And Presto, It's Kirby! - Kirby's Adventure

Kirby's Adventure - Nintendo Entertainment System

A Kirby game will hit me like bad romance- I wake up one day, turn one on, play it, love it, beat it, go to sleep, wake up the next day, and wonder what the hell happened the day before. And not unlike a bad romance, there are a couple of Kirby games I return to every once in a while no matter how many times I might swear them off. Kirby Nightmare in Dreamland is one of those Kirby games.

Of course (and I say 'of course' having only learned this a few years ago), Nightmare in Dreamland is a remake of an NES game entitled Kirby's Adventure. I must assert that better graphics, better animations, and better controls render the remake a higher quality game, but that doesn't mean the original wasn't amazing in it's own right. In fact, Kirby's Adventure is the only NES title I've ever completed, as it's easy for a NES game albeit widely more difficult when compared to recent entries in the Kirby franchise. Praise for Kirby's Adventure in any retro gaming community is not hard to find, but what's so striking about K.A. is how well it still holds up and how modern the game feels.

Kirby's Adventure is a side-scrolling platformer featuring 7 worlds, 35 levels, and 1 fat pink guy who can copy the abilities of his inhaled foes in order to progress. K.A. is the first title ever to feature Kirby's signature copying ability, although it is the second game in the series. What's fascinating about specifically the levels in Kirby's Adventure is that they would really be pretty boring in any other platformer. Each level contains a lot of flat ground without many traps, and enemies are often spread far apart; but these levels wind up being incredibly fun because of the numerous abilities Kirby can gain during them, with no one ability being clearly the best, and some abilities not even particularly good. Each ability feels extremely balanced, and obtaining one of the temporary powers in no way guarantees your safety. Instead, each ability, such as the ability to wield fire, sword, tornado, hammer, i.e., must be mastered and used cleverly to traverse each stage. Often, environments, platform placement, and enemy quantity will pose a bigger or smaller threat depending on which ability you choose to wield. Replayablity is high (as established previously) because of the many different ways you can defeat each boss and complete each level.

K.A.'s aesthetics are sincerely among the best on the system. Bright colors, clear sprites, and even some costume variety that comes with certain gained Kirby-powers (Ice FTW) all contribute to make Kirby's Adventure one of the most beautiful games on the NES, especially when compared to earlier titles like The Legend of Zelda, released 7 years before.

Remarkably, almost nothing about the gameplay is changed from Kirby's Adventure to Kirby Nightmare in Dreamland- a testament to the title's timelessness. Perfectly designed levels that consider each of the many abilities gained throughout the game combined with high variety in aesthetics and environments make Kirby's Adventure ideal for an afternoon of gaming. The title is short, and easy by 1985 standards, but it contains everything required to make an exceptional gaming experience + tons and tons of root beer.

Yu-Gi-Oh! The Eternal Duelist Soul

The early 2000's was no stranger to trends that would be known to spellbind the hearts and hands of young gamers. The new millennium introduced us nerds to popular and memorable franchises such as Guitar Hero, World of Warcraft, and Call of Duty, but among the games competing to shine the brightest was a more traditional game, a trading-card game, that ruled supreme for half a decade; that card game was Yu-Gi-Oh!

Yu-Gi-Oh! The Eternal Duelist Soul - GBA

The popular Japanese manga-turned-game-turned-international sensation saw many different video game interpretations, some re-imagining Yu-Gi-Oh! as a turn-based RPG, to an open-world Pokemon-ish game, while other publications stuck to the rules and characters that made the franchise popular in the first place, and few accomplished the later more successfully than Yu-Gi-Oh! The Eternal Duelist Soul. 

Unlike many other entries to its video game career, Yu-Gi-Oh! The Eternal Duelist Soul sticks to the original rules of the traditional card-based game; it's these same rules with which EDS expects players to be preemptively familiar in order to play, as there exist no tutorials in EDS, making it somewhat impenetrable to gamers unfamiliar with Yu-Gi-Oh! That being said, the game initially offers opponents that are fairly easy to defeat, and as a result it may not be too difficult for determined newbies to quickly get the hang of what winds up becoming a fairly challenging game. The experience of Yu-Gi-Oh! video games will always inevitably be different for those who are long-time fans and those who have never played before, but since EDS doesn't allow you to make moves or play cards that don't abide by the rules of the game, it doesn't really take too long for novices to become familiar with what does and doesn't work.

Players begin the only single-player game mode by selecting from 1 of 3 decks to get you started. There is no way of knowing which decks contain which cards, but all 3 are sufficient for getting you through your first few duels once you become familiar with the rules of the game. Initially, you have the option of dueling against 5 faces familiar to even the most casual Yu-Gi-Oh! fan, and additional opponents are unlocked after having defeated each character in each tier a specific number of times. Each collection of characters unlocked serves not only as fun guides through the first 2 seasons of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, but becomes increasingly difficult and fun to duel against. After you win any duel against any opponent, you are brought to a screen where you get to choose 1 booster-pack to open. Each booster pack holds cards that are unlocked and available to you after selecting to claim them, though once again the contents of each pack is random until it is opened. Constant acquisition of additional cards that you are encouraged to add to your deck helps to keep things from becoming stale. Abstaining from making changes to your deck may result in frequent loses as the skill of your newest opponents becomes more considerable, so having a consistent influx of new cards is an efficient way to make progress and pacing fluid. 

The goal of the game is to advance to and then win the Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship. Each duel either won or lost advances the calendar by a single day, and there are a great number of days to get through before the Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship arrives. Players will spend most of these calendar days dueling against new opponents to unlock more cards and characters. Unfortunately, there is an extremely large number of days between unlocking the final opponent and unlocking the World Championship, and the game slows to a grinding hault during this second half, which abruptly withholds new content. 

Though there are now countless Yu-Gi-Oh! video games out there, I find myself drawn to replay Eternal Duelist Soul every couple of years. The best part about Eternal Duelist Soul is that despite it featuring out-dated cards and strategies, the cards it does feature are the original cards, and your opponents are the original characters from the original cast. Eternal Duelist Soul is to Yu-Gi-Oh! as Red and Blue are to Pokemon. The value in EDS lays in its ability to encourage casual fans to sharpen their knowledge of the basics of the real-life game. Attempting to dive head-first into the world of Yu-Gi-Oh! nowadays can be a tall order, and introducing a new duelist to the latest strategies and combinations can be daunting, but playing these old video games that are more-or-less Yu-Gi-Oh! simulators can be extremely helpful for one trying to begin to play the real-life game. Moreover, EDS and other old Yu-Gi-Oh! games are fun for veteran fans who may have missed out on the opportunity to use old cards and strategies that may have seemed fun at the time but are now out-dated. My Exodia deck is unmatched in this period of Yu-Gi-Oh's history. 

Retrospectively, Yu-Gi-Oh! The Eternal Duelist Soul doesn't offer anything that can't be found in any other Yu-Gi-Oh! game. There are fewer cards, fewer opponents, and fewer strategies to be seen in this classic title, but Eternal Duelist Soul may be valuable to players who wish to get a grasp of what Yu-Gi-Oh! is without throwing themselves into the deep end of a pool filled with unfamiliar monsters and demons (literally). EDS is also still fun for old-time Yu-Gi-Oh! fans who yearn for simpler times of a simpler game. With the exception of some outdated banned-lists and rulings, EDS offers a genuine Yu-Gi-Oh! experience all wrapped up into a handheld video game with an impressive amount of content and replay value limited only by your ability to conceive of new and fun decks and strategies.