Kirby and the Forgotten Land is now available on the Nintendo Switch in certain parts of the world, and as part of this, Nintendo has released a new volume of its 'Ask The Developer' series - providing all sorts of insights about the pink puff's first full 3D action game.
Towards the end of the interview, HAL Laboratory was questioned about the future of the Kirby, and if the team would continue to explore "3D action gameplay". The short answer is - yes, HAL is eager to build on Kirby and the Forgotten Land for Switch.
Game director Shinya Kumazaki believes Kirby's latest outing is a "masterpiece" within the history of the series and mentioned how Kirby still had "unlimited potential". From here on out, he hopes the team can be "even more wild and free" when it comes to creating Kirby titles in the future and told fans to look forward to new Kirby games.
Nintendo's Kei Ninomiya - associate producer of the latest Kirby game - was just as supportive of 3D Kirby games moving forward, revealing how this title has encouraged the Kirby development team to keep doing new things in the future, in "both 2D and 3D".
What sort of 3D projects would you like to see from Kirby and the team at HAL Laboratory? Tell us below.
[source nintendo.com]
Comments 34
I loved the 3D-gameplay minigame for 3DS (Kirby's Blowout Blast). It sure was a good taste of future outings.
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@MostHandsieBoy Sure. That's how businesses work.
Are there people thinking game development was magic? I didn't know! You learn a thing or two everyday.
So you're telling me Forgotten Land is the Legends Arceus of Kirby, and we're still getting a Scarlet/Violet equivalent in the future? That's crazy.
I'm so happy to see Nintendo with actual AMBITION again. They haven't been this bold and daring since the GameCube days, in my opinion. Wii had a lot of great titles, but most of them admittedly kept things pretty standard, and that became the norm moving forward. Nintendo has a tendency to get stuck in patterns though, and while I'm glad we're getting 3D platformers besides just Mario, I hope they won't completely abandon the 2D ones, either. Even if Nintendo EAD is working on a 3D Donkey Kong, I'd still love another Country game from Rare after Prime 4 as well.
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Beautiful game. I want to see more of this from now on. Oh and make sure to include cars too.
@Not_Soos even though it isn't all new n stuff I think their dlc/expansion decisions are kinda bold. Like the amount of tracks and the size of animal crossing dlc.
~~~agreeing with you
I was playing the N64 stuff the other day and was marveling about how nuts some of their ideas where back then.
"Paul, give me your best."
"So you know the plumber right? What if we made him...paper?'
"Why?"
"Well because he would be paper."
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Won't be surprised if it's the best selling Kirby game, warranting a sequel. First Kirby game in a long time where I can safely say that it doesn't look bland and actually has a lot of time and effort put into it.
A return to form for Kirb, for sure.
So many self appointed experts here who think they know everything about business and game development when they don't know anything. It always makes me laugh.
Hope that we still get 2-D Kirby games too.
@Not_Soos I agree about wanting more 2D experiences, although ideally Retro would have expanded up so much they could work on both. Not expanding on Tropical Freeze is a travesty.
Waiting for a Kirby game where he fights Cthulhu with the game play that has horror imagery
@Not_Soos I would love a 3D Donkey Kong game too. Crazy to think there was only 1 3D Donkey Kong game and that was on the N64.
😕I tried the Demo of his latest Game and wasn't impressed.
I liked the GameBoy game back then but Kirby has never been something I've ever gotten into though his power-taking ability is cool a la 'Sylar' from "Heroes".
@RubyCarbuncle
I certainly did not walk into this article wanting to talk business. I have university for that reason. Like you, I'm just facepalming at all these discussions.
Just don't go open world, PLEASE. lol
@ModdedInkling Agreed. It BLEEPS me off when I see it. I come here to discuss the hobby I love not go to a Business Studies class. So annoying.
I absolutely welcome more 3D Kirby. Just so as long there is also 2D Kirby to co-exist with. After all, 2D is where Kirby started with to begin with.
@DanijoEX Agreed, this can be like how Mario has 3D and 2D adventures throughout the series. Perhaps they could even mix it up and have 2D parts in the 3D games, like how Mario Odyssey did
@ElRoberico Tropical Freeze is one of the best 2D platformers ever made, but dude...the concept art you get for collecting the puzzle pieces looks even better than the final product! They had artwork for an Arabian desert world, a haunted forest world with ghost enemies, the freakin' MOON. They don't even need to come up with any new ideas, just do what they were gonna do with Tropical Freeze, and I'll be happy. I need to play that game!
