Kirby Star Allies

About

Kirby Star Allies is an upcoming Nintendo game in the Kirby franchise. The game will be released for the Nintendo Switch on March 16th, 2018.

History

A Kirby game for the Nintendo Switch was advertised by Nintendo at E3 2017, though the title was yet to be announced. On September 13th, 2017, Kirby Star Allies was announced via a Nintendo Direct promotional video advertising upcoming games.

At the time, the game was announced for "Spring 2018." A Nintendo Direct from January 11th, 2018 announced the release date as March 16th, 2018 (shown below). On March 1st, 2018, Nintendo released a demo for the game on the Switch's eShop.^[2]

Gameplay will be a 2D plat former with 3D graphics. Kirby will move with several other characters, allowing the potential for co-op play. Additionally, Kirby will be able to combine with the other characters for powerful moves.

Related Memes

Buff Dedede

Buff Dedede is a nickname given to a muscular version of the enemy character King Dedede shown in the September preview of Kirby Star Allies. The day of the September Nintendo Direct, "Buff Dedede" became a trending topic on Twitter,^[1] where many users joked about the muscular depiction of the character (shown below).

Meanwhile, a Jojo's Bizarre Adventure-themed photoshop of Buff Dedede was submitted to /r/Kirby^[2] (shown below). That evening, the pop culture blog Heavy^[3] published an article titled "Kirby Star Allies Features Buff Dedede, Twitter Goes Nuts."

Online Presence

The game has generated significant hype, particularly on Reddit, where subreddits such as /r/kirby and /r/nintendoswitch feature highly-upvoted posts related to the game. For example, a post about the game's demo in /r/nintendoswitch gained over 4,000 upvotes.^[3] Additionally, the demo was data-mined for leaks. A comprehensive list of leaks mined from the demo was posted to Tumblr on March 5th, 2018.^[4]

Search Interest

External References