Kirby Blitz: Kirby’s Dream Course (SNES)

Mini golf is a wonderful fit for the video game world, the already oddball layouts and designs able to be exaggerated even further when the only limits of a course’s design is the creator’s imagination. The Kirby series already had its protagonist turn into a ball in one of his games, so slotting him into sports titles wasn’t too hard to conceive, and his special ability of taking on the powers of enemies he defeats can actually twist mini golf into an even more gimmicky direction.

The first thing a player needs to know going into Kirby’s Dream Course is that its goals are a bit different from regular golf. When you enter a course, the hole has not even appeared yet. Instead, the player actually somewhat gets to determine where the hole will appear, as the true objective of each level in Kirby’s Dream Course is to defeat the enemies to make the hole appear where the final enemy was. Already, this mechanic requires a different approach then a traditional golf course, as the player has to aim to hit multiple points around the level before sinking their shot and this is why, despite being clearly based on golf, Kirby’s Dream Course actually feels more like a puzzle game with golf mechanics.

For the single player experience, there are eight courses, each with eight holes to clear. Just like golf you are still aiming to finish them in as few swings as possible, earning medals if you can get extremely low scores that can unlock the Extra courses, which are just the same hole layouts but with the enemies repositioned to make them require a different approach. Most levels are fairly small, the challenge not being to hit the ball far but to expertly navigate it around the area to hit the required baddies. When you take your initial swing, you get to choose how you aim or curve the ball and if you want to chip it to help get it over walls or across gaps. After that, Kirby curls up into a ball, the player needing to time their button presses correctly to determine the strength of the shot and how much spin is on it to determine its bounce if it is a flying shot. Once the ball is launched, your influence on it hasn’t completely ended. For the most part its course will follow the expected rules, bouncing off walls and rolling down ramps, but by pressing a button, you can keep it moving a bit longer or give its bounces more oomph. This won’t really make up for a bad initial swing, but it can allow the ball to reach further or keep moving for a longer time. This influence is admittedly minor in the grand scheme, but the major change Kirby’s Dream Course makes to the mini golf formula comes from Kirby’s iconic ability to copy the powers of his enemies.

Kirby can get 10 special abilities in Kirby’s Dream Course, able to carry one at a time and use them once per level. By rolling into an enemy with a power, Kirby will gain it immediately, and its even possible to chain together multiple powers in the span of one level, using one to go grab another. Each of the powers has a unique effect on your golf game, opening up new opportunities on the courses and allowing the area design to get even more creative in response. If you want to come to a sudden stop while rolling, the Stone power up will immediately slam you down, but if you want to stick to a ramp, Needle is your better bet. For a burst of speed, Burning will launch you forward, but Wheel will keep you moving until you hit a wall. Freeze can turn water hazards into ice so you can move across it safely, and Spark can get rid of some of the peskier obstacle-like enemies who block your path but aren’t required to beat for level completion. Some copy powers that weren’t too exciting in the main Kirby series actually prove incredibly useful here, with Hi-Jump allowing you to leap once to gain height with a boost to your momentum to boot, and the traditionally chaotic Tornado power instead allows you to control your movement more than usual in Kirby’s Dream Course. The puzzle of every hole grows more complex with the introduction of these powers, many holes requiring them to get the lowest score. You might need to drift around in the air with Parasol to hit flying enemies, or maybe you’ll need to pilot the rare UFO power properly so that the hole appears in the right place, and in some stages, the chain of powers needed to get a hole in one requires expert timing and a smart starting shot. Kirby’s Dream Course could be an insanely fun golf game with these gimmicks added to the formula, but there is one problem that gets in the way of the experience, that being how you tackle each course.

In a single-player golf game, you can select one of eight courses or their Extra versions once you’ve got gold medals in the regular versions, but the gold medals require you to play an excellent game across those courses. The problem is, the courses require quite a lot of precision and don’t give you easy means to improve at them. While almost every hole can be beaten in one or two strokes, it requires a lot of knowledge on how the physics work and how to influence them properly in that level’s layout. To practice, all you can do is play the full eight holes of a course, meaning that if one hole really gives you trouble and it’s one of the later holes, you’ll have to play that whole course over and over to even get the chance to practice that hole. You can eventually unlock the Map Select to get to individual holes… which requires you to have already mastered them all enough to earn medals in the Extra courses, thus eliminating the practice potential of such an option. If you think you can just take it easy on the other holes of a course in the lead up to a hard hole though, you’ll notice quickly that there is a health and lives system to Kirby’s Dream Course. Every swing uses a bit of your health as represented by tomatoes, and while playing well will prevent you from running out, you can conceivably run out and die, and losing all your lives means the course needs to be restarted. As said this shouldn’t crop up if you’re careful in regular play, but it pairs poorly with a structure that makes practicing tedious.

