January2021
News Tokyo's Kirby Café Is Adding A Chocolate Pizza To Their Menu
And it's served on a Kirby-shaped board
The Kirby Café chain is delightfully weird. With dishes featuring the faces and general shapes of Kirby and friends, and names like "Chocolate fondant that Meta Knight sneakily takes out of his cape", it sounds like the kind of place we'd love to go to. You can even order drinks topped with a marshmallow of...
Poll What's The Best Kirby Game?
The suckiest of heroes
When it comes to platform mascots and beloved characters, the Mario and Zelda series might get a lot of attention, but there are few heroes as enduring and as beloved as Kirby. Everyone's favourite purveyor of pink puffiness, Kirby was born at HAL Laboratory by the hand of Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai and he's starred...
December2020
News Kirby Developer HAL Laboratory Teases New Projects For 2021
Games, merch and more...
This year marked the 40th anniversary of HAL Laboratory - the Japanese developer behind the long-running series Kirby. In 2020, it released Kirby Fighters 2 on the Switch and brought across the title Part Time UFO to the hybrid system as well. What's on the horizon for 2021 then? In an interview with
October2020
News Part Time UFO, The Latest Switch Game From HAL Laboratory, Is Available Right Now
Surprise!
Freshly announced in today's Nintendo Direct Mini: Partner Showcase, a new game from Kirby maestros HAL Laboratory has been surprise-dropped on Switch eShop today. It's called Part Time UFO and it sees you taking control of Jobski the UFO to fly around and help people by completing tasks for them. Cleaning up, fishing, doing a spot of...
Soapbox 10 Years On, Kirby's Epic Yarn Is Still The Pink Puffball's Finest Outing
Fluff and nonsense
It's time for a Nintendo Life Soapbox confession. Ready? While the majority of the gaming world takes Masahiro Sakurai's most cherished child heartily to their collective bosom (squeezing his squidgy body in their embrace, no doubt), I've always found Kirby a bit... what's the word? Oh yes: rubbish. I'm not talking about how he...
September2020
News Read HAL's Translated Blog Post On The Creation Of Kirby Fighters 2
The first in a series
HAL Laboratory has published the first blog post in a series about Kirby Fighters 2, featuring Planning Director Tadashi Kawai. Within this article, they discuss the development of the newly-released title. We have gone ahead and translated the article below. Hello everyone. I'm Tadashi Kawai, the Planning Director for Kirby...
August2020
News Quick Draw Kirby Returns In New Plush Toy Collection This October
Kirby, Kirby, Kirby...out of control!
Kirby fans located in Japan will soon be able to get their hands on a new line of plushies featuring the pink puff in all sorts of different forms. All up, the Sanei "Kirby Muteki! Suteki! Closet collection" has five different plush to collect along with a cushion. As you can see, there are the Sword and...
July2020
News Kirby Studio HAL Laboratory Relocates Its Tokyo Base To Nintendo's New Building
Joins Game Freak and Nintendo EPD Tokyo
Kirby studio HAL Laboratory has relocated its main Tokyo office to Nintendo's new building in the city, it has been revealed. The company – which remains independent but has strong ties with Nintendo (referred to in Japan as "keiretsu") – has also taken on more staff, bringing its headcount up from 169 to...
June2020
Anniversary EarthBound Turns 25 In The USA, And A Whole Generation Feels Old
Mother!
As time continues to march on relentlessly, it's time for another significant video game anniversary - and today's is a particularly nostalgic one. It's 25 years to the day since Shigesato Itoi's lovely EarthBound first arrived on US shores and gamers in the West got to take on Giygas with Ness and his band of young heroes on the SNES. They...
April2020
News Masahiro Sakurai Celebrates Kirby's Birthday With An Amusing Smash Bros. Pic
28 years on
While it's not exactly a major milestone, Masahiro Sakurai – the creator of Kirby – has decided to celebrate the pink puffball's 28th birthday on Twitter, by sharing a funny Smash Bros. Ultimate screenshot replacing the heads of Ganondorf and Cloud. In a follow-up tweet underneath this, Sakurai mentions how it can often be a...
December2019
Poll Box Art Brawl #21 - Kirby's Return To Dream Land
Or Kirby's Adventure Wii to his PALs
And we're back with another Box Art Brawl, the series where regional box art versions of the same video game go head-to-head in a public vote to find out which is superior. Last week we had a real scrap on our hands when Super Smash Bros. for the N64 brawled with itself. Democracy prevailed to decree the North...
Poll Box Art Brawl #20 - Super Smash Bros.
A real brawler
Welcome back to Box Art Brawl, the series where we pit regional variations of video game box covers from back in the day against each other in a savage fight to the death. Okay, it isn't that dramatic - it's just a poll - but let's get into the spirit and pretend that the stakes are incredibly high this lovely Sunday afternoon, hmm?...
