Kirby’s Dream Land 3 SNES

Kirby’s Dream Land 3 is HAL Laboratory’s 1997 platformer, published by Nintendo as the fifth mainline Kirby game and the third under the Dream Land name — and notably the last SNES game Nintendo published in North America, arriving well into the Nintendo 64 era. Directed by Shinichi Shimomura and produced by Satoru Iwata, it returns to the softer, hand-drawn crayon-style art of the earlier Dream Land games rather than Kirby Super Star’s more polished look.

It carries over the Copy Ability system from earlier entries but adds animal companions who each modify how a copied power behaves, giving the same ability different effects depending on which partner Kirby is riding. Its slower pace and gentler difficulty curve, aimed more deliberately at younger players than Kirby Super Star, made it something of a stylistic throwback within the series even at the time of its release.