Another issue here is that getting the best results on a hole often requires not just proper aim but proper execution. A puzzle-inclined player may be able to figure out the physics and methods to complete a course optimally, but then your execution relies on timed button presses, and a player good at timing their button presses might not be able to spot the optimal route for low scores. Kirby’s Dream Course would be so much better if you could tackle each hole individually in a practice mode so that a player can figure out the puzzle and timing angles and then hopefully execute them in the main single-player mode, but instead they only get brief brushes with levels that are hard to repeat. The golf design here has a lot of potential to please both puzzle game fans and golfers looking for something kooky and complex, but it’s just not set up properly to allow its tight design to shine.

Things do change when you boot up two-player though, and as odd as it might seem, it plays in a very different way that honestly proves to be the more enjoyable experience. In fact, the single-player and the game as a whole probably could have benefited from embracing the design decisions used here rather than the demanding puzzle designs it presents as its main appeal. In two-player, there are unfortunately only four courses and their Extra mode rearrangements, each course based around one of the enemy-obstacles that you don’t need to defeat to make the hole appear. In two-player, as odd as this might sound, the amount of strokes you take isn’t important. Instead, these compact levels are filled with enemies who turn into stars when defeated, and players aim to claim more stars on a hole before someone manages to sink the shot that ends the level. Players can steal points from each other by rolling into the stars and changing them to their color, and the powers here can even be used aggressively to mess up where the other player’s ball has landed or make them miss their turn at taking a swing. You aren’t able to swing your ball around willy-nilly though, as the health system returns from single-player and actually earns its spot better here. If you use up your health, Kirby needs to take a break, giving up a stroke and possibly allowing the other player to get ahead. You can also lose health to falling off the course or through the other player’s interference, meaning you can potentially sabotage a player to make them miss a turn and give yourself an edge there as well.

Two-player mode’s design has all the course design complexity and variety offered by the copy powers without the stringent structure that makes practice difficult. Sure, you can’t access individual levels in multiplayer, but that’s not as meaningful when the amount of strokes you take isn’t being tallied up. Instead, it’s a battle between you and the other player with even more considerations to make than in single-player. Conceivably, you and a player can spend as long as you like on a hole, but sinking the shot does come with a two star point bonus and some health restored to your Kirby. If you’re behind on stars though, you can move around the map stealing them, trying to stay ahead of your opponent before moving onto the next hole. Whoever has the most stars at the end of the eight hole course wins, and even if you lose a few holes quite badly, comebacks aren’t rare if you change your goals for the upcoming holes. This more competitive and active golf battle is an even further departure from Kirby’s Dream Course’s mini golf roots, but since the main game doesn’t offer individual holes up for practice, this mode is both more forgiving to experimentation and less frustrating since a bad shot doesn’t necessarily doom your run.

THE VERDICT: Kirby’s Dream Course is a mini golf game with wonderful mechanics that are hurt by the structure of the experience. Every hole is a complex puzzle that requires proper aim, proper button timing, and intelligent use of the copy powers that add an interesting and involved new layer to play, but the game expects you to execute these expertly in straight shots through eight courses without giving you a convenient means to practice or experiment with your approach. You can play through and beat the game easily enough, but getting better scores isn’t supported well by needing to play the entire course again to learn problem holes. The multiplayer manages to avoid these issues and truly shows the potential of the mechanics and level design, changing things away from sinking shots in the fewest strokes into a battle to earn the most points with strategies like stealing points from the other player. If the main game had the same focus as the multiplayer it would be a more unique and less strict experience befitting a traditionally forgiving but fun series, but despite holding you back from bettering your golf game, Kirby’s golf adventure still mixes its copy powers, course layouts, and swing mechanics well.

And so, I give Kirby’s Dream Course for the Super Nintendo…

A GOOD rating. If more of the game’s focus had been on the multiplayer, this could have been even better, but the focus of Kirby’s Dream Course is on its single-player experience. The levels in single-player are well-executed puzzle designs, but the demands of golf placed on them make it a bit hard to get invested in the game, as you would be forced to repeat other holes to even properly retry a difficult one. Figuring out just how to launch Kirby and use the powers to get a hole-in-one is immensely satisfying though and the mechanics are both varied and consistent enough that it can be possible to do really well your first time at a hole. Timed button presses can add a bit of variance, but if you aren’t too concerned about a best possible score, Kirby’s Dream Course is a serviceable and gimmicky mini-golf game, one that is pushed into being better by an engaging multiplayer mode that involves active competition between two players as they can steal from or interfere with each other quite easily and without having to worry too much about how many strokes it takes to win.

Kirby’s Dream Course comes recommended more as a multiplayer experience than a single-player one only because the main game is hurt by its rigid structure. If you could tackle the holes one by one instead of in the course structure, this could have been a unique puzzle game, but for all its breaks away from golf and the new ideas it adds, the few things it upholds impede its ability to see its ideas to their full potential. Kirby’s Dream Course is essentially a good game that resists being better, having all the ingredients it needs to be fun and enjoyable and just not laying them out properly to be best enjoyed.