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Kirby on mobile - What might it look like on iOS and Android?

Suck it and see

Kirby on mobile - What might it look like on iOS and Android?
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'Nintendo on mobile' is no longer the sacrilegious concept it once was. Partly because mobile games can be really rather good these days, and partly because Nintendo isn't quite the market-crushing force it used to be.

But mainly because Nintendo has already announced that it's going to be making a bunch of mobile games. So there's that.

So how might Nintendo's top franchises look and play on mobile? That's something we've been pondering a lot of late. We've already taken a look at Zelda, Fire Emblem, Metroid, and Animal Crossing.

Now it's the turn of Nintendo's much-loved pink blob. And we're not talking about Jigglypuff.

It's Kirby!

Of course it is. He's a strange character, without the heavyweight recognition of Mario or Link, and arguably without a strong personality of his own. But Kirby's relative anonymity arguably makes him a more natural fit for mobile than any other Nintendo IP.

Kirby's very defining attribute is the ability to take on the abilities of other creatures - and indeed other, more famous Nintendo characters. This chameleon-like quality expands into the Kirby games themselves.

There isn't really a single defining type of Kirby game. He started out in Kirby's Dream Land, a 2D platformer for the original Game Boy, back in 1992.

But since then he's starred in a pinball game, a weird golf game, a match three puzzler, a couple of line-drawing games, and endless variations on the platformer.

Drawing a line under it

Yep, Kirby is a blank slate of a character. If Nintendo has a weird or quirky idea, Kirby is the go-to benign character to help make it stick - or perhaps to not get in the way of it.

The mobile possibilities, then, are wide and varied. In fact, we'd almost be disappointed - and a little surprised - if Nintendo opted for a traditional 2D platformer with its first (and strictly hypothetical at this point) mobile Kirby game.

A far better fit would be the Kirby seen in Kirby: Power Paintbrush on the Nintendo DS and Kirby and the Rainbow Paintbrush on the Wii U. True, these were both 2D platformers, but they were also touchscreen-driven line-drawing games.

You had to sketch out a path for Kirby to roll along and tap enemies to prep them for a direct-contact finishing move. We don't need to tell you that this would be absolutely perfect for mobile, do we?

Plotting a different course

That's not to say that there aren't other possibilities for Kirby on mobile. We would quite like to see a resurrection of the Kirby's Dream Course template.

This 1995 SNES game was a bizarre isometric golf-strategy game, in which Kirby played the part of the ball. Players had to set the power, angle, and degree of spin to apply to him, then take out an assortment of enemies en route to the hole.

Those enemies would, of course, grant Kirby special powers that would affect his flight.

Again, we can see an updated version of this being a perfect fit for mobile. Imagine a combination of Super Stickman Golf and Hoplite. Tasty.

We could also see Kirby working as a sort of mobile mini-game compendium. Kirby Super Star, a 1997 SNES release, brought together nine compact platformers, all celebrating the pink blob's varied abilities in subtly different ways.

Why not take that concept further on mobile? We could envisage a mobile Kirby game that celebrates each of Kirby's incarnations over the years - a snappy line-drawing endless roller, a weirdo roguelike golf game, a match-three puzzler, and so on.

Basically, Kirby is the ideal vehicle for the kind of light, cute, accessible yet experimental experiences that have come to define mobile gaming over the past decade. It's a dream of a combination.

What do you think a mobile Kirby would look like? Let us know in the comments below.
Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.