Kirby and the Forgotten Land continues to break Kirby series records for Nintendo and HAL Laboratory. After becoming the most successful Kirby game in the UK ever last week, Nintendo now reports that the latest Kirby game has seen the highest sell-through of any Kirby game to date! This comes from Nintendo's latest financial report, which was published earlier today.
That news means that Forgotten Land has been a pretty fast seller, selling over 4 million units in 15 weeks — pretty big numbers for Kirby! Sitting at 4.53 million sales, that makes this 3D game the second best-selling Kirby game ever.
The only Kirby game ahead of this apocalyptic adventure is the original on the Game Boy — Kirby's Dream Land, which has sold 5.13 million units. We're pretty confident Kirby can suck up the remaining ground to catch up to his sepia-toned origins.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land won't be the only Kirby game releasing this year. Announced just last month, Kirby's Dream Buffet — a Fall Guys-style party game — will be squeezing onto the eShop sometime this summer.
How do you feel about Kirby's reported success? Did you enjoy Kirby and the Forgotten Land? Let us know down below!
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[source nintendo.co.jp]
Comments 48
Well deserved sales. The most fun I had with a Kirby game.
Considering how it's only been out for 4-5 months, is on an incredibly popular system and is only 500k (give or take) units away from Dream Land.....I have a hunch it'll overtake it. Well deserved as well, I can't wait to play Forgotten Land at some point, it's a genuine evolution of Kirby that has proven to be a massive success!
Well deserved. It's the first Kirby I actually beat and have seen the post credits for. I usually like the games but end up putting them down.
Hopefully means mostly 3D Kirby games now going forward.
Now give us Kirby's Air Ride 2 with online play!
I thought Star Allies surpassed Dream Land as the most successful Kirby game a long time ago. If it didn't, I'm not disappointed since that game was terrible.
It deserves it, this was the return to form they needed after Star Allies. Though I want a sequel to this, I do hope they keep the 2D games going in some form.
Congrats to Kirby, well deserved!!
What i dont quiet get it is, Nintendo usually don't share information on digital sales, how do we know these numbers are accurate? 🤔
I still want to buy this game. Lots of other games to finish (+scarcity with Kirby for months after release with the physical version in Europe). And right now I have Xeno3 and LiveALive to finish so... yeah. But this very year I want to buy it, it looks quite fun!
@Not_Soos Star Allies is at 3.42 million as of the end of 2020.
@BTB20 Thanks for the data. I must've read an article saying it was on track to surpass Dream Land, but I guess people stopped buying that game very quickly. Understandably so, if you ask me.
one of two games I've bought this year other being the game of the year Elden Ring
That's huge sales for the game! Even if it doesn't surpass 5.15 million of the original Kirby's Dreamland for the GB, 4.5 million is nothing to scoff at. I'm just glad more people ended up giving this game a try over Star Allies at 3.5 million so we'll see more 3D Kirby and polished Kirby games in the future.
I'm kind of curious how the original ended up selling so well. It's kind of surprising Kirby's never had a game to come close to matching the original's success in over 30 years until now.
It's bound to become No. 1 for the series anytime now, it's gotten so much good press that it has to overtake Dream Land eventually
I love Kirby's Dream Land 1. Simpler times playing before the power-ups. And I agree with the sales numbers that these two games are the best Kirby games
@Not_Soos Really? It's got great reviews. And I played the Demo and thought it was really creative and inventive. Is your complaint that it's easy? Cause that's kinda Kirby's whole thing is being easy to play and win. I'm curious, what did you find off putting about it?
@Not_Soos terrible? Star Allies is great and has incredible replay value.
@thinkhector For me, I felt Kirby's Return To Dreamland was way better than Star Allies. But I also felt Star Allies was better than Triple Deluxe and Planet Robobot. The way the backgrounds have a haze to create the illusion of depth of field really bugged me and came across as lazy. I also wish it was more like 64 or Forgotten Land, with level design that was more organic to the world around it. It's just 90's Kirby with a fresh coat of paint, but not as interesting. The way co-op was with using the enemies as characters was great though.
Wow, go Kirby! I’m really glad because Forgotten Land is one of the best Kirby games they’ve made. A real contender for the best, honestly. So I hope it’s success means we’ll keep getting more Kirby like it.
This game deserves the success. It rules. Forgotten Land is right up their with Planet Robobot as my favorite Kirbys.
@Orokosaki @thinkhector
1/2
My biggest gripe was the lack of content. It's a $60 game that I had 100% completed in about 5 hours. Previous Kirby titles had several collectibles like the Energy Spheres from Return to Dream Land--each level would have anywhere from 3 to 5 of them---but Star Allies only has one collectible to find in each level and maybe an occasional switch that opens a secret level. They're all incredibly obvious and usually in plain sight, though.
