SNES Review 152: Kirby's Dream Course

I remember showing my daughter a Kirby animated series when she was younger and the theme song starting with something on the lines of Kirby Kirby Kirby he is the star of the show, Kirby Kirby Kirby is the name you all know, the truth is though as adorable as the little pink cuddly ball is he has always sort of lived in Mario's shadow. The thing is though that Kirby is an interesting little character whose looks and abilities kind of lend him well to various different kinds of games.

Over the years the little pink ones roundness has allowed him to stand in for a pinball in Kirby's Pinball Land, to be a ball in Kirby's Block Ball. And to tilt and tumble all over the place in the motion-controlled aptly named Kirby: Tilt 'n' Tumble and, here, in this game what does Kirby stand in for well he stands in for a golf ball. You see this is something Kirby has going for him with his squishy roundness in a Mario Golf game you'd just see Mario knocking a ball around but here in Kirby's Dream Course you get to see his royal pinkness being the ball.

If I had to tell someone about this game in a nutshell as quickly as possible then I would basically describe it as being a miniature golf game with a Kirby theme. One of the things which makes this interesting for a SNES game is that it is presented in a three-quarter isometric perspective. The courses are rendered on checker-board style grids and are filled with the standard enemies you would see in Kirby's platformers. I have to admit that I have a certain warmness for sports based titles that throw interesting characters in to the mix, give me a PGA tour golf or a Fifa and I will probably mentally half turn off playing it but throw some interesting characters and crazy powers in a sports title and I will be all over it, my favourite sports titles have been things like the NeoGeo 2020 Baseball with robots in it and Mario Strikers Charged, I guess the less real it is the more on board I can get with it. I guess this is reflected in the fact there a bunch of golf games on the SNES and this is only the second one I have reviewed and heck the first one I reviewed featured a golf playing robot.

OK so basically you hit poor little Kirby like a golf ball with the aim being to send him crashing into every single one of the enemies on the field once you have hit everyone of them bar one then the final bad guy will basically turn in the hole, get Kirby into the hole and congratulations thats a level done, but its a golf style game so just managing it eventually is not good enough nope you will be given a target number of hits and the idea is to come under par.

OK so at least at first the basics are just like any standard normal golf game choose the direction your going to hit the ball, how much power your going to put into your shot, where abouts your going to hit the ball, will you hit it dead on or will you try to give it a little bit of spin or chip it up. Then you go and absorb powers from Kirby's foes such as a parasol. There are ten abilities all of them are clones of powers from Kirby enemies and they are here to try and help you get around the course and if you really want to do well your going to have to learn how to use each and every one of them. You get the aforementioned parasol which helps you float down to the ground, a high jump which helps you jump a stone power which halts your movement instantly at the press of a button, a wheel which makes you shoot off like a rocket.

I think the game has a great concept, and Kirby is a great little character and there is a lot to the game, there are eight different courses to unlock each containing eight holes there's also a two-player mode which you can either have someone enjoy with you or suffer through with you depending on your and there thoughts on the game. In honesty I enjoyed it more in two player mode probably because my player two swore at it and cursed it just as much as I did and that made it both a little more fun and a little more bearable.

If I did a lets play of this game it would pretty much just be a video of me complaining and running through all of the cusses and venom that finds its way to the tip of my tongue. I cant really call this game a bad game, there are things I like about it but it just drives me blooming crazy, sure I do have a bit of fun with it but I also never feel that far away from rage quitting and telling Kirby to take a hike.

Kirby's Dream Course is probably one of his least known games, and that's why I was so surprised to see it taking up a slot on the Classic mini SNES. I never knew about this game back when I was a young SNES owner in fact it didn't enter my life until years and years later when someone gave it me for Christmas knowing I was a game collector so I have no real nostalgia for it and yet I feel bad taking a dump on poor old Kirby yet I cant help but score this game with a lowly 5, its ok, it has good presentation and it applies Kirby's powers well to the game of golf and it feels like it really really tries and yet its just not the game for me. If you want to try it well a loose Pal cart tends to go for £15 and up with boxed copies usually being around £60 when you see them, if you can play imports you'll occasionally see a loose Japanese cart for about £5 and to be honest that's kind of what I would pay for this game, I wanted to enjoy it more I really did.