and magic stars that have been stolen. Along the way you will have to kill a whole lot of interesting enemies - most of the time you will do this by sucking one of them into Kirby then spitting them back out at another enemy. You can also pump the jump button a few times to inflate him and use that to spit back out at someone or something. The game has a limited amount of moves; you can jump or fly, inhale and exhale blobs or enemies and squat down to avoid floating mines or things that they throw at you. The various levels that you have to go through are not timed so you can go back and get magic bottles if you need to restore your health. Kirby has six hit points, when you are running low try to find or remember where the bottles are to get two hit points back.
There are a lot of enemies that you will encounter like flying bats, hovering landmines, octopus, ghosts, mushrooms, various animals and even mummies. Some of the mummies can be sucked in by Kirby and used to kill others, but the ones that are all wrapped up and floating can’t be inhaled, these have to be killed with his blobs or when you suck in other baddies. One thing that completely messes with me are the boxes with the question marks on them; the booklet that comes with this doesn’t tell you how to open them or bust them open and I have tried just about everything to do this. The small shields that you come across can be sucked up by Kirby and used to kill meanies, these don’t give you a lot of points and most of the time you won’t need to use them. When you reach the end of a stage and kill off the boss you will see one of the glittering shimmering stars, you have to hop on it or jump up to it to complete the level. You will only see this when you have beaten the mini game or killed off the boss. There are also stars in the game that will transport you to other areas, usually these are over rivers or mountains. Make sure you just directly on top of it or jump up and float down, if you miss it, you will die.
There are only five different lands to explore and once you leave one you can’t go back to it. Likewise, if you know that there are magic bottles somewhere you should stock up on them if you need to - once you grab one of the stars that transport you to another area, you can’t go back. Some of the doors that you go in and out of can only be used once so remembering where they lead you will help you complete the game or at the very least help you find the magic items to keep you healthy. I have only gotten to the middle of the third land before I gave up with this and admitted that I lacked the patience to have to start over when I lost my lives. Adding insult to injury my youngest beat the game in about two hours then took a great deal of pride in showing me the screen with Kirby dancing away after he recovered all the stars.
The Bad Things
There is no way to get extra lives - at least I haven’t found any ways to do so. OK, I take that back, there are supposed to be ֫ up’ items in the game but I have never come across any of them. I even spent a lot of time in the early stages racking up points thinking that if you hit 50,000 or 100,000 you would get an extra life. There are little magic bottles that will restore two life points but that is about it. I already mentioned that there is no way to save the progress of the game but if you do run out of lives you can opt to continue your game but you go back to the beginning of the stage where you died. This can really suck if you are close to completing an area but hey, it was a three dollar game. There is no way to toggle off the music that plays through the game so you will have to turn your volume all the way down. If you do this you might not realize when you get hit and lose life points and need to find a bottle of ‘pep brew’ to restore a few hit points.
The Bottom Line
I guess I should have stuck with the game when I made it to the end of the third world but it was just too frustrating to have to worry about losing lives and going back to the start of the stage again. The booklet that comes with it does give you information on the various things that you will see in the game but this is an older game and let’s face it, it’s not the most visually appealing things to play. If you like any of the Mario Brothers games then there’s a chance that you will like this. The bosses that you meet at the end of the stages aren’t that hard to beat and overall it is a fun game to play for twenty or thirty minutes - after that you start worrying about your health and how many lives you have left. The clerk that sold this to me said that it was available in another Nintendo format that had more levels and enhanced gameplay, if they make it for one of the systems we own, chances are I’ll try to track it down to see if it’s better than the GameBoy version.
As always, thanks for the read!
~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~
© 2005 Freak369
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Recommended:
Yes
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