Earlier this year, Nintendo ended the six month celebration of Mario’s 35th anniversary by removing Super Mario 3D All-Stars and Super Mario Bros. 35 from the Nintendo store, as promised. Despite the fact that limited edition games are nothing new in the industry, Mario fans seemed to take this decision by Nintendo particularly hard, declaring that Mario should no longer be the company’s mascot and Kirby, the pint-sized pink alien, should be given the honor instead.
In fact, whether Mario is truly deserving to be Nintendo’s mascot has long been a bone of friendly contention, with many gamers feeling that developer HAL Laboratory’s creation is just as worthy. Since the first game in the series, Kirby’s Dream Land, which launched in 1992 on the original Game Boy, more than 30 Kirby titles have released on Nintendo consoles and it has become one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time. In April, the official Japanese Twitter page began releasing Kirby artwork in celebration of the pink puffball’s 29th anniversary.
Also this year, a new original Kirby artbook was released that contained concept art from Kirby: Star Allies, which released for the Nintendo Switch in 2018. Near the end of the book, which can only be purchased from Japan, the game’s director Shinya Kumazaki spoke very briefly and vaguely about the series’ future. Kirby: Star Allies ended what Kumazaki called an “11-year drought of side-scrolling titles on consoles.”
That accomplishment, along with the addition of the cooperative multiplayer that fans had long been asking for, left the staff at HAL Laboratory feeling that they’d accomplished something. Now, according to Kumazaki, the development team is ready to move on to Kirby’s next stage. What that next stage might be is not exactly clear, but the director stated that he tries new things at work every day and discusses with his colleagues where the series should go next. The current team, said Kumazaki, “is a culmination of the best aspects of the Kirby franchise.”
While that might seem like an unsatisfying tease about what fans can expect next for Kirby from HAL Laboratory, two other developers from the Kirby: Star Allies team have also spoken in the past about where they hope the franchise will go. In an interview with Famitsu magazine, lead action programmer Katsuyoshi Sumitomo declared that he wanted their next project to be the pinnacle of Kirby games. However, that might not exactly be a good idea, because that would mean it would all be downhill from there. Design director Riki Fuhrmann shared that he would like to create a non-action Kirby spinoff game, diverging from the franchise’s platformer roots.
No matter what awaits Kirby in the future, it seems certain that there will be many fans ready to welcome whatever HAL Laboratory creates, traditional or experimental. Even now, Kirby’s name is trending on Twitter, thanks to a poll that lists a number of Nintendo stars like Donkey Kong, Luigi, Link, and Samus Aran. “Choose 2 to protect you. The rest will try to kill you. Who do you choose?” Kirby seems to be the hands down winner, simply due to the fact that he can inhale and copy his enemies’ powers. In the words of one commenter on the poll thread: “Imagine not picking Kirby, the indestructible god of death and consumption.”
Source: Nintendo Everything, Nintendo Everything