I've never really understood the idea that Kirby games are supposed to be easy; games like Kirby's Dream Land, Kirby's Adventure, Kirby 64, Kirby Superstar, Return to Dream Land, and even Forgotten Land can all put up a decent challenge. It's not uncommon for me to die while going through The Great Cave Offensive, for example, and Kirby 64 can be quite tricky the whole way through. It's rare you'll fall in a pit in Kirby games, but it can take skill to navigate the intricate enemy placement sometimes.
Puzzle rooms that are necessary for 100% completion like the treasure chests in the Great Cave or the ones in Triple Deluxe can also leave me stumped for a bit. Sometimes they require me to use a specific copy ability, but it might not be immediately obvious which one. In Star Allies, I never had to stop and think about it for a second. Every puzzle was spelled out for me. Bosses have also always been challenging in Kirby games, but one of the worst parts about Star Allies for me is the titular allies. They basically play the game for you and take down every boss in a matter of seconds. I would try to avoid using allies as much as I could, but when it was mandatory, it would break the flow of the game for me to stop what I'm doing and throw hearts at enemies to get past an arbitrary wall in my way, only to then have to go through and delete each of them. It was just a very tedious mechanic.
The game just feels incredibly rushed to me, if not downright lazy. Especially in the later half of the game, I felt it was reusing the same purple backdrops again and again instead of having unique level themes. It's also overly reliant on old music--not remixes, that would be fine, but it's very jarring to go into a secret level and hear 16-bit music juxtaposed with the HD environments.
I know they added extra content after the game's release and made the new mode more challenging, but I had already moved on by that time and wasn't interested in picking the game back up. It once again seemed to be reusing the same background in every level, and from what I remember, the difficulty felt artificial instead of clever--like they were trying to overcompensate for the easy base game by releasing DLC that was just frustrating. There's no difficulty curve, it just flatlines through the main game and skyrockets in the DLC. There's no sense of cohesion.
The DLC characters did nothing for me, as it felt like a cheap way of using easy fanservice to make people overlook the glaring faults of the game. I don't consider the time trial challenges to provide any worthwhile replay value, as you're just going through portions of the same game again and again, except it's worse because you begin with reduced speed until you gradually build it back up.
@thinkhector @Orokosaki
2/2
The level design was just so lackluster to me from beginning to end, and it never felt fun--which is definitely possible, even in a game that's easy. You can't even die in Epic Yarn, but I adore that game because the level themes are interesting, the designs of the levels are engaging, and completionists like me are incentivised not to take damage since it makes you lose beads in a similar fashion to Sonic's rings. But I remember very vividly that there's a level in Star Allies--the one where you fight Meta Knight--that plays out exactly like this: Run to the right, climb stairs, hit switch, activate more stairs, climb left, hit switch, more stairs, climb to the right, hit switch, repeat. (Or, just fly over the whole thing.) The whole game feels like this, and I hated it.
The only positives I can say about the game is that the graphics are absolutely beautiful, and I was very happy they brought back the concept of combining your copy abilities. Flame swords will never stop being epic. The 3D World map was also pretty cool, and I loved the visuals of the final map when you're on the Warp Star traveling the cosmos. But that was pretty much all I liked.
Everything about the game was uninspired to me, right down to the antagonist, who I completely forgot about until recently. He's literally just Zant from Twilight Princess, and then it ends with fighting Majora's Mask, basically.
I know there are people who really like the game, and that's fine. I feel like it should go without saying (but this is the internet and people have to find a way to get offended over something, lol), but my opinion isn't meant to invalidate anyone else's. More power to you guys for finding enjoyment where I couldn't. But for me, it's easily my most regrettable Switch purchase--even as a massive Kirby fan--and it feels like a game that would have released on the Wii U in 2015-2016 around the time of titles like Ultra Smash and Star Fox Zero.
I'd like to replay the game and give it another chance, but I've already went back and played it at least once with lower expectations going in since I first beat it, and I was still disappointed that second time around. I just couldn't get into it at all and was bored for a significant portion of my time.
@Not_Soos Thanks for the info. I whole heartedly agree with you on the price point, and that's why I never picked up. I mean Kirby's Fighters 2 is only $20! And Kirby's Clash is free! And I'm betting Kirby's Dream Course will be $40 at launch. All Kirby games SHOULD be priced lower. Yes, even the new Kirby game should have launched at $50.
