Kirby/Trivia

• The Character Died with Him: Characters from Dream Land 2, Dream Land 3, and 64 have mostly been relegated to cameos or bit parts (if not dropped entirely) after director Shinichi Shimomura's death.
• Development Hell: Since Kirby's Air Ride, HAL Laboratories have made repeated attempts to create a home console game for the Kirby series. The most known attempt was the Game Cube game, announced in 2004, and widely believed to be reincarnated as Kirby's Return to Dream Land. However, a recent interview has revealed that the Game Cube game was the first of four attempts at a home console game, the final being Return to Dream Land.
  • Kirby Air Ride itself was trapped in Development Hell for quite some time. It was originally intended as a Nintendo 64 game, but after spending many years in production it was quietly canceled. It was The Unexpected when it finally showed up as a Game Cube title at E3 2003.
• Executive Meddling: Rumor has it that Masahiro Sakurai left HAL because this happened during the development of Air Ride.
  • And he also didn't like the sequelization of the gaming industry.
• Fan Nickname: King Dedede is sometimes referred to as "DDD", "Triple-D", or "3D".
• Throw It In: Kirby's appearance was originally intended to be a placeholder.
• Trope Namer: This series named the following tropes:
  • American Kirby Is Hardcore
  • Bubbly Clouds
  • Dream Land
  • Megaton Punch
• Vaporware: Kirby, with the addition of a pink, curly hair on his head, was originally supposed to star in a Spinoff Babies game, Kid Kirby, for the SNES; it was never finished, and all that remains of the game now are a few sprites and one stage layout.
  • Air Ride began on the Nintendo 64 and was scheduled for a late 1996 release. It went through years of delays until it was quietly cancelled in 1998. It caught the public by surprise when a Gamecube version was announced in 2003.
  • When the Nintendo 64 was in development and still called the Ultra 64, one title in development was Kirby Bowl 64 -- Kirby Bowl being the Japanese name for Kirby's Dream Course. The snowboarding mode it featured likely led to Kirby's Air Ride as described above.
  • Also, Kirby's Tilt 'n' Tumble 2 for the Game Cube, using the Game Boy Advance and cable to control the same way as the original title.
  • There were several attempts to make a console Kirby game for the Game Cube and later the Wii. The first of such attempts was shown in an E3 trailer, but this one fell through. The fourth attempt was finally released on the Wii as Kirby's Return to Dream Land.
• What Could Have Been: There was originally supposed to be a Kirby game for the Gamecube, but it never got released.
  • According to this interview, there were three other attempts at making a home console Kirby game. Kirby's Return to Dream Land is the fourth (and successful) attempt.
• The Wiki Rule: WiKirby, Kirbypedia, and Kirby Wikia