Origin: Kirby Super Star
Plays In: Crystal Field and Mystery Paradise areas of The Great Cave Offensive
Status: Arrangement
Composed by: Jun Ishikawa, Dan Miyakawa
The Super Nintendo Classic Edition is finally coming!!! In just two days, we'll be reliving twenty classics from Nintendo's greatest system, as well as the never-before released Star Fox 2! Has such a package ever blended the nostalgic and the new so perfectly? Needless to say, if you call yourself a Nintendo fan, you know you gotta get one.
But with so many incredible games featured, which one could I possibly play first? Those who know me could rule it down to two titles: EarthBound and Star Fox 2. Both are great guesses, but they aren't what I've decided upon. Humbling as it is to know EarthBound, the greatest game ever made, will be on it (let us have a moment of silence for our Japanese brothers and sisters), I know I probably won't be able to stop playing it and as I wish to play at least a little bit of every game just once, I may save it for last. I suppose that's fitting for the best game ever, yes?
Meanwhile, Star Fox 2 requires the completion of the first level in Star Fox, and while I did play the original to death over the summer in preparation, something about immediately pushing it aside in favor of the shiny unreleased sequel does feel...off. I mean, I'll probably do that anyway, but I'd rather not start off my SNES Mini experience like that.
With those two out of the equation, the answer is clear: Kirby Super Star. My second favorite SNES title, the Spring Breeze and Dyna Blade sections are just compact enough in serving as a sizable introduction, so it's perfect! Not to mention, I actually haven't played it since Kirby's Dream Collection way back in 2012, so revisiting it after five years should bring quite the nostalgia trip! And, well, we all know how I feel about that game and nostalgia.
(By the way, the traffic for that specific review has been busy for about a year now. Wonder where it's coming from?)
Anyway...starting with Kirby Super Star does hold some great significance for me. For one thing, readers should know how I passionate I am about Nintendo's filters for their Virtual Console releases, and hardly any are as dismal as they are for Kirby Super Star. The emulations for Super Nintendo games are typically lauded for being squeaky-clean, but Kirby's best game was bizarrely slapped with a muted, darkened filter. What was once the system's brightest, most colorful game no longer held that title, and many new players exposed to it on VC and Kirby's Dream Collection were left none the wiser. With how much I prize the game's visuals, it's nothing less than a crying shame.
Now, that won't be the case. No filters exist on the SNES Classic Edition, and so Kirby Super Star will be as pristine as ever. With no barrier in the way, I can now calmly reflect on all the children who'll be exposed to that dreamy nostalgia, that heart-melting hypnosis as I once did.
More than that, though...there's something else I've mentioned once or twice before, and given the surprising lack of awareness around the subject, it's rather difficult to describe. Much as Kirby's Dream Collection captivated me otherwise back then, it was one of the sole oases in a year of suffering. Much of that is personal, but one big reason was the discovery many of the cartridge-based games I'd grown up with were contaminated with graphical glitches no amount of rubbing alcohol could solve. N64 polygons meshed together, pixel effects would distort in EarthBound and Super Mario RPG, and Kirby Super Star unleashed a nasty morphing white box in the corner whenever the beloved puffball would so much as move.
Needless to say, it was heartbreaking to see the childhood friends I thought I'd be with forever fall to the ravages of time, and it was a sobering lesson that nothing lasts forever. This is hardly a "me" thing: other cartridges and systems I've bought exhibited the same problems, and I've spotted identical glitches in YouTube videos, so I know it's only a matter of time before every cartridge of Kirby Super Star exhibits the exact symptoms. This is why I've been such a huge proponent of proper Nintendo emulation: with the gaming medium touching and shaping so many lives, it's vital we pay it back with the preservation it deserves.
And now, that preservation is alive and well on the SNES Classic Edition. Will my unit last forever? Probably not, but it doesn't matter: that its brand of emulation exists at all shows Nintendo is listening, and it'll likely be the standard moving forward. There are other boons for Kirby Super Star on the system -- given the obvious differences between physical and digital, I imagine the infamous clear data glitch won't present (if it wasn't already; I never went back to test that on Dream Collection) -- but knowing the game that defines magic for me will live on as intended for future generations is nothing less than a dream come true.
Final Thoughts: I can't believe the second BWM! installment of Kirby Super Star will end on the same note, but you know how I always keep talking about finding new things in that game? While looking for an embed video for this column, I read that the title screen theme for The Great Cave Offensive is actually an arrangement of Peanut Plain from Dyna Blade! HOW DO YOU KEEP DOING IT, KIRBY SUPER STAR?!?!?
No comments:
Post a Comment