Sweet Dreams Are Made Of These (Kirby's Adventure)

Hello! This sure as hell isn't an entry on Jeopardy games. Rather, we've skipped ahead to a game from the K galaxy. Why? Well, because I can. I doubt anyone is really sore about me jumping ahead a bit, and I promise not to make a habit of it... but sometimes you just get a good idea inspired by timely events, and you have to go with it. To do this in January or February would betray the heart of the piece. With that said... on with the show.

Wait a minute. Something's wrong. This isn't right... this is not the right time. Gravity has made time go haywire. It's several times at once. Somewhere between December 13th and December 14th, 2013. A man takes his girlfriend's hand and asks her to marry him, She can only nod in agreement, and as he slips the ring onto her finger, she says "You asshole.".

It's the early morning of December 17th, 2013. I have awoken from a nightmare in which I yell in frustration at people before storming out of a room. As I leave, I hear someone offering to talk to me, followed by a man yelling at them in anger about how I just want attention and should be denied it. In this nightmare, I am alone.

The dream of a perfect wedding day. The nightmare of being abandoned. These incidents are related, and pulled into our maelstrom of a blog entry. Sucked into the collective consciousness of an adorable pink mascot. Somehow, these events that occured over a thousand miles apart have converged, and are relatable to our subject matter. This is Kirby's Adventure.

At the heart of the time vortex, in this Tornado ability of a gravity storm, we can see that it's three dates at once. All three are dated from a time we have visited before. It's March 23rd, 1993. May 1st, 1993. December 1st, 1993. The events of 1993 are 20 years old as I write this. Remember 1993? We're at the edge of the lifespan of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Buried within this swirling void is one simple fact: the NES is all but dead. You have children like me who cannot afford the hip new Super Nintendo, who enjoy the handful of video games they can rent or buy on the cheap. My own memories of this time are lost to the cutting winds, but I can remember seeing the box of this video game on display. I remember it looking interesting, but I do not remember the game itself. Kirby's Adventure came and went. It did not light the world on fire... but maybe it should have. A man can dream.

Dreams. That's what it's all about. Hell, the original Game Boy game this is a sequel to had you dancing about in Dream Land. As the story helpfully suggests, that wily King Dedede has taken the Star Rod and broken it into seven pieces. Seven is a number of significant power. It's good luck. It's the number of dreaming children you need to defeat a shapeshifting It that has existed for eternity. Our job is to restore the dreaming to the world. A Dream Land without dreams is just a Land. Just a continent on a planetoid circling a star. Kirby the pink, a true agent of the Valya. What force of pure positive energy can rival the power of dreams? Dreams give us creativity. Creativity gives us both our voyage through this blog, and the games we cover themselves. Imagination is the true force of this place... and now we've tumbled along, just as Gene Wilder said, into a world of pure imagination.

Dream Land, 1993, is unlike any world we have experienced yet. This should be a dying ember of a world. The NES has no place in a universe where Star Fox is making jaws drop... and yet, here we are. Instead of a dead planet, we have one that is more alive, more vibrant, more... imaginative than any we've seen. As I swirl through this vortex, I can see it. The dizzying heights of the Butter Building. An aurora borealis on an alien world of dreams, lighting up the night sky. The tart fuschias and violets of other galaxies, other worlds that have yet to be dreamed. This is not the death of the NES. This is the NES, more alive than it has ever been. In this moment, we realize what it's all been for. 1983 gave Japan a little red box that could play a conversion of an arcade game. 10 years later, the cocoon has burst. The butterfly of the dreaming now flutters across the sky. Kirby's Adventure is beautiful. A masterpiece. We could escape the vortex now and go about our business... but no. I've been denying it, but I know that there's a reason for coming here early. We have to deal with the dark side.

Reuniting the seven pieces of the Star Rod makes King Dedede plead and beg with you in a comical, wordless fashion. He is a light and fluffy little penguin, despite being an agent of the Yin. Even he fears what is about to come. Despite his protests, we know what must be done. The Fountain Of Dreams has been corrupted by nightmares... and It bursts forth, a cosmic cocoon that rockets upwards through the stratosphere. Even an agent of the dark must help us now, this close to the purifying power of Valya. He blasts us up after it... and we are now fighting the Nightmare. Of course. We established this before. You cannot have the light without the dark. You cannot have imagination without laziness. The Nightmare is our every fear and insecurity come true. It is the shapeless form that manifests as a cosmic cocoon before hatching into a cloaked figure, its body the very vortex we need to escape. This is the force that gave us Ikari Warriors. The ultimate dread beast. It. By all accounts, we should be powerless against this creature... but there's one thing he didn't count on.

The power of dreams. The Star Rod is now in the hands of an agent of the Valya. Its power courses through us like wildfire, and a hit cuts through that dark vortex. The Nightmare is now screaming in agony, its own sense of self threatened. As we fight on, in this swirling storm outside of time and space, I can see... things. Events which have not come to pass. Are they merely my own dreams, or visions of a future that is yet to come? Whatever they are, they manifest as 8-bit stars. Pure imagination meeting the limits of technology. Every hit, every dream, it damages the Nightmare more. Here is what I use to cut through my own insecurities. The Nightmare has brought me terrible fears. I will be abandoned, it says. I will be alone. I am not liked, I am a burden and a bore to the masses. I am tolerated rather than loved. The people you care about will toss you aside, toss you away and you will never know why... and the Nightmare will be right there, using your imagination to think up every scenario possible to make you feel like shit about it. Then, a light in the darkness. A distant pair of voices, speaking directly to me within the void of despair.

"We want you to be at our wedding."

Then, we see the dreams.

A yellow taxi cab pulls up outside the door. I walk out of the house and enter it, placing my bag in the backseat. I shut the door and tell the man to go to the airport.

The inside of an airplane. I have not been in one of these in over 10 years. The thing speeds up and I grip my seats, remembering the last time. With a rush, I look to my left and see the ground below me grow more distant. I have left the island of my birth.

I am in an airport in a foreign land. There are too many people here, too many strangers. Walking forward, I see the one familiar face. I approach, and extend my hand and greet him. In that moment, I am not Frezno. I am just another person in the world.

A city that dwarfs my expectations. The size is too much for me to even comprehend in terms of imagination. The city, like another space, is bigger on the inside.

Hugging the bride-to-be. Shaking hands with people from all corners of the world, from lands distant to my own. People I have laughed and joked with in the past, but now share real physical space with.

With a set of words from an official, and a ring sealed with a kiss, a Miss becomes a Mrs., and it is beautiful and wonderful.

White Russians made with ice cream. Alcohol, dancing, laughter. Good feelings.

This is what destroys the darkness. This is what destroys the Nightmare, collapsing its own vortex in on itself. They care. They care, you miserable blight, and they care enough to believe that my presence will make their own day that much better. They care enough to invest their time and money in bringing me across the void, across the sea. To bring all of us together in one unified moment of triumph. That, folks, is the power of dreams. The power that uses imagination to put a smile on your face. The vortex calms, and we are back in our own time.

It's December 18th, 2013. Christmas is a week away. Kirby's Adventure came out 20 years ago, and it's a wonderful Nintendo game... but there's a more important lesson to be learned here.


My friends are getting married, and they're some of the best friends a guy like me could ask for.