What’s fascinating about this particular video is the history behind the game’s creation. At first, you might think that all the ideas came from Sakurai, as he was the game’s director. But he noted himself this wasn’t the case. For example, one of the fundamental gameplay mechanics in Kirby Super Star was the two-player system. Something that the Kirby franchise had never done before. This request came from Shigeru Miyamoto himself, who wanted to do this with his Mario franchise but couldn’t figure out how to make it work. So he got Sakurai to do it with his.
“Kirby moves slower than Mario, though, so you should be able to figure it out, right?”
Sakurai stated in the video how much pressure he was under to fulfill the wish of the legend, and he did all he could to make it work and be fun to play. Thus came the creation of the “helper” system. There would only be one Kirby, but the second player got to be an enemy character on Kirby’s side. To solve the screen issue of one person pulling on the other, Sakurai had to get creative. The game would focus solely on Kirby, and if the 2nd player got too far off-screen, they’d pop back in without missing a beat. A clever workaround.
A fascinating tidbit that this led to was the creation of the “Kirby Hats.” Every time Kirby absorbs an ability, he wears a unique “hat” that indicates what power he has. That wasn’t in the first two games but came in Kirby Super Star and stuck throughout the rest of the franchise. But, as Sakurai reveals, this became a problem for him when he made Super Smash Bros. Why? Because Kirby has a lot of hats in that game!
Finally, in the SNES game, the main game also had a bunch of short mini-games that players could try out. That may seem odd when looking back, but Sakurai made it clear that it was intentional. He called the other modes the “Omnibus” of the game. Sakurai wanted them because many video games were expanding into long-term forms of play, so there weren’t many “short titles” to experience. Kirby Super Star fixed that, and he was happy with it. You can watch the full video below!
https://youtu.be/PkeETXCSn5M
Source: YouTube
