The Kirby Lands:
The History of a Game that Nobody Played - Part II
A Commentary by FnrrfYgmSchnish

Return to The Kirby Lands
Somewhere around the end of 1999, or possibly the beginning of 2000, I rediscovered my old notebook with pages upon pages of stat boxes for all kinds of enemies. Flipping through these old drawings, though they were pretty bad-looking compared to what I was capable of drawing then, somehow inspired me and once again, I went to work on the OHRRPGCE. In a matter of weeks, I drew all of the enemies in custom.exe's built-in graphics editor. Many of them turned out pretty bad-looking, but in the end I did manage to translate the vast majority of the enemies from the pages of my old RPG plans to sprite form. After that, I began to come up with a storyline. I didn't want Supernum to be the focus of the game this time--I'm not sure why, but I just didn't. But I most definitely did want Killer Kirby to take up the role of main villain once again. And I wanted to make a game populated with Numnums, Kirbys, and Blurbys, not the bland boring humans and generic fantasy monsters that had somehow infected Prophecy of the Numnums (I suspect that the easy availability of pre-made "bland boring humans and fantasy monsters" graphics in RPG Maker 95 was responsible for that) and even slightly influenced The Eight Orbs of Power.

So I went searching through my old notebooks again, and found one detailing the setting and several boss battles from my original unfinished OHRRPGCE game. I quickly decided to toss out most of the bosses from that game (which included a team of two different-sized Kirbys named "Micro Kirby" and "Macro Kirby," a machine that mass-produced clones of Geno from Super Mario RPG, and a blue humanoid lizard-monster of some sort named King Kabootik), but the overall setting was good, and it definitely worked for the game I was about to make. I went back to the Kirby Lands, and almost immediately a game started to develop.



The map of the Kirby Lands had a small kingdom in the northwest set aside for those Kirbys who were not under Killer Kirby's rule, and another in a mountainous area where Numnums lived. Originally, the Numnums had been overtaken by King Kabootik; this plot point was dropped, though Killer Kirby's conquering of the Num Kingdom sort of unintentionally mirrors it.



In the mountains north of Num Kingdom were Micro Kirby's house and the Ukku Sewers; the sewers made it through pretty much intact (I've noticed that sewer dungeons seem to be a recurring theme in my games...), while Micro's house was given a new paint job and rented out to Barney.



For some reason, Barney was always one of the most common villains in my early games (and even more so in my old Supernum stories, where there was an entire species of "Barneys" that all seemed to work for Killer Kirby.) Apparently I was not alone in my hatred of the purple dinosaur, as he's also appeared as an enemy in a few other OHRRPGCE games.



The original map had a small island in the south where Killer Kirby had set up a secondary base of operations; this was removed to make way for a Blurby settlement, to round out the trio of species that made up most of the NPCs in my games back then.



It had a town in the southwestern swamps where the School of Doom, home of the dreaded Alligator Teacher, was located. And of course, there was the Kirby Desert in the northeast, and in the center of it all was Killa Castle, home base of Killer Kirby's conquering army.



Unfortunately, even after the "no bland boring humans" rule was established, I did somehow end up putting a bunch of random humans in the game. And, just like the humans that showed up in my earlier Supernum games, it made no sense whatsoever for most of them to be there. I guess since Robert, Natasha, Michael, and Steven were brainwashed by Barney at first, they could have always come to the Kirby Lands with him... and since Ex-Teacher and Christy were both working for Killer Kirby, they probably got there with his help. But the random cheerleaders, bullies, booger-eaters, and cafeteria ladies in the School of Doom, the witches in Narrland, and the nameless knight dude living in Koogra? And, worst of all, the random human NPCs in various towns that are just palette-swaps of Robert and Natasha? They really had no reason to be in the game, and I'm still not quite sure why I put them there in the first place.

All I can really remember about the development of The Kirby Lands are the very early parts. I remember coming up with the idea that the three kingdoms had each sent away the heirs to their thrones, in order to protect them from Killer Kirby and in hopes that they might someday grow strong enough to come back and help them fight off the conquering Kirby army. I remember making the introduction scenes, where King Narmer sent away his son Nummer using a Num Warp and then bravely faced off against Killer Kirby himself with no help other than his rather wimpy brother Gourbik. And then... I ran into some trouble. I had no idea how to plotscript, so there was no way to make it so that the inevitable loss to Killer Kirby didn't result in a Game Over. I took this question to the OHRRPGCE Help Me boards, and before long I got an answer. Heck, I even sent my game to James Paige for testing when I still couldn't figure out how to get the script to work. Eventually, I ironed out all the problems with the intro scene... well, okay, except for the fact that killing one of the wandering Kirby Invader NPCs caused all of them to vanish, since I used the same NPC for each of them (that wasn't fixed until years later.)

