Kirby’s Dream Land for the Game Boy is the first game ever released in the long-running Kirby series. It was developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo themselves in 1992.

Kirby’s Dream Land is a simple platform adventure, but with lots of detail and charm. Kirby himself is full of character and has various abilities to help him win. He can gulp in air, which allows him to fly. He can swallow an enemy, and either spit it out as a projectile or gulp it down to finish it off. He can also pick up certain power-ups (often disguised as food) to give himself temporary abilities. For example: eating the curry will give Kirby temporary fire breath!

The game was designed to make it as easy to play for newcomers as possible, but it also contained elements for more advanced players (such as an unlockable hard mode, and the ability to edit Kirby‘s HP (Hit Points)).

Kirby’s Dream Land is relatively short. There are five large levels to explore in total, each with a boss fight at the end. And – at the very end of the game – there is a “boss rush”, where Kirby has to fight all the previous bosses before taking on the final boss himself.

To date, Kirby’s Dream Land has sold more then five million copies worldwide, but the most important thing about the game is that it introduced Kirby to the world. Later games in the series would develop the character and gameplay ideas much more. The NES and Super Nintendo versions reprised some of the levels, bosses and ideas from this game, except in colour and with even more detail.

And Nintendo still makes Kirby games now – the last one released (at the time of writing), was Kirby Star Allies for the Nintendo Switch in 2018.

More: Kirby’s Dream Land on Wikipedia