#10: Kirby’s Return to Dream Land – Nintendo Wii (2011)
Here’s where the fun really begins – Kirby’s Return to Dream Land is the first entirely original main series game directed by the current series director, Shinya Kumazaki, who began his tenure as director with Kirby Super Star Ultra. Under Kumazaki’s supervision, Kirby games returned to the very start of the series, took the classic formula that made the series a hit to begin with and expanded upon it by introducing new concepts, such as enhanced power ups in the form of Super Abilities, as well as placing greater focus on the background lore of the series, specifically its bosses and villains.
The game opens to show Kirby enjoying a sunny day with his friends. Kirby, King Dedede and Bandana Dee seem to playing tag with a piece of cake while Meta Knight reads a book on a grassy hill at the side of the road, a butterfly perched on a nearby flower to keep him company. Suddenly, a hole opens up in the sky, and from it emerges a huge starship, rapidly descending as several chunks of the craft fall off and fly away before it crash lands in the distance. King Dedede wastes no time in chasing after the ship, and the rest of the gang follows him.
Once inside the ship, Kirby comes face to face with the unconscious pilot, who introduces himself as Magolor after waking up. While not explicitly confirmed in the opening cutscene, Magolor seems to be some kind of excavator, native to the planet Halcandra. As it happens, he had just retrieved the ship he arrived in, the Lor Starcutter, from a volcano on his homeworld when he was attacked by the volcano’s guardian, Landia, forcing him to flee to Pop Star. Fortunately for Magolor, Kirby and co. agree to recover the Lor’s missing parts and Energy Spheres that will restore the ship’s functions and allow it to take Magolor home, with Magolor promising to take the friends on a trip to Halcandra as a way of showing his gratitude.
Once the crew arrive on Halcandra, however, the Lor is attacked by Landia once again. Thankfully the ship survives a second crash landing without losing its parts again, but Magolor knows that as long as Landia is a threat, the Lor can’t take to the skies again, so he asks that Kirby do one more favour for him and defeat Landia so he can get them back to Pop Star safely.
After defeating Landia, Magolor comes to personally congratulate Kirby, casually picking up the crown that Landia wore while revealing his plan. Magolor had actually manipulated Kirby and his friends into beating Landia so he could claim the Master Crown, a potent relic said to give its wearer the power to control the universe. With all this explained, Magolor quickly warps away to another dimension, taking the Lor with him as he begins his universal conquest with Pop Star. Unfortunately for Magolor, however, Landia wasn’t completely down for the count. Picking itself up, now as four small Landias, each with one of the original’s four heads, the mighty dragon prompts Kirby and his allies to take flight through Magolor’s portal and give chase, which the gang does without hesitation.
After a couple of bouts with Magolor and the Lor, the Halcandrian becomes corrupted and transforms once more into a gooey entity that somewhat resembles Dark Matter and Zero, even sporting an eyeball in his mouth. Of course, grotesque new forms only make Kirby’s victory more assured, and the gang quickly defeat Magolor once and for all, with the dimension around them breaking up as he fades away into a blinding white light (don’t worry though, he gets better). Kirby and co. are retrieved by the four Landias and taken safely back to Pop Star, with the dragons bidding Kirby farewell as they take the Lor back to Halcandra to resume their duty of protecting the planet’s artifacts.
As you can see from the size of this entry alone, Return to Dream Land is where the series really started to focus on its lore, packing its stories with tons of details and world building for Kirby’s universe. Heck, this synopsis doesn’t even cover what Magalor tells Kirby in optional conversations, such as the implication that Halcandra’s ancients created NOVA and other machines like it, as well as powerful artefacts like the Star Rod. Although the 3DS games don’t pack quite so much narrative detail, Return to Dream Land definitely marked the start of a trend for the series.
Technically, Kirby’s Dream Course and Kirby’s Avalanche were both released before Kirby’s Dream Land 2 and both were directed by someone other than Masahiro Sakurai, though to be fair, they both started out as non-Kirby games.
Neat to see an official article over this. Lores over the Nintendo universe, especially that of Kirby, are always surprisingly interesting. There’s a lot more to these franchise, especially Kirby, than what the eyes see.