Random: Nintendo's Kirby Adverts Used To Be Much Grittier

The more stuff I learn about Kirby, the more I'm convinced that he is the real villain, and we're all just subjects forced to witness his acts of mass murder.

Kirby's days of war crimes...

...never ended.

@StarPoint My head-canon has always been that Kirby has no clue he's saving the universe. He just goes on eating sprees and happens to stumble into saving Dreamland.

I love the North American ad for Kirby's Dream Land 2, where Kirby (and friends) basically eat a whole biker gang.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqVVG4FCq7w

Man, old Nintendo commercials were something else...in a good way. My favorites will always been the Game Boy Advance and Gamecube ones.

Gotta love those edgy 90s ads. Kirby with stubble is pretty hilarious. He just needs a smoke hanging out of his mouth.

Man, I kind of miss some of this 90s humor.

As I said before this is called American Kirby is hardcore.
What’s with America wanting everything to be so edgy?
I remember reading that in a monster rancher game
They actually REDESIGNED SOMEONE BECAUSE SHE WAS TO CUTE!!!

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AmericanKirbyIsHardcore

This is a call-back to Kirby's creation.

His model is a placeholder and was meant to be replaced by a character that would be called "ポポポ". This is a Japanese onomatopoeia equivalent to "pow pow pow" or "bang bang bang". Although the early art ... honestly doesn't look that different from Kirby, he was going to have details that made him more "gritty" like the angry eyes and scowl seen here, and start with a gun.

Sakurai had trouble with pixel art, and when he asked Miyamoto for help he told him to just leave the placeholder in and colour it ... yellow.

Although he didn't go with exactly what Miyamoto suggested, he played around and eventually feel in love with the pink Kirby we know and love.

Shortly after that, the game was changed from "Twinkle Popo" (little Japanese language craziness happening here that I don't fully understand. The game used "ティンクル", which is actually "Tinkuru" or "Tinkle", but all the Romaji at the time and all references Nintendo has made to it seem to point to it being intended as "Twinkle", There is probably something in the Kanji that makes this make sense ) to "Kirby of the Stars" and took on a much lighter, cuter style.

Of course Kirby is a psychopath: he has a game that is called Mass Attack!

I for one am glad we are MOSTLY over this edgy time in advertising Kirby. Kirby's allowed to just be his cute self in ads now. Was done with that insecure nonsense about manning up a pink ball. Just play the games if you like them and don't worry about it. Kirby is awesome!

@Kirby_Girl IKR hopefully this whole “everything has to be edgy for the US” garbage stays dead.

Peak badass-ness was Super Star. Possibly OG Smash Bros.

Then after that "The Softening" happened.

Seems in line with existing Kirby lore. He's toppled kingdoms and slayed gods, getting arrested isn't that surprising.

@HeadPirate - It's a trip how some of the most endearing characters in gaming came from some level of restriction that the developer had to make use of what they had in creative ways.

Mario had a moustache to show the player which way he was facing, Mega Man being blue to utilize the other color palette more, even Minecraft had limitations that made Notch use the graphics he used.

@Paraka

You're right. There are so many great stories out there, and I've been collecting them for a while. A lot are rumour or unconfirmable, but that doesn't make them any less fun.

Did you know why Mario is a plumber? In Japan he's a construction worker because that's the "go to" job to give a character when you want them have a respectable job but still be the "any man". When localizing, the rumour (that OBVIOUSLY has never been confirmed, but has a lot of weight behind it) is that Miyamoto ask a friend what he thinks of when he thinks "Westerner" and he said "They smell bad and are full of *****".

What I've always heard is that the moustache is actually just his mouth; the team could never get it to stop looking like a moustache and eventually just gave into it. But really either, or both, could be true.

@SpeedRunRocks Kirby Super Star is my favorite Kirby game and that game is still cute and has soft spots like Kirby feeding baby birds and healing his friends 😘