With DLC Wave 3 fast approaching, HAL Laboratory has spoken about the character animations that appear on the menu screens for the pink puffball’s kaleidoscopic adventure.
“Bonjam. I’m Tatsuya Kamiyama from HAL Laboratory, the sequence director for Kirby Star Allies,” the message starts. “On the Main Menu, title screen and file selection screen, you can see little animations of Kirby and his friends.
“New Dream Friends were added in the free update, along with some short homages to their debut games and short skits unique to them. Another 18 animations were added in the second free update, bringing the total number of animations to 82. That’s how many we prepared, but the characters that feature in them are random and the directions they come and go in can be inverted, so the real number of individual animations is much larger.
“We originally wanted to have the title menus match the feel of the game. Cooperation between Kirby and his friends is the lynchpin of this title, so we planned to have animations of them appearing on screen.
“The stages and title menus are different from a system point of view, so it wasn’t easy to make Kirby appear in the same way in both contexts. The sheer number of characters and Copy Abilities which appear in the game caused us problems too.
“At first we only had animations of Kirby and friends running across the screen, but the staff came up with more and more ideas out of their love for Kirby, suggesting things like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cute if they did this?’ and ‘If we include these characters, we can do this!’ Through their contributions, we reached the number of animations we have now.
“When you start the game for the first time Kirby appears on his own, but as you play and make friends, those friends will show up on the screens and menus too.
“We ask that you leave one of these screens open from time to time, if only to watch Kirby being adorable. That’s all from me. Jambuhbye!”
Kirby Star Allies is now available exclusively for Nintendo Switch worldwide.
