Super Smash Bros. - Kirby Music - Video Game Music Shrine

Slavic frantic fun

Taking the maxim you are what you eat to the extreme, the Sanrio-like puffy, cute, pink…thing known as Kirby is the pampered child of the Super Smash Bros. series, being also created by the fighting series director Masahiro Sakurai for the Game Boy and developed by HAL Laboratory—there is a reason why he is the only one that survives the world of light massacre. Throughout most of his adventures Kirby journeys across Dream Land, a fictional country on the distant Planet Popstar, to protect it from alien invaders and other threats to his home, often with eldritch abominations as final bosses.

In development, Kirby’s design was originally intended to be a mere placeholder for the Player Character. However, Sakurai grew attached to the Waddling Head, and decided to stray from the plan and keep him as the protagonist. He was initially known as Popopo, the star of Twinkle Popo, but this was wisely rechristened from a list of name candidates. It helped that the lawyer who defended Nintendo in an important lawsuit from Universal involving Donkey Kong was named John Kirby.

Hirokazu Ando, the composer of the first Super Smash Bros. game is also very familiar with Kirby seeing that he personally composed many of the games from the franchise; however, curiously one of his own compositions was not selected to represent the Kirby series in this fighting title. Instead, we get what was at the time a rather obscure track from original series’ composer Jun Ishikawa, an inhouse composer from HAL. The frantic pace of the music that accompanied a mini-game included in the SNES game Kirby Super Star, Gourmet Race, fit perfectly the tone of the Super Smash Series and went on to become one of the staples of both series, becoming the most recognizable piece to come off the Kirby franchise without being remotely close to being the main theme, unlike the other characters represented in the game which have their series’ iconic theme as their stage background music.

Dream Land

This stage is loosely based on Green Greens, which is located in Dream Land, from Kirby’s Dream Land and Kirby Super Star‘s Spring Breeze. Whispy Woods, a sentient apple tree, first appeared in Kirby’s Dream Land as the first boss and has appeared in numerous Kirby games since. In most games, he attacks by dropping apples over Kirby and shooting gusts of air at him. In this stage, Whispy Woods still blows out air, but this only pushes fighters without damaging them.

The theme uses the infectious fast oom-pah rhythms reminiscent of Russian folk music to set the chaotic tone alongside a simple harmony in the C minor tonality, which then goes on to the relative Eb major tonality. It sticks close to the original arrangement from the SNES game, not adding the characteristic extended harmony that plagues other Smash 64 tunes. It mainly focuses on a i to iv progression after a descending intro of Fm – Gm – Ab – G. It uses sparingly the VII chord to finish the phrases.

The composition is all about the melody, instrumentation and jumping rhythms. When it goes to the relative major it focuses on the famous Pachelbel’s Canon chord progression, ending with a sus chord in order to loop, just like the Lost Woods theme from Ocarina of Time.

Here you can hear the “instrumental”version followed by the melodic one.

Kirby Victory Theme

Like the other combatants, Kirby’s victory theme is the short recurring theme that plays when Kirby completes a stage or defeats a boss, debuting in Kirby’s Dream Land (though the shortened version that this track is based on debuted in Kirby’s Adventure composed by the same guy in charge of this Super Smash Bros. entry). It is a fun celebratory flourish in the key of A major which also ends with the characteristic extended harmony prevalent in the music arrangements from Super Smash Bros. 64. Here you can see the track deconstructed.