Kirby Super Star, an SNES game from 1996, claims to be "eight games in one," and while that's sort of true, they're really all different parts of the same game of varying difficulties. The graphics are always the same, the power-ups are always the same, and the goal is almost always the same. Super Star also exists in a weird graphical stopgap somewhere between ultra-detailed sprite animation (which exists) and bizarrely pre-rendered backgrounds (which also exist). The game is good, but I don't know how well it's aged in the last seventeen years.

Super Star includes five traditional platforming Kirby games, one sidescrolling racing game, and two reflex-based mini-games. The four platformers, Spring Breeze, Dynablade, Revenge of the Meta-Knight, and Milky Way Wishes are all essentially the same game as far as difficulty and game length. Spring Breeze is basically Kirby's Dream Land with Super Star graphics but even shorter, Dynablade features Kirby trekking towards a mountain to defeat a giant multicolored bird, Revenge of the Meta-Knight is a fast-paced and surprisingly short journey through Meta-Knight's airship, and Milky Way Wishes is really the only game in this collection that feels like a fully fleshed-out Kirby game that you probably won’t beat in one sitting.

I've left out The Great Cave Offensive, because it really is a different beast. This is where the infamous Subspace Emissary came from: Kirby wanders through a thousand different rooms without a map collecting various items along the way. It's at once the most interesting and the most frustrating game in this collection. More recent Kirby fans might be reminded of Kirby & the Amazing Mirror in its attempt to replicate a Metroid style of exploration.

The racing game, Gourmet Race, consists of three straightforward platforming areas in which you race Dedede to the finish line. Even the final course isn't very difficult and unless you're a fan of time attack there's not much here. Finally, the two mini-games (Samurai Showdown and Megaton Punch) are, you know…there. Megaton Punch asks you to hit three different targets to produce a ground pound that goes through the planet while in Samurai Showdown you just see who can "press X the quickest." If you've played Kirby's Adventure, you'll recognize it as a re-skinned version of that quickshooter mini-game. Finally, once you beat everything, you'll get The Arena, which is an endurance mode featuring all the mini-boss and boss characters across all the games.

While I don't find any of the games that impressive, my eyes are constantly popping at the beautiful, detailed sprite work. The game has more powers than any other Kirby game, and each power gives Kirby a multitude of different attacks (press pause to learn 'em). Kirby himself must have about a million different animations, but you can turn a power into an AI-controlled buddy (or give control to a second player) who also has a bucket load of animations. It's fun just to grab every power you can find just to see what it does and how Kirby animates with it (he's got a new hat!). The downside is that you can't just drop a power anymore—you spawn a helper, but if you don't want that helper, you have to tap A to destroy him so he doesn't kill the enemy you want to eat instead.

This definitely isn't my favorite Kirby game, but it's impressive for what it does right. Given the choice, though, I'd go with one of the other eShop Kirby games first.