Tendo City

It's a great collection for those who missed out on some or all of the older Kirby games. While it doesn't have the "spinoff" titles, it has every main platformer Kirby game up to the N64, so excluding the Gameboy Advance on up.

So, it's got:

Kirby's Dreamland 1, 2 & 3
Kirby's Adventure
Kirby Super Star
Kirby 64

It also has some new "challenge mode" stages built with the engine from Return to Dreamland, a "history" of the franchise, and a few episodes of the cartoon.

The games aren't enhanced in any real way aside from adding "suspend" functionality. The games aren't ported either, rather they are emulated. The emulation is done well though, with one glaring exception. Each game has it's own border and is put into the proper aspect ratio from the start, notably unlike virtual console games downloaded from Nintendo's store. During each game, the "home" button also pulls up an option for a different manual for each game.

Kirby's Dreamland 2 is that exception I alluded to above. The game was a Gameboy game with Super Gameboy support. It was one of the few SGB games that actually did a really good job with the coloring. Stages had appropriate color schemes and stationary scenes like the opening, the little cartoons, and some boss fights had very good use of color. It also had a unique border and more notably had additional SNES quality sound effects added throughout the game.

Unfortunately, Nintendo made no attempt at all to emulate the Super Gameboy. I'm still rather surprised at this myself. The vast "history" both within the game and in the booklet packaged with the game bears no mention of this at all when talking about Dreamland 2. Further, all images on the box and in the booklets of the box art for Dreamland 2 seem to have the Super Gameboy logo edited out. Well, all except one glaring exception. The game's box art in the collection itself, that is within the game, still has the Super Gameboy logo. That's sure to confuse, but it's the sort of thing that's known to happen when manual makers and late comers putting finishing touches in the game itself like altering the Japanese box art to the US versions don't communicate.

So as it stands, I really don't get it. They know how to emulate SNES games and Gameboy games, so emulating SGB functionality should be feasible if they decided to put the effort into it. Most homebrew Gameboy emulators have SGB support too. Heck, I know they WERE able to emulate some SGB functionality in the N64 days because Pokemon Stadium was able to play Pokemon Red and Blue with their SGB color palettes and borders intact.

The thing is, it really does take away from the game. If you recall the Donkey Kong Country Gameboy Color port, imagine if all subsequent releases of that game only used THAT version. Yes, the gameplay is intact, and yes, it was an impressive feat when all they had was the power of the Gameboy Color, but it would take away from the experience knowing exactly what the game looked and sounded like on the SNES. Granted, it's not as drastic a difference as that, but it's notable especially to someone who primarily played those SGB supported games ON a SGB. To rub salt in the wound, the game takes place in the "Rainbow Islands" so the story itself refers to the SGB functionality and more notably color.

I wouldn't be running on and on about this except for the sheer strangeness of how Nintendo intends to whitewash the Super Gameboy out of existance on so many emulated SGB games rather than just put in the time and effort to properly emulate SGB functionality and go forward from there.

They still CAN do that work mind you. Ports of Kirby Star Stacker, Kirby Block Ball, and Mega Man V (GB) onto the 3DS could actually get the work done. In fact they could even go back and patch in the support for Donkey Kong (GB) and a handful of others (once the emulator's done, all that's left is testing and fine tuning to be sure it is working on other games). However, the Anniversary collection is stuck. It's on a static disk on a system that doesn't support patching (at least not easily) and nothing short of a reissue will fix the release of Dreamland 2. It's a sore missed opportunity to really show off how the game was meant to be played.

I put a lot of time into the SGB issue, but aside from this issue the rest of the collection really shines as brightly as they did when they first came out. Note "when they first came out", as it doesn't include the remade versions of Kirby's Adventure (Nightmare in Dreamland) or Kirby Super Star (Ultra), but it still is a FAR more substantial offering than Super Mario All-Stars was. As I said before, that particular game had no additional menu interface, simply launching directly into the emulated ROM, and didn't even use the best version of that ROM at that (the SNES later had Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World, which added Super Mario World to the list of games), and counts as one of the laziest cash grabs Nintendo has done in recent memory to me. This one is much better and has far more than just one game. I recommend it to Kirby fans and those who missed out on a lot of these gems.

Does it have a full-screen 4:3 mode, or do you play in an all-four-sides box?

Also, yeah, the missing SGB support continues to be extremely disappointing, I entirely agree. It's really, really stupid that they haven't bothered to program an SGB emulator. I'm sure they can do it.

But still, I own all six of these games for the original systems, but I'm very tempted anyway...

Not quite sure what you mean. If you are just asking if the Gameboy games are stretched to fit the top and bottom of the screen, then no, it keeps the same resolution as the Super Gameboy used, with borders on top and bottom as well as the sides. I understand that, as it prevents a rough image when the resolution doesn't fit. The NES, SNES, and N64 games display with borders only on the left and right as they fit the TV as is.

If you're asking if there's a mode to display the games in a stretched 16:9 ratio, then no, it will always play them in their proper 4:3 ratio with those left and right borders. The borders themselves can be turned into a black area instead of the custom Kirby artwork if you wish, but I don't think anyone would actually prefer to stretch out these games. It's certainly an improvement to me, but if you wanted to FORCE it, you could set the Wii's TV setting to 4:3 ratio and then it'll play those games in that ratio, without the borders, thus forcing the stretched image on a widescreen set.