@Not_Soos epic reply! We’re all entitled to our opinion and I guess it’s why we all love different games. Life would be boring if everyone liked the same thing although I do appreciate you taking your time to justify why you don’t like it
@Not_Soos When you play too many games, everything started to feel the same. Don't expect Kirby to change though, instead you should move on from Kirby and play something else. A lot of Nintendo IPs are meant for entry level players anyways.
@Not_Soos I HIGHLY doubt you 100% the game in 5 hours.... unless you were playing in easy mode and had some incredible luck. Perhaps you should stream it. Cuz I'd have to see it to believe it.
Good Kirby game but I like Star Allies better. Each to their own I guess.
@Serpenterror It's really not that. I loved Forgotten Land, and I can still go back to previous Kirby games from before Star Allies and have a great time. I just replayed Kirby 64 when they added it to NSO not very long ago, and I actually thought the game was even better than I remembered. I even quite like the New Super Mario Bros. games, even though they get a lot of flack for being the same thing. I just...really didn't like Star Allies, lol.
@LikwidYoshi The main game, yes. I didn't bother with all the time trials though. They don't count toward file completion, and it was just kinda the same thing over and over again. I also never went back to do the DLC mode they added because I had already moved on by then.
Duh. 3D has always sold better than 2D. The only exception is Mario Bros.
Game is excellent, wish they would make dlc for it.
At this point, becoming the best-selling Kirby game is a matter of when, not if.
Unless the game somehow suddenly drops in sales for some reason.
In our house - Kirby was the summer hit. They beat it a while ago but they enjoy it so much they just keep playing boards they have beaten over and over again.
HAL deserves all the success. They put a lot of effort into the title and it shows.
Nice. It's a massive comeback after the mediocre Star Allies.
Hopefully the next game in the series is even more ambitious.
GO KIRBY GOOO!!!!
Very well deserved. Fantastic game, one of my favourites of the year. Had loads of fun playing it with my kids.
I was hoping for a content update/dlc here, ah well.
The sales are even more impressive when you consider it's not a 1-to-1 comparison in terms of pricing. Game Boy games weren't priced as high as console releases even at the time of release. So consumers are investing far more of their financial capital into Kirby & the Forgotten Land than they did for Kirby's Dreamland... although it's a safe bet former costed a lot more to produce than the latter for Nintendo.
Would be cool to see a net-profit comparison adjusted for inflation of course for a more in-depth contrast.
... Wun can only hope.
Cool. I want a King Dedede game now.
... Wun can only hope.
Go Kirby great game.
I was incredibly surprised by this game. I hadn't bought a Kirby game since the GBA days but decided to give this one a chance since I'd heard good things about it and ended up absolutely loving every second. I was honestly sad that it ended.
It's a great Kirby game. For me, Planet Robobot is very slightly better, but since everyone has mostly moved on from the 3DS this is definitely the defacto Kirby release
@Not_Soos I’m a HUGE Kirby fan since the first game and honestly I felt the same. I don’t dislike the game as much as you. I did have a lot of fun with the Arena mode afterwards. However you are right about the levels feeling super lackluster. The meat of the game is just lacking. It’s made more painful and frustrating by the fact that the game was a 25th anniversary send off. It should have felt like more of an epic send off of 2D Kirby but it’s just fanservice to the extreme with weak levels. Maybe if HAL didn’t spend as much time on SO MANY additional characters and worked on levels and worlds, would have balanced out. OR if the game was just all these awesome characters and boss fights at half the price, I would have been satisfied. Felt like it needed to concentrate on a particular thing.
@Serpenterror I love souls games and beat Elden Ring and Sekiro twice recently. I’ll never stop playing Kirby tho lol. I legit enjoy the games.
@Axecon it’s not surprising Dreamland sold so well. It’s a very solid entry level title for the times and the gameboy was HUGE. It just became a must have for the handheld along some other decent titles for the handheld. Mario, Zelda, Tetris, etc
I want to play it so bad! I'm just having trouble justifying the $80CAD price tag for it. I feel like I have a lot of other platformers to play, including most of the Kirby library on NSO. Maybe I'll wait for a price dropped or used copy at my local used game store.
@Not_Soos what DLC are you talking about? Am I missing something? Also… the time trial events are partners are part of the 100%, as they help to unlock all items. Also the boss arena. Also the post-game levels. So what you really mean is that you just beat the game in 5 hours, not 100%. Congrats. Now it makes sense.
@LikwidYoshi Maybe you're confused--I'm complaining about Star Allies, not Forgotten Land. Forgotten Land has a sizeable amount of content, and I love that game.
@Not_Soos You're correct. I guess I was confused. Glad we're on the same page . I was about to be like "wtf, no way"
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