Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe review – overfamiliar fun for friends and families

Nintendo Switch; Hal Laboratories/ Nintendo
This colourful multiplayer platformer was largely ignored when it first came out in 2011 - is it worth a second look?

Kirby was designed to be easily drawn. Part balloon, part sentient piece of bubblegum, creator Masahiro Sakurai envisioned a character so simple that kids would scribble it on their notebooks for decades to come. And it worked: Nintendo's ball-shaped mascot is ubiquitous in modern meme culture. Yet despite Kirby's status as an internet icon, for most of his existence, he never quite had the gaming classic to match.

Thankfully for Kirby, that all changed last year, with his fantastic first foray into the third dimension: Kirby and the Forgotten Land. It was a hit, shifting over 5 million copies and delighting players of all ages (including this 31-year-old). Now Nintendo has raided its vaults to reanimate an old Kirby caper: Return To Dream Land's colourful platforming was largely ignored when it originally arrived in 2011, sent out to die on the (then) ailing Wii. Why not give it a second chance on the mega-successful Nintendo Switch?

Kirby's Return to Dream Land is out 24 February; 49.99