@RubyCarbuncle What's even crazier is that Nintendo is hailed as the king of platformers, and they pioneered the 3D platforming genre with Super Mario 64, yet outside of Mario they literally never made another 3D platformer until now! 😭 DK64 and Banjo-Kazooie were technically handled by Rare, and the former wasn't received very well while the latter is no longer a Nintendo exclusive. Then I guess you have Wario World, which also didn't have the best review scores and was handled by a little-known company. Meanwhile, Sony had Crash, Spyro, Rachet and Clank, Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper, now Sackboy and Astro...that genre should've been Nintendo's bread and butter, but they've been sleeping on it for the past 2 decades. I'm glad they're finally starting to fix that though and hope this is a sign of things to come. A 3D Yoshi game would be something else.
@Not_Soos agreed
in a interview back in 2019, Shiya Kumazaki stated Hal Laboratory started the development of Kirby next phase, now we know Kirby and the Forgotten Land is the start of Kirby 3D era
https://www.gamesradar.com/kirby-game-director-says-the-next-stage-of-kirby-is-already-in-development/
@Not_Soos all the rumors state Nintendo EPD 8 is developing a 2D Donkey Kong game, sorry Donkey Kong 64 is gonna be Donkey Kong only 3D game.
@MostHandsieBoy
Unless you’re Sega then you pretend Sonic Mania doesn’t exist.
@Giancarlothomaz I’m still betting on that game being jungle beat 2
@OnlyItsMeReid I need Jungle Beat 2 asap! What a fun game.
Hopefully one of the games they make next is a warriors spin-off.
The sheer amount of Kirby characters would make it an absolute joy to play if they make it.
@Not_Soos They're bold but cmon the GC wasn't THAT bold. Most of the GC biggest software was just just iterations on the N64 entries. Or N64 games (Luigis Mansion, Animal Crossing) shifted onto GC. Outside of Metroid Prime they only experimented with a handful of new IP (Pikmin) or spin-offs.
The Wii and DS were bolder these were ideas they had no idea if people would like. In the GCs case they already knew players liked 3D Mario, Zelda, Smash, Kart, Star Fox,etc.
But it's not been since the N64 that they've taken so much of their software into entirely new formulas. If Switch were GC BOTW would never happen.
Ehhh, hard disagree. The Wii was when they revived a lot of their 2D platformers. New Super Mario Bros Wii, Kirby's Return to Dream Land, Wario Land: Shake It, Donkey Kong Country Returns, etc. Now, these are all excellent games, don't get me wrong. But they were pretty by-the-numbers and didn't exactly do anything revolutionary. Paper Mario even became a 2D platformer on Wii. Then you had Punch-Out, which felt more like a remaster of the old game than something completely new and different.
Even Mario Party 9--which admittedly did something very different, albeit unsuccessful with the car mechanic--was stripped of its identity and made to look like the New Super Mario Bros. aesthetic. I'd argue Skyward Sword is also very New Super Mario Bros. esque, simplifying the gameplay mechanics of Zelda to its most basic elements for the sake of accessibility. Breath of the Wild would not exist if not for the criticism Skyward Sword received for its hand-holding.
This was also when Nintendo was targeting the casual crowd harder than ever with stuff like Wii Fit and Wii Sports. I don't think saying Luigi's Mansion began on N64 is a fair comparison; Super Paper Mario began its life on the GameCube, and Super Mario Galaxy's origins are from Super Mario 128, which was in development for the GameCube. Twilight Princess was literally a port. There are likely several other games in development for GameCube before they were moved over to Wii, but Nintendo likes to be pretty secretive with that stuff, so we'll probably never know the extent of it.
The GameCube gave us Metroid's first foray into 3D instead of another 2D platformer; Wind Waker, which had an incredibly divisive art direction that wasn't received warmly until much later; Twilight Princess, which was the exact opposite and--along with Metroid Prime--probably strived for more realism than Nintendo has ever done before or since; a Kirby racing game instead of a platformer; Chibi-Robo; Pikmin; Star Fox became an action-adventure game with Zelda elements instead of an on-rails shooter; this was the last time Nintendo attempted to make an F-Zero game...I feel like I could go on. The sequels felt far from iterative, and even when they didn't stray too far from the formula like TTYD or Sunshine, they upped the innovative ideas by 10. FLUDD is a mechanic we haven't seen in a Mario game since that drastically altered the gameplay, and TTYD is probably the most lore-heavy game Nintendo has ever made.
The Wii was still a great console though. While the game is pretty disliked today, Brawl was certainly more ambitious than Melee with its inclusion of third-Party characters and a robust single-player mode where all the heroes get Thanos snapped more than a decade before it was cool. And even if it started on the GameCube, Galaxy is one of the most ambitious games ever made. But I felt those games were few and far between.
If there was a Kirby game with Super Mario Odyssey-style sandbox gameplay, then I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
I have been absolutely loving Kirby and the Forgotten Land so far. I was honestly a bit skeptical at first, but it is just so much fun.
Please let there be a sequel and/or another new entry that is a true open world game (no linear paths).
I'd buy that day one for sure.
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