Kirby's Dream Land 2 gets the deluxe treatment

Post 00040 | June 06th 2023

I have been playing Kirby and the Forgotten Land in between Tears of the Kingdom sessions. It's a true return to form for the series and it has reminded me how much I loved the classic games. It might have been because of this that I was very excited when I saw a romhack for Kirby's Dream Land 2 had recently been released; A romhack that brings full colorisation to one of my favourite entries in the series.

I've already covered Wario Land Color Edition here on TokiMemo; An attempt at remastering a monochrome Game Boy game by adding code to take advantage of the Game Boy Color's enhanced colour palate. Wario Land is in no way the only game that has received this treatment - In fact there are a handful of "DX" romhacks available, with "DX" being the naming convention Nintendo used for their own Color enhanced titles at the time. The game I'd be looking at today is 1995 title Kirby's Dream Land 2.

Kirby's Dream Land 2 is the kind of Game Boy game you wouldn't think possible when you look at the spec sheet of hardware - How the hell do they manage to run this on a 4 Mhz processor?? The game follows HAL Labratory's mascot Kirby on his quest to save Dream Land from Dark Matter who has taken control of King Dedede. It's a solid platformer covered in cuteness much like its two predecessors, the original Dream Land and Kirby's Adventure that released on the NES. However, while Kirby's Dream Land was pretty basic compared to Kirby's Adventure, Dream Land 2 manages to build upon its predecessors and exceed them, despite the inferior hardware.

Kirby's Dream Land consisted of four levels that you can play through in two difficulty levels. While this in itself is pretty bare-bones, more noticeable is the complete lack of Kirby's defining copy ability. Kirby can suck in enemies and spit them out, but if he swallows he won't learn its abilities. This ability wasn't added before Kirby's Adventure. The level selection was also greatly expanded in this sequel. It featured multiple worlds that allowed you to visit a total of about forty levels, ten times the original. It seemed like HAL was able to use the more mature and powerful hardware of the NES to its fullest to overcome the limitations of the Game Boy.

It must have raised some eyebrows when the next game in the series, Kirby's Dream Land 2 returned to the Game Boy. Would a return to the more limited hardware also be a return to more limited gameplay? Thankfully, no. The overworld persists in Dream Land 2, with seven levels to choose from. The copy ability also makes a return, and while there aren't as many copy abilities, the game's new selling points more than makes up for it.

The highlight of the game however is without the doubt Kirby's new animal friends. Kirby can team up with Rick the hamster, Coo the owl, or Kine the fish. They all control differently, with Rick not sliding on ice, Coo being able to fly and Kine being able to swim faster. That's not all however; Whatever ability Kirby has copied will work differently with each animal friend. For instance, Kirby's spark ability will allow Rick to fire a beam whip, allow Coo shoot a bolt of lightning, while Kine will shoot light bulbs from its mouth! With seven different abilities this means there are a total of twenty-eight unique control styles in the game!

Kine often serves as the comedic one of the animal friends. When Kirby has the spark ability, Kine will have light bulbs hanging out from its mouth. It can light dark areas or be spat out as a projectile.

Of course, good controls means little if the rest game isn't fun to play. Predictably, Kirby's Dream Land 2 is cute and joyful game much like it's two predecessors. It is by no means a difficult game, but with the amount of polish you can tell that developers wanted to show off all the cool things they'd made - and who can blame them? The graphics and music are some of the best you will see on the system.

The romhack only enhances this. I have always loved the colour palate of the Game Boy Color and in this romhack, kkzero manages to take full advantage of it. Colours pop without looking gaudy. No matter if you've never played it before or if you have beaten it a number of times, you owe it to yourself to give Kirby's Dream Land 2 DX a go.

While the game is pretty easy, in order to beat the game 100% and get the true ending, each world has a Rainbow Drop for Kirby to collect. In the later stages this does become quite challenging.

The patch for the romhack is available for download on romhacking.net - A big thank you to kkzero for taking his time to make this!