Kid Kirby Recreation Finally Lets You Fling DMA Design’s Lost SNES Mouse Game

In 1994 Nintendo handed Scotland’s DMA Design a Kirby license and a Super NES Mouse and asked the studio to make a prequel. DMA was already known for Lemmings and Uniracers and would, two years later, ship Grand Theft Auto. Kid Kirby started even earlier as a golf-style mouse prototype from freelancer Tony Colgan, then became a stretch-and-launch blob called Jellies before Nintendo suggested the pink puffball.

Players were meant to grab a younger Kirby by the skin, yank him back, and launch him through maze-like courses, slapping him upward or slamming him down in midair. He wore a curl in his hair. Dedede appeared as Prince Dedede. Former DMA writer Steve Hammond later published story pages depicting Kirby waking up after the Dream Spring fails and attempting to repair it while speaking in fruit-and-vegetable speech bubbles.

Nintendo Power predicted a 1995 release date for the game, and a Mexican Club Nintendo issue even featured the logo. They also had some very great promotional imagery planned for shops in October, but as is common, development took longer than expected. The Super NES Mouse that came with the Mario Paint bundle performed poorly outside of it, and the design never appeared to convert adequately to a conventional pad. Nintendo was already looking ahead to the Nintendo 64 at the time. A playable demo did exist, but Mike Dailly claims it vanished without a trace. What did survive were maps, placeholder sprites, and pre-rendered SGI workstation imagery developed by dma in the style of Donkey Kong Country. These materials were eventually posted by Dailly, Hammond, and programr James Watson. They sat in the archives for more than three decades.

NovaStar86B, a project that began as a hobbyist project for a YouTube video, converted the public materials and interviews into a free Windows and Linux download named Kid Kirby Recreation on itch.io. It’s a modest 51 to 55 megabyte bundle that includes eight stages and a boss. Some of the layouts were adapted from earlier test maps, but NovaStar created the opponent and object placement on his own. The designer stated that their purpose was to take what the original DMA team had left behind and turn it into something actual, and that adding much more to the mix would simply be making up things that the team had never mentioned. Recent updates addressed stop cursor glitches and a Linux full screen stretch issue.

Kirby, simply click and drag him back, then release. He has a fast spin that knocks enemies out cold, as well as a gradual drift that can damage him. You can even capture him in the air and launch him on a different trajectory. Some adversaries will drop copy abilities, such as beams and parasols, which endure approximately ten seconds or less. If you right-click or use the space bar, they will turn off early. Kirby transforms into a paper plane that tilts with the W and S keys, similar to the plane in Paper Mario, but you exchange height for speed. He also has anvil and fireball forms to deal with. Some of the keyboard features include a door key, as well as a rapid upward and downward slam. To pause, simply press the P or Enter keys. Go fullscreen at 1024 by 896 and use F to do it.

The eight levels each introduce fresh rules, so you’ll never get into a rut of doing the same thing twice. There’s a central hub that connects everything, and you can skip cutscenes with the space key. Updates are simple because save data is saved outside of the game folder. Commentors have described the game as having a similar vibe to Kirby Canvas Curse and Mass Attack, which is a valid comparison. The game is entirely about hand movement, much like the SNES Mouse was supposed to be back in 1995. The animations are a touch stiff, though, because the majority of Kirby’s frames came from a placeholder sprite file. Watson later revealed that the finished sprites were actually 24 by 24, rendered on SGI workstations and hand retouched, and would have grown larger as you powered him up. Unfortunately, those finished papers never left DMA.
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