But anyway, I fixed the major problems and I got rid of the Final Fantasy 3 final boss song, changing the Killer Kirby battle theme to an RPG Maker 95 default song titled "B003B." It was the final boss theme from Prophecy of the Numnums (the final boss being Killer Kirby, of course), which is why I picked it in the first place. The reason why I stuck with it, though, is because the song somehow sounded amazing in BAM format; while some midis seemed to lose quality or become pianofied for no good reason, B003B.mid made the transition to BAM very well, and ever since then it has been forever linked to Killer Kirby in my mind. Heck, you can see this for yourself if you open up Puckamon in custom.exe and see what the theme song for the Kihlah Castle dungeon is. It's been remixed pretty heavily (by playing around with the instruments and tempo in Anvil Studio) so as to not sound quite so "battle theme"-like, but the song used for the post-game dungeon where Killer Kirby resides is none other than the infamous B003B.mid. Sadly, the BAM version of B003B.mid used in The Kirby Lands sounds pretty terrible now that the OHRRPGCE plays BAMs using the standard midi instruments; the main part of the song still sounds fine, but the drums sound like someone slapping one of those rubber squeaky hammers all over the place like an idiot.



After the intro scene, my memory of creating The Kirby Lands pretty much goes blank. I seriously can't recall anything more than a few vague bits related to playtesting (for example, I managed to beat the Alligator Teacher too easily the first time through, so I went back and upped her HP) and some memories of building the final scene of Part 1 in MS Paint before importing all those BMPs into the game and hoping the colors came out right.



Other than that, it's all one huge blur, especially when it comes to Part 2; all I can clearly remember of that is the ending scene, which was also put together from a long chain of MS Paint'ed backdrops.



What Went Wrong?

And with that mention of Part 2, we come to what was (in my opinion) the absolute biggest mistake I made in The Kirby Lands--the fact that I even made a Part 2 in the first place. Everything up to the final rush through Killer Kirby's second castle in the Dark World was great (well, okay, not "great," but not something that embarrasses me when I look back on it, either.) What should have been the ending scene, with the Dark Castle collapsing under the strain of the final fight with Killer Kirby and then falling from the sky and creating a massive explosion that took the entire Dark World along with it, was pretty awesome considering that I pulled it off immediately after I first learned to make cutscenes with a string of backdrops in plotscripting (the earlier backdrop cutscene, at the very start, was made mostly or entirely using textboxes, and was pretty lame in comparison.) Speaking of lame scenes, the ending of Part 2 was also made using textboxes with backdrops for some reason... I guess I must have subconsciously knew that it wasn't good enough to deserve a fully-animated plotscripted ending. Or maybe I was just being lazy.



But anyway, the Part 1 ending would have made a great finale to The Kirby Lands--the heroes fight Killer Kirby (twice) and his three toughest minions, escaping from the collapsing castle just in time by flying into the air and leaving the world through a Num Warp. Killer Kirby may have died in the blast--heck, he was technically dead even before that, since his final form was a green-skinned zombified one wielding a ghostly yellow Shicker composed of electrical energy--but it isn't confirmed for sure. He could really be dead at last... or, for all we know, the Zombie Killer Kirby could have been a fake, created by Dr. X to distract the heroes while the real Killer Kirby escaped to plan his next conquering scheme after triggering the castle's self-destruct sequence.



Instead of ending it there, with a world-shattering explosion, a narrow escape for the good guys, and another ambiguous death for Killer Kirby... I kept going. I honestly don't know what I was thinking when I decided to make more of the game after the Zombie Killer Kirby battle. Apparently I had started to plan out bits and pieces of Part 2 already by the time I was making the Dark World (as things like the Ranoids' Castle sidequest and the ruined temple with statues of Nummer, Kirber, Ondu, and Maalzo wouldn't have made much sense otherwise), but I can't actually remember any of it.

Looking back on it now, I'm pretty sure that at least some of the reason for Part 2's existence was the fact that I hadn't yet used all of the monsters from that old notebook--I hadn't yet come to a point in the game where you could encounter a Sand Squid or Big Parupoo in a random battle, and there were no boss fights with those weird guys named Cruncho, Darno, Eato, Grakker, and Uposo, who I knew I had drawn all those years ago even though I couldn't really remember the story behind them. The Killerbahd Nums, the gang of evil Numnums that Killer Kirby paid to terrorize random villages, weren't in there yet. Even Edwin, the evil clone of Eddie (complete with his own gray-and-black evil doppelganger Supernum form), hadn't had a chance to appear in the game... and he ranked second only to Killer Kirby on the "powerful recurring Supernum villain"-o-meter. I can't say for sure, but my guess is that Part 2 wasn't made because I had more of a story to tell, but because I had more characters that I wanted to jam into the game. But the game as I had planned it was over, and I didn't have any more material to expand on it in a way that made sense with my old stories. The hivemind aliens known as the Bridgetoids, another frequent enemy of Supernum, would not have even known a place like the Kirby Lands existed... so they were out. Ex-Teacher, who was the one who jumped into the "main villain" role after the supposed death of Killer Kirby in my old stories, had already been killed off earlier in the game, and in this game she wasn't nearly as powerful as she had been before (heck, she wasn't even as powerful as Killer Kirby when he was holding back; after the supercharged robot and zombie Killer Kirbys, even a full-power Ex-Teacher would've been a step down on the threat-o-meter.) The Coraudos were sealed miles beneath the ocean... on Nummorro, which wasn't even in the same universe as the Kirby Lands. That meant pretty much all of my usual backup villains were unavailable... so I had to make up something new.



