Kirby's Dream Course

"A mini-golf game for kids... and anyone else who likes a challenge."

Kirby's Dream Course is a Kirby game (duh) and one that can be described as challenging. The storyline is about Kirby having to beat the willies out of DeDede again, only this time not but platforming. Now he's a golf ball (kind of) and you're the club. You set the spins, the power, the aiming, etc. But the courses are floating platforms in the air.

Gameplay is easy to learn, hard to master. You hold B to set the target spins, target aiming, etc. There is a guide of dots to point out where the current settings will take you. Then after that, you press A to start the shot process, where theres a pendulum going up and down, and a fake one indicating where you want to stop it. Press A again to set the power meter. It goes up and down, and if you don't act, you will go nowhere and lose a shot.

It should be mentioned that you have four tomatoes per life, times 3 lives per continue, and each shot takes 1 tomato. When you hit an enemy on the course, it disappears, you get one tomato back, and IF they have a special power, you take it. Powers range from the parasol to the hi jump to the UFO and other quirky things like that.

When there is one enemy left on the course, the last one becomes a hole. Hit Kirby in and you beat the hole.

THere are 8 holes per course, and 8 courses, followed by the match with DeDeDe.

The graphics are great and very suiting to the nature of the game. Hills, water pits (which can be frozen by the freeze power) trampolines, and other objects that affect Kirby's progress are all very well done, and literally pop up from the background.

But the real replay value lies in the scores you get. The score for each course is the amount of shots you took on each course added up. Novice players won't care much for it, but advanced players will sweat when they try to figure out the complex combinations of angles, spins, powers, and stage obstacles will give them a way into the hole in one shot.

This game is a classic strategy game, one that I havent played for a while, but when I did play it, I played it constantly. A great game that should be tried by all fans of strategy, and fans of Kirby games. You won't be dissapointed.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 11/01/99