Round. Pink. Cute. Named after a brand of vacuum cleaners. Kirby has a lot going for him, but in his very first adventure which came out in 1992 on the Game Boy, he had a little less going for him than what people are used to. But to judge Kirby's Dream Land on what it does not have instead of what it has would be doing it a disservice, and missing the little blob's first journey would be a mistake for anyone calling himself a Kirby fan.


No matter how much he eats,
he cannot fill the hollow inside.
Unlike in his later adventures, Kirby cannot run. He cannot slide. And most importantly, he cannot copy enemy abilities. All of these things would come less than a year later in the NES game Kirby's Adventure. That said, when you take Kirby's Dream Land for what it is instead of what it would become, it's hard not to be impressed by what IS there: the character's charming animations (I love seeing Kirby land face-first after a long fall), a vast majority of our favorite foes (Waddle Dee! Sir Kibble!) and really, really tight level design.

In fact, Kirby's ability to float seem to make more sense than ever in this game. With his offensive abilities stunted and the smallness of the Game Boy screen, avoiding enemy encounters is not always an option. The game is very easy (at least the main quest is), but thanks to the character's abilities and the level design matching each other perfectly, it remains satisfying and fun to play.


And your victims, little guy? Do they live on inside of you?
Do their voices make you feel less alone?
The game is incredibly short, with only 4 levels (plus a boss gauntlet at the end) to go through in less than an hour. There is a hard mode that you can unlock which makes the enemies in the game a LOT more aggressive, but despite the fact that I had to use many continues to go through it, it was still over very quickly.

But there is more to a video game than the sheer amount of stuff it contains. Yes, it is short; and yes, Kirby lacks some of the abilities that would come to define him, but every second spent playing KDL is a fun-filled one. There is always an enemy to kill or a platform to jump on, there is always excitement. The game feels dense. Kirby's Dream Land 3 may technically have had more: it had puzzles, it had tons of abilities and it had a quest that lasts a dozen hour instead of just one or two. But there was a lot of tediousness in that adventure, something that cannot be said of the first KDL. You may actually want to replay this one.

It is easy to look at how "little" Kirby's Dream Land contains but honestly, while I was playing it, I did not feel anything was missing. It is a solid, charming, fun little platformer, always was, and always will be, no matter what the franchise would later become.