Folks, “Kirby’s Adventure” kicks ass.

This is easily one of the best games on the NES, in the same way “Dream Land 2” is one of the best on the Game Boy (you can read my retrospective below — hint, hint).

The Kirby Khronicles: Revisiting Dream Land On The Game Boy

I had no clue that playing every single Kirby game in order was going to, right off the bat, deliver the goods. The soundtrack originated here, the colors started here (Kirby could have been yellow and not pink, no thanks to Miyamoto), the mini-games are here, and, of course ,this is the start of the central conceit of the entire series: Absorbing enemies and sucking up their powers to transform.

The entire Kirby experience is all on the original Nintendo, which is NOT something I knew ahead of time.

I always figured that these early games were like the original “Dream Land” where you just swallow apples and shoot out stars — much more simplistic. But no, I was dead wrong in my blind assumptions as “Adventure” holds up so well. It’s no wonder they remade this game over and over.

The formula is perfect, the vibes are immaculate, and you even get fun interstitial skits and dancing clones after you beat a level. The anxiety-inducing doors within doors design is gone here, but it doesn’t sacrifice complexity in any way. There are still plenty of secrets to discover, depth to the combat, and variety to the worlds.

Hell, even the boss battles were fun as shit. Innovative, inviting, not a cake walk, and it makes all the sense in the world to carry over some of them into later games. They figured out everything with this one, and it was a pure joy to experience for the first time.

My very first Kirby game was on the SNES with “Super Star,” which will come up in a later edition of this series. I thought maybe they took a few years to refine Kirby to where he had so many different game modes and powers to choose from, but no, the first one knocked it out of the park on the first go for consoles.

The only problem with this game is the lag. There are some major frame drops constantly, and it seems like even emulated on my Switch 2 ,there was nothing stopping this game from chugging along when things got busy. When there were too many enemies on screen, when you fly up in a vertical scrolling level, really any time the game felt like it, things would slow down to a crawl.

But if you’ve never played “Kirby’s Adventure,” give it a try! It’s fantastic, and made me much more excited to actually go through this experiment, which could have been a real slog for all I knew.

I suspect things might trend that way with some of the NES/SNES spin-offs coming up, as they were more placeholder gaps between mainline titles. Kirby as a pinball, Kirby as a golf ball, Kirby… ripping off “Puyo Puyo.” Things are going to get weird for our puffy friend soon, and I cannot wait.

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Image credit: “Kirby’s Adventure,” Hal Labs