Minigames have it rough.
It used to be, minigames were refreshing little diversions from their parent games.
Tired of bossing Goemon around Edo?
Go bet on some dice, or do a quiz.
Can’t stand one more moment of Squall’s angst?
Play some cards.
Have nothing better to do with your life?
Go experiment in the field of chocobo eugenics.
These had some substance, and served to augment the experience rather than define it.
Anymore, though, the rise of the “Minigame Compilation” has distorted the meaning of
the word into “cheap, fast, low-cost, and rarely entertaining.”
Kirby had a minigame compilation back on the SNES, reproduced several years later in a
touch-enhanced DS version.
By today’s standards, though, those words are slightly defamatory, so we’ll phrase
it thus: This is an assembly of rather short Kirby games.
Several of them, in fact.
Don’t call them minigames.
(Well, except for the three that are.)
You’ve got two classes of game here, starting with Sub-games, which support up to four players
in either a shooting gallery, gluttony race, or hanafuda-slapping competition.
That’s all well and good, but we can do better than that.
This is a Kirby game, after all.
How about you just shrink the original Kirby’s Dream Land down a bit, make it a quick four-stage
affair with all the power-copying, partner-spawning, serious platforming action the 16-bit-era
could muster?
Sound like a plan?
Good.
We’ve established a baseline, then: Real, honest-to-goodness Kirby action, just stripped
down a bit.
We know how to get there...
now we just need to know where we’re going.
Well, how about similar adventures focused on putting down a rogue Dyna Cutter, or neutralizing
Meta Knight’s airship?
Effectively, you’re getting six or so different Kirby games, playing by generally the same
rulebook, and each about a quarter as long as a regular title.
And then there’s the Great Cave Offensive, a huge cavern full of hardcore Kirby action
(or as close to that idea as any game starring a pink puffball can possibly get) with sixty
treasures to unearth.
Some, like the Dime and the Saucepan, make you wonder who buried all this crap in here.
Some, like the Triforce, Falcon’s Helmet, and the Screw Attack, make you wonder who
killed the cast of Smash Bros. and buried the bodies here.
And then you dig up a guilty-looking Mr. Saturn, but how can you get angry at that nose?
I ask you.
It might take several passes, some fairly advanced puzzle solving, and what I’m calling
the most entertaining RPG boss fight I’ve ever experienced in a non-RPG.
Complete with EarthBound-style level up stats!
It all comes back to EarthBound.
If you’re an old-school Kirby fan, from back before all of this power-stealing nonsense,
the first “episode” will serve as a nostalgic reminder of that first adventure, while acclimating
you to the brave new world of mechanics, including situational attacks, dash attacks, grabs,
air attacks, teammate attacks, and so forth.
And if you’ve got a friend in range, they can control your teammate monster, instead
of leaving it to the AI.
For later comers to the party, it’s a slew of slightly different ideas on the main Kirby
concept, from a treasure hunt to a race, allowing for a maximum of diversity on one cart.
Don’t call it a minigame compilation.
That would be doing a disservice to the quality of this title.
If anything, it’s just a series of short, rather unrelated Kirby games, augmented with
a bit of wireless multiplayer fun.
The primary downside, though, is that there’s no Cheetahmen to be had.
And that’s sad.