[GAME] Kirby's Adventure (1993)
After the decent but not exceptional Kirby's Dream Land, I was absolutely blown away by Kirby's Adventure, to the point where I think it might be a top 5 NES game. Here is the game where Kirby gains the ability to absorb the powers of his enemies, and the result of a level of sophistication in game design that is just not present in 99% of the NES library.
The level design absolutely shines here, with loads of jam-packed secrets and interesting layouts that specifically take advantage of the powers that you gain from nearby enemies. A suspicious looking wick is close by to an enemy that breathes fire; a laser beam power is granted right before a level full of right angles that a beam like this can bounce off of. The most important thing here is the fact all of these little secrets don't feel immediately obvious - they are placed in such a way that it feels like you are discovering the powers and their uses yourself, which is a trick that is incredibly difficult to pull off.
Gone is the Game Boy game's trick of floating to the top of the screen and sitting there while pushing right - the levels force you into tight mazes and throw flying enemies at you to make sure that you are engaging with the game. The difficulty has also been increased somewhat. The bosses are a particular highlight, and really make you squeeze the most out of whatever power you own at any given time. Thankfully, the game is still very beatable - there is no typical NES-style platformer savagery, so it feels like the developers finally got the balance right.
I should mention the visuals here, too - they are, simply put, jaw-dropping. At times this feels like a SNES game, with the crazy pseudo-3D pillars and what I am assuming is a faked parallax scrolling effect. I don't think I've played a NES game before that looked as good as this.
Games that come out towards the end of a console's lifespan tend to be really technically impressive - while this is certainly the case for Kirby's Adventure, what will stick with me the most is the exceptional game design, which to me is some of the finest this platform has to offer.