November2019
Anniversary Super Smash Bros. For Nintendo 64 Is Now 20 Years Old In Europe
Smashin' it mate
It's time for the birthday bumps! Yes, with time moving irrevocably and irritatingly forward, the original Super Smash Bros. turned 20 today - or a version of it did. Having had its Japanese launch in January 1999 and its North American debut in April, Europe finally received the N64 crossover brawler on 19th November exactly two...
October2019
News Reggie Is Glad He No Longer Has To Deal With People Asking Him About Mother 3
"This is a decision that I'm no longer part of"
Reggie Fils-Aimé's recent lecture at Cornell University delivered many tasty and amusing pieces of information, including the fact that the late Nintendo present Satoru Iwata didn't want to bundle Wii Sports with the Wii, and that Reggie himself considers the Wii U to be a "failure forward"
September2019
News HAL Laboratory Seeking Staff For New Project Based On The Kirby Series
The pink puff returns
HAL Laboratory appears to have no trouble pumping out new games starring the pink puffball on a regular basis and with this mind, it's currently recruiting for a new Kirby project, presumably targeting a Switch release in the near future. All up, the company is seeking an Action Programmer, UI Programmer, Graphics Programmer,...
June2019
News A Forgotten (And Kirby-Free) HAL SNES Title Has Been Preserved For The Ages
Anyone for golf?
Some great news for retro gaming enthusiasts as the year of noteworthy Super Nintendo efforts continues unhinged. Reports of successful preservation of HAL Laboratory's Special Tee Shot prototype and subsequent public release means that we can all now enjoy the isometric mini-golf game that was meant to show up as a regular SNES...
News Previously Unseen Footage Of EarthBound 64 Emerges Online
Take a trip back to 1996
One Nintendo 64 game that never saw the light of day, in the end, was EarthBound 64 – also known as Mother 3. The project started out life as a Super Nintendo release before being moved across to the Nintendo 64 and was eventually axed in August 2000. It ended up arriving on the Game Boy Advance in 2006 and since then, all...
April2019
Soapbox I Don't 'Get' Smash Bros. And I Just Don't Know Why
Confessions of an apathetic Smasher
Soapbox features enable our individual writers to voice their own opinions on various topics, opinions that may not necessarily be the voice of the site. In this piece, staff writer Gavin looks back on his history with the Smash Bros. series and tells us why he's weary of the latest iteration on Switch...
March2019
Random Let's Find Kirby, A Where's Waldo?-Style Book, Announced For Japan
Kirby's no wally
Is it possible to have too much Kirby? We're not convinced so, and a new book announced in Japan has taken that sentiment to the next level. In addition to the mountain of merch already devoted to the pink one, Let's Find Kirby is an official book in the vein of Where's Waldo? (or Where's Wally? for UK readers) where you must find a...
February2019
News HAL Laboratory Celebrates Its 39th Anniversary With A Cute BOXBOY Comic
Happy Birthday to the House of Kirby!
As noticed on Twitter by @teamkirby92, the developer that brought us Kirby, BOXBOY, Earthbound, Smash Bros. and much more is celebrating 39 years in the video game business with a little comic featuring Qbby and his companion, Qucy. Below is the entire comic, plus a translation courte
January2019
News Nintendo Shares Special Artwork To Celebrate First Anniversary Of Kirby Battle Royale
Party time
Think of a battle royale game and the last title you will probably consider is Kirby Battle Royale for Nintendo 3DS. Even so, the title is now one year old. In celebration of this epic milestone, Nintendo of America has shared special artwork for the game, over on its Twitter account: If you haven't played Kirby Battle Royale, here's a...
November2018
News Kirby Star Allies Update Introduces New Dream Friends And Adds Challenge Mode
Arrives 30th November
Later this month on 30th November, Kirby Star Allies on Nintendo Switch is receiving its 'wave three' update which will add a bunch of new characters and a special challenge mode to the game for free. After teasing much of this DLC content in Japanese, Nintendo has now released a prolonged video in the west which runs for...
News The Japanese Name For Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's World Of Light Mode Holds a Cool Easter Egg
Kirby takes the spotlight one more time
As we already know, Kirby is the sole surviving hero at the beginning of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's "World of Light" adventure mode. However, in another twist, the Japanese title for World of Light hides a Kirby-themed easter egg. The name in Japanese is Tomoshibi no Hoshi (灯火の星). If you reverse the...
July2018
News HAL President Satoshi Mitsuhara Reminisces On His Close Friendship With Satoru Iwata
"We were very close friends"
Many will remember Satoru Iwata as the late president of Nintendo, and particularly as the warm and gentle face of some fantastic Nintendo Direct moments but, of course, he is also well known for his time at Kirby developer HAL Laboratory. While technically being an independent studio, HAL has always been very closely...
News Adeleine And Ribbon Are the Newest Dream Friend In Kirby Star Allies
Update goes live later this month
A couple days ago, we shared an image that had popped up on Twitter showcasing a silhouette of the next Dream Friend that would be coming to Kirby Star Allies this summer. There were plenty of good guesses, although it seemed all too likely that this would be a “Jigglypuff, viewed form above” bait and switch...
