 A few days ago I'd looked at Kirby's Dream Land 3, and while it was a good game, I wasn't all that impressed, I was expecting more. Kirby Super Star, on the other hand, is the go-to Kirby game on the Super Nintendo, and one of the best games on the system. It essentially consists of seven different games, and a ton of sub-games, if that makes sense. It's certainly a unique approach, it's pretty refreshing actually, compared to just a straight ahead sequel like Kirby's Dream Land 3 was. The first game is Spring Breeze, a streamlined remake of Kirby's Dream Land for Game Boy. The second game is Dino Blade, featuring four standard platforming levels leading up to a one-on-one boss fight against this big bird thing that looks like something out of the Mega Man X series. Game number three is Gourmet Race, where you race against King Dedede while collecting as much food as possible. The fourth game is the Great Cave Offensive. This has Kirby exploring caves for 60 hidden treasures with all sorts of goofy references thrown in. There is Revenge of the Meta Knight, which features a set of story-driven levels that need to be completed within a time limit. There's the Arena, a 19 round boss run where you try to complete on one life. And finally, there's Milky Way Wishes, the largest game here, and probably the most difficult. Again, this is mostly straightforward platforming here, with the twist being that instead of absorbing an enemy's power, Kirby can now permanently obtain it and switch from several of them. So that's pretty cool. It should be noted also that throughout pretty much any game, Kirby can exchange his absorbed power for a helper guy that can be controlled by a second player if you want. Now that is awesome. But as you can see, the core gameplay here is pretty much the same. Throughout most of these games, it's just that the objectives are different, and yeah, it comes across as kind of a cop-out at first, like, what's the big deal if the basic gameplay is going to be pretty much the same anyway? But I see it the same way I look at Super Mario World or Super Metroid, for instance. Those games offer multiple ways to approach them just within the basic confines of regular gameplay. You can speedrun, you can go for 100% completion, beat the game without special items, or whatever. If Super Star is the same way, it just has its own built-in structure. If you're more of a speedrun guy, there's Gourmet Race and Revenge of Meta Knight. If you're a completist, there's stuff like the Great Cave Offensive. And if you just like the typical Kirby platforming action, there's plenty of that here too. Of course it also helps that the platforming here is fantastic, an ideal progression from the Game Boy and NES games. It's on par with Super Mario World and Yoshi's Island. Very polished and reliably consistent, the enemy design and level layouts ensure that everything is always fast-paced and pleasantly chaotic. Not slow and dull, like Kirby's Dreamland 3. One minor thing I really admire about this game is that it has a built-in learning curve, so to speak. The first two games, Spring Breeze and Dynablade, are pretty dang easy, so it allows you to get comfortable with the gameplay. The difficulty slowly ramps up after that, peaking with the last game, Milky Way Wishes. Not that this game is really that hard, but still. I thought that was kind of clever. In fact, if you have a young child that you want to get into Super Nintendo, Kirby's Superstar would be my go-to choice for that. And that's not to say this game is just for kids. Kirby's Superstar is immensely entertaining, offering many, many different ways to approach the usual Kirby game mechanics, from speedruns to boss fights to exploring. Not only other the games I listed, but there's tons of other minigames buried in here too, like Samurai Kirby and Megaton Punch. Kirby's Superstar is available on the Wii and Wii U Virtual Console, and if you haven't played it yet, you're missing out on one of the most entertaining, bang for your buck games ever made.