Kirby. Who can forget Nintendo’s small adorable pink character from the old Game Boy days when he even has his own Anime show in Japan. In this latest second outing on the DS, the story begins on a bright sunny day with Kirby sitting on the soft, comfortable grass fields ready to have a scrumptious piece of strawberry short cake. But just as he was about to dig in, the cake disappears right before his eyes! Little Kirby suspects it’s King Dedede up to no good again and so he sets off towards his castle, ready to retrieve his snack!


Where did my cake go?
It’s back to the good old platformer for Kirby in “Sanjou Dorocche Dan! (Kirby Squeak Squad)”. You’ll find yourself controlling the pink little guy, swallowing enemies to obtain their powers or attacking them with puffs of air as you make your way through the short levels. Lots of little obstacles such as giant rolling boulders, heavy canons and burning blocks all stand to slow you down. Fans who have played previous Kirby platformers will recognise all the familiar bad guys and bosses as well as the powers you can obtain. Of course, we can’t forget the new thieving Squeak Squad who’s out to steal whatever treasure there is.

There are basically over 25 different powers available allowing Kirby to set his enemies on fire, hit them with a chain of light, smack them with a hammer or blow them up with bombs. Not all of the powers are obtainable from enemies, however. Making use of the touch screen, you can store up to a maximum of five different powers and items. The interesting part is that once you have more than one power stored in Kirby’s Copy Palette, you can merge the items or powers together by dragging them into each other. Doing this you can merge mini Kirbies to create extra lives or, create new powers such as Angel that grants Kirby a pair of wings and arrows to fire. Sometimes you’ll find you’ll need the right power to progress any further.


It can’t be a Kirby platformer without King Dedede.
Due to the limited size of the Copy Palette, you’ll find yourself doing a bit of inventory management now and then as you try to decide what to keep. You might want to keep a number of healing items or, you might want more powers handy so that you can try and experiment to see what powers you can create. Apart from that, you’ll also want to make room for the various treasure chests scattered throughout each level which carry some rare items such as scrolls that give you new moves, sprays to dye your Kirby and musical items that unlock new tracks in the sound test room. You don’t actually find out what’s inside these chests until you reach the end of the level. With over 100 chests to find, there’s plenty of exploring to do!