And boy, did it suck. The only thing Part 2 did well was the part where all of the heroes were split up and you had to fight with smaller parties instead of having a dozen or so characters with you at all times. While Supernum, Robert, and Natasha ended up back in the Kirby Lands right away and had to face off against Supernum's evil clone, Nummer, Kirber, and Ondu found themselves transported to the icy world of Narrland, which was ruled by Ex-Teacher before but now was in the hands of Christy, a former minion of Killer Kirby. At least, that's the way it should've gone--instead, Supernum's group reunited with Nummer's group after only a couple of easy boss battles. It was actually impossible to fight Edwin with only Supernum's group, since the Nummer NPC on the world map just happened to be plopped right in front of the front door to Killa Castle. Even when it got something right, it still didn't quite get it right--Part 2 was just that bad.



Characters went out-of-character for the sake of the horrible plot, or maybe just to free up space for the tons of secret characters I added later--Robert and Natasha randomly decided to settle down and do normal jobs rather than helping the other guys fight (despite the fact that both of them recently found their ultimate weapons and neither of them are people who give up easily.) On top of that, Killer Kirby was brought back to life (meaning he actually did die!) and brainwashed by the boring, generic new villain. After a disappointing final battle with Killer Kirby (though it did have good music, and appropriately enough it wasn't the usual Killer Kirby theme), he pulls a Bowser for the first time in his life and does the whole "well, if I can't beat this guy alone, I'll have to join you guys!" thing.


I do like the idea of an "enlightened" Killer Kirby deciding to give up his conquering ways and becoming more of an "honorable (but still a bit power-hungry) wandering warrior" type that fights Supernum just to prove his own superior strength; if I ever make more games with Supernum and Killer Kirby, that'll probably be what ends up happening. But there's right ways and wrong ways to do everything, and having Killer Kirby brainwashed by a more-powerful villain and then beaten up by children who shouldn't have a chance against him (even with their fathers' secret weapons on their side) is not the right way to do this. I mean, just look at that ridiculous line in his textbox--"Well, I don't really feel like taking over the Kirby Lands anymore!" Just because he lost against Nummer, Kirber, and Ondu, completely out of nowhere, he decides to stop conquering the Kirby Lands. He's suffered much more impressive losses before, but this one (in which he's not even seriously injured, just knocked around enough to break the brainwashing spell) is somehow enough to get him to change his mind? It just doesn't make any sense.

On a positive note, Killer Kirby did manage to take out the three kings in the process of this final battle, so I guess I could always explain his loss to Nummer, Kirber, and Ondu by saying that his fights against the far-more-powerful Narmer, Kirbarbo, and Blubbarr weakened him a lot more than he thought... and since he was brainwashed at the time, he didn't know any better and jumped into another fight right away.



I also, for some strange reason, decided to throw in a ton of random extra characters in Part 2. Maalzo wasn't that bad, and of all the new plot elements and characters that Part 2 introduced, she's probably the only one I'd really consider keeping around if I ever made another game with Numnums and such. But some of them... made absolutely no sense.



For example, there was a random cameo from Sailor Jupiter, most likely because she was the favorite Sailor Senshi of a girl I liked at the time.



There was a purple frog dressed up as Lucca from Chrono Trigger (no screenshots of her as a playable character, though, since I completely forgot about the random sidequest you need to do to get her), most likely because at the time I was obsessed with that game and hadn't yet realized that it was only "a pretty good RPG," not "one of the greatest RPGs on the SNES." Speaking of the greatest RPGs on the SNES, Geno from Super Mario RPG was also in the game for some odd reason, accompanied by an entire species of "Genos" living on Star Road... which was apparently relocated to the Kirby Lands at some point in the recent past. Why can't they just decide on a place to stick that thing? First they had it in the sky over Dinosaur Land, then the sky over Star Hill in the Mushroom Kingdom, and now a completely different universe? Those star guys make no sense.



There was also "The Pathetic Pikachu," which was actually much stronger than your average Pikachu despite the name and, for some odd reason, had nothing but a Pokéball for its walkabout sprite. But not all of the extras were random crap like this; some of them were cameo appearances by characters from my old storylines that never got a chance to be in a game of their own.



