Kirby’s Dream Land 2 GAMEBOY

Kirby’s Dream Land 2, released in 1995, brought two things to the series that hadn’t existed in the original Game Boy game: the Copy Ability system (borrowed from the NES’s Kirby’s Adventure, letting Kirby permanently gain an enemy’s power instead of just inhaling and spitting them out) and three animal companion characters — Rick the hamster, Kine the fish, and Coo the owl — who ride alongside Kirby and change how each Copy Ability functions depending on which one he’s paired with.

The animal-pairing system means the same ability behaves differently depending on context: a Fire ability might shoot forward on foot but breathe flame in an arc while riding Kine underwater, giving the same power set noticeably more variety than a straight ability list would. The plot also introduces series antagonist Dark Matter for the first time, corrupting the Rainbow Drops that Kirby has to recover across seven worlds to restore color to Dream Land.

It’s a direct sequel in name only — mechanically it’s closer to a handheld cousin of Kirby’s Adventure than a follow-up to the more minimalist original Dream Land, and the animal-buddy system it introduced became a recurring feature across several later Kirby games.