Revenge of the Meta-Chat
Jason and Kathrine's conversation continues.
Jason: Prince Fluff looks too similar and too different at the same time! Gooey and Kirby are nothing alike. Helpers share no characteristics, either. But Fluff has the same outline. Why not the same eyes, though? And those eyebrows!
Kathrine: You can't not look at them. Don't forget the crown!
Jason: But right, seeing as he's royalty, but similar to Kirby, I had the feeling he wasn't related in the traditional sense. I figured they probably decided to add in Kirby at some point, and at first, I figured it was just to help sell the game. I thought "This wasn't really a Kirby game at first." But then I played it, and I was like, "Hey, that's a Waddle Dee! He's from Kirby!" And so on and so forth, relating the transformations used in Kirby's attacks as "Traditional Kirby Lite."
Kathrine: Well of course, Kirby is going to bring with him some of his enemies and other assets.
Jason: Bosses. Stages. Penchant for hurting snowmen. Though I did think it was interesting that, when playing single player, Prince Fluff would jump in and dance with Kirby. It's like they wanted to make sure players knew he was there, a part of the game.
Kathrine: The change happened early enough to make it more than just a yarn game with Kirby.
Jason : And so, to that extent, I think it was a Kirby game with yarn.
Kathrine: In fact, didn't they hit a wall in development?
Jason: Right, they hit a wall, according to an Iwata asks session.
Kathrine: It's still Prince Fluff's world! Most of it.
Jason: Only right after the beginning and up until the end.
Kathrine: Spoilers? Oh well.
Jason: Sure, spoilers all around.
Kathrine: I s'pose. I actually wonder if there were better choices of a character out there.
Jason: I don't. Who? Boo? Pikachu? Lakitu? Tabuu?
Kathrine: Given the gameplay, most notably the whip, I think Yoshi could have fit this game pretty well too. The whip is not unlike Yoshi's tongue, and the transformations have a distinct Yoshi's Island feel to them.
Jason: Oh. Yoshi. Well, to be fair, there was a lot of pants ground in one of his games, too. Maybe not pants ground. Pants wall. Though I'd say the enemy direction and stage design were much more reminiscent of a Kirby game.
Kathrine: The aesthetic is also similar to Yoshi's Story as well. The enemy direction was because they made it a Kirby game, they could have found Yoshi enemies to suit most of the roles. Kirby and Yoshi both have similar stage design, too.
Jason: Sure, sure, but it would have felt entirely different.
Kathrine: I believe, anyway. You don't have to agree.
Jason: Fine! Next time, Yoshi can fall into the sock, and he and Prince Fluff can team up and fight Kamek or something!
Kathrine: Kamek is just MagiKoopa, only the US calls him Kamek.
Jason: Wait, so blue MagiKoopa is MagiKoopa... And purple MagiKoopa with hair is also MagiKoopa? Kamek was the one in Yoshi's Island, right? Who flew by and blew up enemies into massive sizes.
Kathrine: We're not going over this again. In Japan, he was still named the Japanese equivalent of MagiKoopa. There was no distinct name for him.
Jason: But it was a she then! In Yoshi's Island, even?
Kathrine: No. Stop. We are not doing this again.
Jason: Ok, but I don't recall doing this about Yoshi's Island before.
Kathrine: MagiKoopa is the same concept of Toad, Yoshi, Birdo, etc. All is one, one is all. Anyways, I just think that, given all of the traditional elements of Kirby that they removed, even though they would have to remove Yoshi's egg ability, and change the way his spit attack works, he would have suited the game a little better than Kirby.
Jason: I think given the easy nature of the game (Boshi), the chosen stage design, and the enemies, that things were probably very Kirby-like from the beginning, and he fit into the game pretty well.
Kathrine: I think he fits, but the game is quite a departure from other Kirby games, and so some fans are disappointed in the game. Not that there still wouldn't be fans disappointed in Yoshi's Epic Yarn, but I think there'd be less.
Jason: I still think "Hoshi no Kirby," or whatever that GameCube Kirby game was called is still in development. So they'll get their Kirby game yet!
Kathrine: I hope it is, it looked fun. And hey, Nintendo have proven they are not against releasing different types of games in the same franchise. Just look at Metroid Prime 3 and Metroid Other M. Super Mario Galaxy and New Super Mario Brothers. If we can have 2D and 3D Mario, we can have traditional and yarn Kirby.
