Most platformers of 1992 punished a single mistimed jump. Kirby’s Dream Land let its hero puff himself up and float over any gap, as long as the player liked. Masahiro Sakurai, who had joined HAL Laboratory at 19 and was 21 when the game came out, set out to make a platformer that players of any age could get through. His hero began as a placeholder blob, swallowed enemies instead of stamping on them, and within a year had sold more than a million copies on the Game Boy. Nintendo has kept him busy ever since.
Fast facts
- Developer: HAL Laboratory, published by Nintendo.
- Designer and director: Masahiro Sakurai.
- Released: Game Boy, Japan April 1992, North America August 1992, UK December 1992.
- Length: five stages, ending with a fight against King Dedede.
- Sales: more than a million by March 1993.
- Sequel: Kirby’s Adventure (NES, 1993), the first game in which Kirby copies his enemies’ powers.
A placeholder that stayed
Retro Gamer tells how the hero was found. The game was first called Twinkle Popopo, and its hero Popopo was a placeholder, a round shape with stubby limbs that was quick to draw. As work went on, Sakurai “gradually fell in love with the placeholder design and decided to keep him”. Popopo was renamed Kirby, and Sakurai has said he does not remember why. The name is often linked to Nintendo’s American lawyer John Kirby; in 2011 Shigeru Miyamoto said it came from a list of candidates and the team simply enjoyed the coincidence.
The British press did not yet know whose character it was. Nintendo Magazine System’s December 1992 review told readers that “Kirby is the brainchild of Shigeru Miyamoto”, the man behind Mario. It was not: Retro Gamer later set the record straight, noting that Kirby “wasn’t the creation of Shigeru Miyamoto” but of Sakurai at HAL.
Sakurai meant Kirby to be pink, but the Game Boy’s screen showed only shades of grey-green. The Japanese box showed a pink Kirby; the North American box showed him white.
Inhale, float, spit
Kirby has one weapon, his mouth. Nintendo Power explained the controls for American players in August 1992: hold B to “snarf up” an enemy, press B again to spit it out as a star at another enemy, or press Down to swallow it. Press Up and Kirby gulps air, inflates and flies. In the air he can blow a puff of air that knocks enemies out. He starts with six blocks of vitality, and each hit costs one.
The items were as odd as the hero. GO!, the handheld supplement to Computer and Video Games, listed them in January 1993: a microphone whose singing made King Dedede’s cronies explode, spicy food that let Kirby breathe fire, and a mint leaf for a stream of “air pellets”. The magazine sold the cartridge at £24.99.
Easy by design
The stages ran from the Green Greens, guarded by an apple-dropping tree, through Castle Lololo, the Float Islands and the Bubbly Clouds to Dedede’s boxing ring. Nintendo Magazine System fell for Kirby, calling him “surely the cutest character ever to find his way onto the Game Boy”, and praised a hero who “owes almost nothing to any other platforming star”: instead of bouncing on his enemies “a la Mario”, he “sucks them up like a vacuum cleaner”. A second reviewer still rated it “one of the best Game Boy platformers”. The magazine counted two difficulty levels, “one’s a secret”: a “Hard” level that was “a real challenge”, though the reviewer guessed that “most people will play it through using the easiest level.”
Not everyone was won over. The Japanese magazine Famitsu’s four reviewers gave it 5, 5, 6 and 6 out of 10.
Sakurai heard the same complaint from players. “Kirby was originally designed to be a somewhat easy game, something that a young child could enjoy playing,” he said in 1993. “However, after the Game Boy Kirby’s Dream Land was released, there was a lot of feedback from players saying ‘it was too easy and too short.’” By then the game had sold. Nintendo’s results for the year to March 1993 counted Kirby’s Dreamland past a million copies.
Copy abilities
For the sequel Sakurai asked himself “how can I retain the easy parts, but make it so skilled players could have fun too? That was when the idea of copying enemy abilities came to me.” In Kirby’s Adventure (NES, 1993), swallowing an enemy could give Kirby its power: a sword, fire, needles, or a UFO he turned into. Satoru Iwata, then at HAL, said the team had started with more than 40 abilities and whittled them down. Nintendo Power counted “over 25” enemies that would hand their powers over, across seven stages.
The series
Sakurai directed Kirby Super Star for the Super NES (1996), a single cartridge of several separate Kirby games, which reached American shops that September. Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (2000) let Kirby swallow two enemies at once and combine their powers. It sold 350,000 copies on its first day in Japan, Edge reported, though the magazine found it “over too soon” and short of new ideas.
By Kirby’s 20th anniversary in 2012, Retro Gamer put the series’ combined sales at 33 million, across platformers, pinball, puzzle, golf and racing games. Kirby’s Dream Land stayed the best-selling Kirby game until Kirby and the Forgotten Land (Switch, 2022), the first main Kirby game in full 3D, which had sold 7.52 million copies by March 2024. Sakurai, who left HAL in 2003, came back to the character to direct Kirby Air Riders for the Switch 2 in 2025.
Sources
- Retro Gamer issue 109, December 2012, pp. 81–85: Kirby’s history (created by Sakurai at HAL; Popopo and Twinkle Popopo; the name; combined sales of 33 million).
- Retro Gamer issue 103, June 2012, p. 11: Kirby was Sakurai’s creation, not Miyamoto’s.
- Wireframe issue 17, June 2019, p. 51: HAL Laboratory profile (Sakurai joining as a 19-year-old graduate; the design aims of Kirby’s Dream Land).
- Nintendo Power volume 39, August 1992, pp. 46–49: Kirby’s Dream Land feature (the controls; six vitality blocks).
- Nintendo Magazine System issue 3, December 1992, p. 102: Kirby’s Dream Land review (five stages; the stage names; “the cutest character ever”; “the brainchild of Shigeru Miyamoto”; the secret hard level).
- GO! (supplement to Computer and Video Games) issue 15, January 1993, pp. 24–25: Kirby’s Dream Land review (£24.99; the items).
- Nintendo Power volume 48, May 1993, pp. 77–83: Kirby’s Adventure (seven stages; “over 25” enemies with powers).
- “Kirby’s Adventure – 1993 Developer Interview”, translated from a 1993 Japanese guidebook by shmuplations (web, secondary): Sakurai on the first game’s easiness and the origin of copy abilities; Iwata on the 40 abilities. https://shmuplations.com/kirbysadventure/
- “Nintendo earnings up 2 percent”, United Press International, 21 May 1993 (web): Kirby’s Dreamland past a million in the year to March 1993. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1993/05/21/Nintendo-earnings-up-2-percent/5012737956800
- Nintendo Power volume 88, September 1996: Kirby Super Star in shops in September, several games in one.
- Edge issue 85, June 2000: Kirby 64 review (350,000 on its first day; combining two enemies’ powers).
- Tim Turi, “Miyamoto Talks Wii U, Zelda, And Nintendo’s Past”, Game Informer, 17 June 2011 (web, secondary): Miyamoto on the name. https://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2011/06/17/miyamoto-wii-amp-wii-u-are-colored-white-for-all-ages-appeal.aspx
- Wikipedia, “Kirby’s Dream Land” and “Kirby and the Forgotten Land” (web, secondary): release dates; Sakurai as director; the pink and white Kirby; the Famitsu scores; Forgotten Land’s sales, from Nintendo’s financial results of May 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirby%27s_Dream_Land and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirby_and_the_Forgotten_Land
- The Masahiro Sakurai entry gives sources for his career, including leaving HAL and Kirby Air Riders.