By far my favorite of the extras is Pototo, who actually predates Supernum and Killer Kirby by several years. He may actually be the oldest character in the history of the OHRRPGCE, since the very earliest versions of Pototo (and his brother Potato) were created sometime in the summer of 1991, when I was barely 5 years old. That's nearly a year older than even the venerable Bob Surlaw. Of course, it's entirely possible that someone else out there made a game with at least one or two characters that date back to sometime before 1991... but as far as I'm aware, Pototo's the oldest.



Besides Pototo, there was also Tootamatic Turtle--that's the turtle who makes fart noises with his tongue who I mentioned earlier. Or, as 10-year-old me would say, he's "the tough turtle with the tooting tongue." He's probably my second-favorite character of the extras, and one of my favorites in the whole game, though the scene leading up to him joining the party makes absolutely no sense. Why does he start out looking like an average turtle and then grow into his usual self? He's supposed to always be full-sized! And why doesn't he have his trademark big red tongue until the last form? 13-year-old me's thought processes confuse the heck out of 23-year-old me.

Speaking of confusing things, I wonder why I left out a certain scene that I knew I had planned on putting in. The song I was going to use for it is still there and everything--it's titled "The Evil Frogs." Basically, what was going to happen was that some of the aforementioned Evil Frogs were going to creep around along the outside of the inn room while the heroes were sleeping and creepy music played, creeping you out and making you wonder what's going on. If you stayed at an inn again after that, the frogs would leap out and attack, leading to the party discovering that the frogs were also being mind-controlled by the generic boring final boss. I guess I ended up leaving it out because I was in a rush to finish the game and I didn't know how to plotscript the scene at the time. Maybe I'll make that scene into a 48-hour contest game or something as an excuse to make better TKL graphics without actually doing a remake of TKL itself.

The Future of The Kirby Lands

As for an actual TKL remake, well... I never really considered the possibility of making one, even back when I was still remaking Frankfurter's Quest for Soap. I did have a plan at one point (back around 2003 or 2004) to redo the graphics so they weren't completely terrible, and I think I may have at least gotten started on that--I know an old Castle Paradox post of mine mentions something about "new Supernum graphics," so I at least redid some of the worse-looking ones (and Supernum's original sprites were pretty bad; his mouth was always hanging open for no apparent reason.) But I can't seem to find any of these upgraded graphics anywhere--the zip files on Castle Paradox and Slime Salad didn't have them (with one exception--the improved title screen can still be seen on the Castle Paradox gamelist, even though it's not actually in the game), so I figure I must have stopped working on them and deleted the file at some point in the past. I also had a plan around the beginning of 2008 to make another Supernum game, pretty much throwing out everything that I had added into the Supernum universe from 1998 onward and bringing the series back to its 1994-1997 roots: Supernum as main hero, Killer Kirby as main villain, and no bland boring humans or generic final-boss demons popping up where they're not wanted. While the graphics for this game were great (on par with my other unreleased 2008 game, Fnrrf Ygm Schnish: Alleghany Hell School), I lost interest in it before I got much else done. And unfortunately, I deleted the file after deciding not to make the game... which means that, sadly, the 2008 Supernum game is lost forever (though I do still have a few graphics from it; one of them, with the colors reduced down to 8-bit levels, even shows up as an enemy in Chapter 6 of Okédoké!)



But hey, a lot people seem to dislike the mild cursing I've included in more recent games, so maybe completely remaking a game that just happens to be set in a world where hardly anyone curses wouldn't be such a terrible idea.



The only one who uses an actual curse word in the game is the Rapper Kirby enemy, as seen above; everyone else says things like "crud" and "heck" and various weird exclamations that wouldn't even be recognized as cursing by anyone on Earth (such as "yaaargh!" and similar things, which seem to show up a lot in scared/surprised textboxes.)

Anyway, if I did do a remake of The Kirby Lands, it probably wouldn't really be recognizable as a remake, because so many things would be changed. I'd probably expand the Part 1 plot, completely ditch Part 2, add things here and there, remove other things... well, it'd be a very different game, to say the least. At the moment, though, I have absolutely no plans to ever remake the game--in fact, playing through it in order to write this article has made me like the idea of a TKL remake even less than I did before. Unlike my early '90s Supernum stories, The Kirby Lands holds absolutely no nostalgic value to me; it's just that crappy old game I made back in the early years of high school that isn't nearly as good as I thought it was back then. I do still want to make some sort of a Supernum game someday... but if (when?) that happens, it most likely won't have anything to do with The Kirby Lands.

By the way, the password to kirbland.rpg is "gomagoo" (without the quotes, of course.) If you've ever wanted to open that old thing up in Custom.exe and poke around with it, now's your chance.