Sure I'd love if they'd gone that extra All-Stars mile and actually remade all these games with modern 2D graphics, but this is still a VERY solid collection and much improved over Mario 25th Anniversary.

On a 4:3 TV. How does it look on a 4:3 TV.

If you set your Wii to 4:3 mode in the system settings, the game will display without borders except for the Gameboy games, which will have a border of the same size as the SGB provided.

Oh, okay. That's good, and certainly is how it should be. Some Wii games are 16:9 only, including several Kirby titles (Well, Epic Yarn technically supports 4:3, but it plays in widescreen only with a yarn border around it), DKCR, Xenoblade, Zelda SS, and such, so I wanted to be sure that this does have fullscreen as of course it should.

Really then, the one thing holding me back is how disappointing it is that Kirby 2 doesn't have SGB support. Sure, I have a SGB, but my Kirby 2 battery is dead... I could get it replaced, but that'd cost some money. My Kirby 3 battery is dead too; another reason to consider this.

Those are natively built around 16:9, unlike these which were originally made for 4:3 (and whatever ratio the GB is).

HDTVs are getting cheaper and cheaper. Pretty soon you should go ahead and get the upgrade. It's pretty much past the point where game developers have any real obligation to support 4:3 for anything other than ports of classic games these days. I mean you can keep the old set around for games of Duck Hunt as I do.

Oh yes, since you use 4:3 you may not know of this annoyance. Most Virtual Console games ignore the Wii's wide screen setting entirely. So it displays all stretched out on a wide screen set no matter what that setting is set to. In order to get around this, I'm forced to set my TV's setting to 4:3 mode instead. My HDTV is CRT, but on an LCD screen forcing it into true upscaled 4:3 is the only way to avoid all manner of pixellation originating from a forced fit that doesn't quite work, such as "stretch to fit" or other ungodly modes that artifact the hell out of otherwise perfectly clear images.

<img src="http://cdn.brawlinthefamily.keenspot.com/comics/2012-09-18-438-20thAnniversary.jpg" alt="Here's to 20 more years of unexpectedly horrifying imagery!">

Huh, VC games don't have optional borders? No, I didn't know that. What about Wii games? Do they all have 16:9 modes or something? The only time I've used my Wii on a widescreen TV is at my cousins'; I've played it there a couple of times, but they prefer stuff stretched (I do not, I always play original GB games with borders on my GBA, for instance, not stretched), so I didn't really take notice of the aspect ratio because we'd been playing older consoles stretched too.

All Wii games are developed for wide screen, every last one from Wii Sports to Smash Bros. Brawl to The Last Story to Madden 2012 to let's say "Rango" the game. This is also true of the main Wii OS, but again as I said, strangely not true for virtual console games, which all get stretched out unless you specifically force the TV into the right ratio. This is also an oddity of the 3DS, which "stretches out" DS games into a resolution that isn't a multiple of the DS resolution so there's serious artifacting instead of making the default action to shrink the games to their proper scale. The PSVita doesn't even give you a button code to play PSP games in the right ratio or resolution though, ALL PSP games will ALL have serious artifacting when played on that gorgeous screen. I think it's a mandate by Nintendo, which I'm fine with as having to deal with odd borders or having to switch TV modes on the occasional modern console game would be a little annoying. MS and Sony similarly require all 360 and PS3 games to be built around wide screen (more specifically in those two cases, at least 720). 4:3 modes are an afterthought. I thought I'd add one thing. While all the included retro games in the Kirby collection are displayed as they were originally released in 4:3 mode, the main interface itself (and by extension the added Return to Dreamland challenges) has two borders along the top and bottom to sort of squeeze that all in, which I know is annoying on an older display.

They're all built primarily with wide screen in mind, so I'd seriously consider picking up an HDTV set at some point when you can afford it since the Wii U will actually be an HD system (and as a result, if you don't have one, get ready to deal with unreadably small font on a standard TV as 360 players have had to deal with). There are a surprising number of 1080P LCD sets available at Walmart or Bestbuy or the like for around $300 if you wanted to look into it. I too put off getting one of these sets up until a few years back, but it's essentially a requirement now. Also, most HD sets have a VGA port so you could even hook up your PC to it and slap a dinner tray in front of your couch to enjoy PC gaming at much higher resomalutions.

(A warning: far too many HD sets have their initial settings entirely aweful. They "zoom" the image slightly for some reason, creating obvious pixelation artifacts only resolved by switching to "native" mode or whatever it will be called on your set, and they use brigher or "bluer" color settings than the native image actually uses, usually to seem "shinier" than the other TVs in the store but when you get home it just makes everything look unnatural. I'm basically saying you should play around with the TV settings until you find appropriate ones. The right setting to play classic 4:3 games may take a bit to find. You'll know you hit the right one when there's two very small black strips above and below the image as well as the wide black strips on the left and right. Anything else will make older video all pixelated, but THAT setting will actually perfectly scale up the older image to the right pixel to pixel ratio of the TV itself. All other settings are because casual audiences hate black borders FAR more than jagged artifacts (I can ignore them completely myself, as much as I ignore the bezel on the TV)