Kirby’s Dream Land is a video game developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy. Released in 1992, it is both the first video game in the Kirby series and the debut of Kirby himself. As the inaugural Kirby title it created many conventions that would appear in later games in the series. However, Kirby’s trademark “copy” ability would not appear until Kirby’s Adventure, released less than one year later.
Kirby’s Dream Land was designed by Masahiro Sakurai, who intended it to be a simple game that could be easy to pick up and play even by those unfamiliar with action games. For more advanced players, he offered additional optional challenges such as an unlockable hard mode and the ability to edit Kirby’s maximum HP and starting number of lives. Kirby’s Dream Land was re-released on the Nintendo 3DS via the Virtual Console in 2011 and is also one of the games included in the compilation game Kirby’s Dream Collection for the Wii, released to celebrate Kirby’s 20th anniversary.