Jason And 3D Kirby. It's a dance simulator.
Kathrine: I'm still waiting on that.
Jason: Keep waiting. What about Yarn Metroid?
Kathrine: No.
Jason: Why not?
Kathrine: Too cute for sci-fi.
Jason: What, and baby Metroids aren't? Fan art of that, too please. Don't make me draw these things. I can't draw well.
Kathrine: So you want to see other franchises try out yarn themes? It doesn't fit everything!
Jason: I don't see why not. It's like how first, Zelda did four players. Then Mario did. Next up was Kirby, but something happened to that game. Yarn Climbers.
Kathrine: It's on GBA. Magic Mirror?
Jason: Oh, right, there was a four-player Kirby... before four-player Zelda! Which means Zelda is next.
Kathrine: And before Zelda... There was four-player Mario Brothers.
Jason: Original Mario Brothers. That barely counts. Link's Epic Yarn? Octoroks could eat spools.
Kathrine: Then Four Swords shouldn't. It's as much Zelda as the Mario arcade game is Mario.
Jason: It carries over a lot of Zelda puzzles and enemies, and just makes linear stages. And it had Vaati. Everyone was tired of Ganon, anyway.
Kathrine: Yeah, but they got to do better than Vaati.
Jason: Vaati plus a magical sock. And so Link and Prince Fluff would have to go fix it. What could go wrong?
Kathrine: Everything.
Jason: See, you do agree it's ripe for a video game! Maybe as a spin-off.
Kathrine: Tingle's Epic Yarn. He could make each world's maps with yarn as he goes.
Jason: Sounds like a Sim title.
Kathrine: SimYarn?
Jason: Maybe.
Kathrine: We don't want to overdo the yarn theme, then it'll lose its appeal.
Jason: I still think having an official "ambassador" between various Nintendo franchises would be pretty cool. Sometimes he can go into the real world. But anyway, it does stand to show that unlike Gooey, and unlike even New Super Mario Bros., every time you clear a stage with Kirby, Prince Fluff appears and dances, too. Nintendo clearly wanted to give the character extra visibility.
Kathrine: You said that already!
Jason: If he's going to be "patched in" to the next Kirby game, that wouldn't be necessary. So I think he's either going to go out on his own or team up with someone else.
Kathrine: Like how Donkey Kong Country 2 starred Diddy Kong and a new character?
Jason: Maybe. Depends on if he teams up with another Nintendo character or a new one. If the former, not really. If the latter, maybe.
Kathrine: If the latter, yes.
Jason: Well, the title probably won't have "Kirby" in it.
Kathrine: That'd be the only difference.
Jason: If it does, it would be something like how DC used to make a comic book called "Superman's Pal: Jimmy Olsen!"
Kathrine: Kirby's Pal Fluff's Epic Yarn. Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land
Jason: Kirby's Epic Pal: Yarn Prince Fluff
Kathrine: Kirby's Epic Yarn 2: Prince Fluff and the Beautician. The beautician tries to wax his eyebrows.
Jason: To make more yarn.
Kathrine: Now we're cooking. I hope Nintendo developers read this.
Jason: We'll have to send it to our PR contact. Maybe that's why they keep emailing me over Nick. I do these things.
Kathrine: Anyways, in closing, if you were forced to attach a score to Kirby's Epic Yarn, what would it be?
Jason: It would be up there, but it's hard to say, exactly. With Chris, it's probably around a 4 or 4.5. If I had played it with a grandparent or potentially, if I had children, it would probably rate the full five stars.
Kathrine: I thought you hated playing with Chris?
Jason: Exactly. I think it's a good game, though Chris didn't always help. New Super Mario Bros. Wii was more fit for Chris's play style.
Kathrine: Forgetting context, I'm going to rate it 4 out of 5 stars. Although I have just two issues with the game, they are large enough for a whole star reduction. One is the forced Wii Remote controls, which make some things harder and more uncomfortable than they need to be, and the other is that the game is too easy.
Jason: And I think, given the game's audience, it's just right. But at this point in time, in principle, I think controls need to be as customizable as possible. So I can agree with that reasoning.
Kathrine: It can have both. The extra challenges should have been more difficult. People don't have to play for those. Even so, I'd still recommend to just about everyone to at least try the game, especially people who have someone to co-op with.
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