Kirby

   

This page is about the video game character; for other meanings, see Kirby (disambiguation).

Kirby exhaling, in the first level of Kirby's Adventure, Famicom/NES
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Kirby exhaling, in the first level of Kirby's Adventure, Famicom/NES

Kirby (Japanese: カービィ) is a character in a series of video games published by Nintendo for their video game consoles and handheld video game systems over the years. He has been the star of a number of namesake games which were developed by HAL Laboratory. Kirby has also became a popular anime character as well in the recent years.

Kirby is a small, pink, round ball-shaped character with large feet and small arms. He is a fantasy character and as such is not intended to "be" anything, although this is still the source of some humorous speculation, similar to that surrounding McDonlads' Grimace character. Kirby's color has been the source of some confusion: the box art of Kirby's Dream Land erroneously depicted Kirby as being white, and it has been suggested that Shigeru Miyamoto wanted to make Kirby yellow. Ultimately, Kirby's creator Masahiro Sakurai insisted upon pink. It should be noted that all three of these colors would be depicted as white on the Game Boy, the platform on which Kirby made his first appearance.

Kirby is an oddly heroic resident of Dream Land, on the planet of Popstar or Pop Star (varyingly spelled with a space). The cute, peaceful residents of Dream Land often find themselves being terrorized by some form of evil creature, who Kirby must venture out to defeat.

Kirby's signature ability is to "suck up" enemies with his big mouth and swallow them, stealing their powers. Kirby games feature an enormous variety of powers to gain. Swallowing one enemy may grant him the power to shoot needles from his body, another may allow him to become a spinning wheel or a fireball.

In later games Kirby was assisted in his quest by three animal friends, Coo the owl, Rick the hamster, and Kine the fish.

King Dedede

The character Dedede or DDD is somewhat bad, yet somewhat good to Kirby. He is commonly portrayed as a bad guy, but at other times, he does good deeds, as in Kirby's Adventure.

Dream Land monsters

Games

Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land cartridge
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Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land cartridge

Kirby has also made cameo apperances in other Nintendo games, such as The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening.

Screenshot of Kirby after copying Mr. Game & Watch in Super Smash Bros. Melee
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Screenshot of Kirby after copying Mr. Game & Watch in Super Smash Bros. Melee

Anime and manga

Kirby stars in his own anime titled Hoshi no Kaabii ("Kirby of the Stars"). It is currently licensed in North America by 4Kids under the title Kirby: Right Back at Ya! and is airing on the Fox Box (since 2002, heading to its 60th episode) via Chubu-Nippon Broadcasting Company (since 2001 which has done 100 episodes). It is produced by Nintendo and HAL Laboratories.

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

The story tells how Kirby's star ship was lands close to Cappytown, where he meets his new buddies Tiff, and Tuff. Fololo and Falala was separated from Fofa when Kirby was too late to stop that Dreamland monster. The bad guys, Dark Matter, Dedede, Escargoon, and monster-creator NME were trying to capture Kirby with his monsters, but many of these attempts had failed. The reason is that Kirby sucks up with making some abilitites to capture and defeat Nightmare Enterprises' monsters.

Kirby also starred in his own manga series, which was never released outside Japan and is virtually unknown among English-speakers.

External links




ja:カービィ de:Kirby

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