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Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Return of Egg Catcher: Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - This seems like a return worth doing.

In about five weeks, Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe will release on the Nintendo Switch for $60. That's $10 more than what Kirby's Return to Dream Land sold at over a decade ago on the Wii, and $40 more than what it normally sold at when Kirby's Return to Dream Land was ported to the Wii U's Nintendo eShop. Yet despite its availability and positive reception, I never got it. That makes this return to the return appealing to me.

For the past month or so, I've secretly been obsessed with the Egg Catcher sub-game from Kirby's Adventure. It was by far the best of the three sub-games there. And I'm pleased that Nintendo has announced that one of the many NEW features to Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe is Merry Magoland, a super-charged collection of sub-games in a park ran by Magolor that features stamps and its own series-referencing souvenir shop. While the original only has two sub-games, the deluxe version has... TEN! And most of these are returning from previous games in the series that I may or may not have played. But among the returning crew is... EGG CATCHER!



How does this compare to Egg Catcher from Kirby's Adventure, which unlike many other sub-games in the series, has never been in another game besides Kirby's Adventure, not even Kirby's Adventure's own remake, Kirby Nightmare in Dream Land? Take a look at my own footage and a way to very quickly play Egg Catcher on your own Nintendo Switch right now:



If you are a Nintendo Switch Online subscriber (or are part of a Family Group like KoopaTV's staff are), you can access the Nintendo Entertainment System emulator on the Switch at no additional cost. This gives you access to two different Kirby's Adventures: regular and SP (Special). If you go to Special, you can access its three sub-games, boss rush, and in-game OST right away since it's pre-unlocked. This also gives you access to Egg Catcher and its three difficulty modes.

My video above has me fail Egg Catcher in the highest Challenging difficulty, but even Easy difficulty can be troublesome. Easy is certainly much faster and difficult than the speed that King Dedede's robot is tossing eggs and bombs in the above clip of Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe. Maybe because it's a robot and not the real King Dedede, with all of the PASSION that you can't program into a robot. Or perhaps Egg Catcher in Kirby's Return to Dream Land also has a range of difficulty levels, and its Easy mode is actually easy. Perhaps the highest difficulty in the new mode will be comparable to Challenging in Kirby's Adventure... or even more menacing. I'm pretty sure that in Kirby's Adventure, eggs and bombs are thrown in the same order and timing every single time within that difficulty level, so if Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe mixes up that timing at all instead of it being pre-determined (though, since it's a robot, robots are always deterministic if you know their seed function), then it may already be a challenge if the speed gets higher.


Egg Catcher in Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe robo mecha Dedede
Sure, you can play Egg Catcher on the NES game. But it won't be as pretty as Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe.
And you won't get stamps. What do stamps do? I dunno. Probably something better than points and 1-Ups in Kirby's Adventure.


Sub-games like Checkerboard Chase, the best gameplay experience of Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, are also returning. (You can also play Checkerboard Chase immediately on any copy of Kirby 64, which is also available for Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscribers, or those who are part of an Expansion Pack-enabled Family Group like KoopaTV's staff are.) They also have Samurai Kirby from Kirby Super Star and a modified version of it, Samurai Kirby 100, which lets you fight 100 dudes’ online records at once. Which brings me to an important note...

Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe features extensive local multiplayer, including during its actual story campaign, but no online multiplayer. It's listed as single system 1–4 players, just like the Wii version was. If that's going to stop you from getting the game, well, it's important we get that fact out of the way now. While Egg Catcher is a single-player sub-game, Samurai Kirby and Checkerboard Chase are best enjoyed with other people. And you can play them with other people over the Internet through Nintendo Switch Online right now. That might sound like an anti-endorsement, though currently I'm not even sure how I feel about this!

If you're worried that all the added goodies to Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe are for (local) multiplayer, you should also know that two new Copy Abilities not seen in the series are coming: Sand and Mecha. It's unknown why Mecha Kirby wasn't a thing introduced in Kirby: Planet Robobot, but I'm interested in seeing (and experiencing) how these will play out!



Ludwig thinks you should try playing Egg Catcher on Challenging difficulty on your first take and see how well you do before you think about making fun of his performance. Anyway, Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe is actually the game he is most looking forward to in 2023, which is probably indicative of something bad. It is also certainly subject to change.


He played the game's demo and wrote about it.
The third level of Egg Catcher is significantly more difficult than the first level!
Ludwig made his own videogame heavily inspired by Egg Catcher: Fire Withdraw. Play it here!

4 comments :

  1. You and I are in the same boat as I too never got the original Return to Dreamland. I preordered the game and eagerly await it's release and subsequent arrival. This Egg catching mini game did look boatloads easier than adventures, but I'd wager this is probably only the first round and it gets harder and faster as the game goes on. It should also be considered that the switches screen is significantly bigger than the 3DS's and so (combined with more empty space) the game looks slower than it probably actually is. I imagine most people played the egg catching mini game most recently on their 3DS's, even if Kirbys adventure is now on the switch. Although it would be nice to see some data on which games in Nintendo NES/SNES/Etc. receive the most playtime among the total audience of online subscribers. How many subscribe just for online play and don't give a hoot about the older games, probably more than we think.

    I actually had not heard of the Sand ability so i am looking forward to that, but all i can imagine is more of the Water/Poison moveset. Calling it now, the dash attack is gonna be Kirby riding on a sand wave just like water and poison and their corresponding water/poison waves.

    I want more RoboDeDeDe, apparently there is one in Dream Course but i haven't gotten there yet. The game is really hard, even with save state abuse.

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    Replies
    1. You keep mentioning the 3DS; personally, I've only played Kirby's Adventure on the Wii and the Switch. My video embedded in the article is... obviously from the Nintendo Switch Online version of Kirby's Adventure, and it absolutely is way faster in the original than what the Twitter clip portrays of Return to Dream Land Deluxe.

      Sand I'm hoping references Dale Gribble's "pocket sand!" in some way.

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    2. I didn't know you liked King of the hill. Just remember you "Don't give a toy without batteries" in it. Even if that toy is a gun, so says Cotton Hill

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    3. https://twitter.com/NintendoUK/status/1616480677456650240

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