Video Games

Masahiro Sakurai Shows Off Original Kirby Design Docs and Other Secrets in New Video

Kirby and Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai unveiled Kirby’s original design document and other secrets of Game Boy’s Kirby’s Dreamland in his. Episode 100 Introduced “Masahiro Sakurai’s Game Making” on YouTube.

The documents themselves are nothing new, as Sakurai said he presented them at Kirby’s 25th Anniversary Orchestra Concert in Japan in 2017.

in the videoSakurai said he came up with the concept for 19-year-old (now 52) Kirby’s Dreamland around May 1990. It was so easy it took less than 20 minutes. All Kirby did in his first game was he hovered, swallowed, and spit out because he didn’t have copy abilities until Kirby’s Adventures.

Kirby’s Dreamland was developed in less than a year after connecting a trackball made by HAL Laboratory to the Twin Famicom. Mr. Sakurai demonstrated the versatility of his twin NES. He and his fellow developers were able to draw his art in pixels, combine art to create characters, animate them, conduct his tests, and even create backgrounds and title screens.

But the most important part of the presentation was how Sakurai was able to get around the severe memory limitations that the small game presented. Designed, but released at 2 megabits. To reduce ROM space, he designed the characters to fit while maintaining their actual size, for example he reused the back half of one of his Waddle Dee and Waddle Doo to create a Boss Whispy created his Woods by sticking his three dots on one of his trees.

Despite the limitations that arose during the making of Kirby’s Dream Land, the game sold five million copies worldwide and topped the Game Boy bestseller chart for several months in a row, demonstrating the power of the Twin Famicom.

Today, more than 30 years later, Kirby made the jump from side-scrolling to open-world gaming with the release of Kirby and the Forgotten Lands, which was created without Sakurai’s involvement. That’s why we haven’t developed a Kirby game since Kirby and the Amazing Mirror in 2004.

Christina Alexander is a freelance writer for IGN. She has contributed her work to various publications including Digital Trends, TheGamer, Twinfinite, Mega Visions and The Escapist. To paraphrase Calvin Harris, she has her love for Sonic the Hedgehog up her sleeve like a big deal – follow her on her Twitter @SonicPrincess15.

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