Looking back on 2011's Fortune Street (or 'Boom Street' for those in Europe) today feels like a fever dream. A Wii board game starring Mario & co. that isn't Mario Party? One that's published by Nintendo but developed by Square Enix? And also features a handful of familiar faces from the Dragon Quest series? Sounds like something you'd find in a nasty AI-generated mash-up, no?
Fortunately (heh), Fortune Street was anything but. Sure, the crossover never quite reached the heights of the Mario Party series, but the bonkers board game has still managed to build up quite the following in the years since — even grabbing the attention of some rather talented modders.
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Clearly not content with the lack of Pink Puffball content, modder RyanDCB took matters into his own hands and tweaked Square Enix's Wii board game to be a little... pinker (thanks for the heads up, GamingReinvented).
Introducing 'Kirby Street', a Fortune Street mod that puts Kirby and friends front and centre. RyanDCB started work on the project last year and, 26 new characters and 18 unique boards later, we'd be lying if we said that we weren't impressed. We've added a full trailer above, but look! It even has its own cover art!
All of the original Fortune Street boards are still present and correct, but with all of the new assets and animations, this is quite the mod to behold. Heck, even the Mii characters have some fresh Kirby-themed accessories.
Kirby's official board game adventures have previously been limited to little-known Wendy's tie-ins, but the mod is so well made that we're scratching our heads wondering why Nintendo hasn't put some of the Kirby crew into a dice-rolling design before — if there's a big enough cast of characters to fill a racer, surely a board game wouldn't struggle.
Now that we think about it, it's been a while since we've seen a new Kirby game come our way. There was a time when it felt like you couldn't go six months without that round little guy making a Direct appearance, but it's approaching two years since Return to Dream Land Deluxe landed on Switch. All eyes on that rumoured Planet Robobot port, then.