We all love a good redemption story, right? And, as we all know, redemption can be a long uphill battle, or in some cases, an arduous journey through another dimension. No, that’s not a reference to some dramatic Star Wars story arc, but to a surprisingly awesome encounter that I stumbled upon after beating Kirby’s Return To Dream Land Deluxe. Once you finish Story Mode, Magolor Epilogue: The Interdimensional Traveler is unlocked and included in the game’s Mode Options.
‘Nothing strange about an Epilogue,’ I hear you say, but here’s the thing: it’s really good. So good, in fact, that it made more of an impact on me than the entire rest of Dream Land Deluxe did (which is saying something, because I absolutely loved the main game).
Reader Beware: Spoilers Ahead!
Towards the tail end of Dream Land Deluxe, you find out that your once-trusted space traveler buddy Magolor has just been playing Kirby for a sap the entire time in order to get his mitts on the Master Crown. Enraged and deceived, you beat him to a pulp and then send him packing via a shimmering star portal to God knows where. In the original Dream Land, that’s where Magolor’s story stops, but don’t duplicitous space wizards deserve a second chance?
Nintendo sure thought so, and by the end of the Epilogue, so did I.
The Interdimensional Traveler epilogue chronicles Magolor’s plight immediately after the events of Deluxe. Without missing a beat, you’re dropped into some strange dimension as Magolor (honestly, not that strange, as it’s crawling with the same enemies from Story Mode), disheveled and stripped of all your magic powers; your once-shiny regal blue and white robes are now reduced to torn gray rags. Pitiful, destitute, and yet, just where he belongs. A contrite character ripe for redemption!
Minus his sorcerer abilities, this guy can’t do much besides weakly shoot magic orbs at enemies and hop around like an injured frog. That’d make for quite the tragic Epilogue indeed. Thankfully, that’s not the case for long. The progression of the game is set up in a familiar Kirby fashion with three to four platform levels before a boss fight, each giving you the chance to regain what was lost via Magic Points collected throughout the levels.
As the Epilogue takes an ephemeral two hours to complete, there’s no time to waste. After every boss victory, Magolor re-learns old skills, like the Magalor Surge, a dash-combo that bashes through baddies, and the Magolor Cannon, a super weapon that emits a massive ray of deadly light. Other powers are earned the old-fashioned way for a former criminal: in the trenches.
Like Deluxe’s Story Mode, my favorite part was the journey, but Epilogue incorporated mechanics that hit harder than Kirby’s tale, literally. Magolor earns extra Magic Points not only by finding gems and rubies throughout the levels, but through combo attacks that resemble all the beat ’em up fun of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. At the end of each non-boss level, you’re faced with an onslaught of enemies whose only purpose—at least to me—was to let me practice racking up combo hits by wailing on them as long as possible. Familiar punching noises and button mashing ensued.
Once I’d accrued enough currency, I hit up the Magical Skills shop to spend some Magic Points. This would’ve been a fun experiment to try out in Kirby’s Story Mode (are you listening, Nintendo?). Options included boosting my HP, elevating my levitating abilities, increasing the Megalor Surge and other preliminary powers. Over time, I managed to max out the majority of skills, putting me pretty much where I’d left off prior to the defeat at Kirby’s hands. OK, cool. Almost back to normal and totally redeemed, but to what end?
This is where the game fell a bit flat. As there is no precedent to Magolor’s second-chance in the original Return To Dream Land, Epilogue’s “plot” revolves around acquiring 5 golden apple slices, easily obtained after each boss fight, that ultimately merge and give you a complete golden apple. Well that’s just great. We all love apples, but they don’t equate to pure absolution. I’d hoped for an inkling of backstory, or at least some loose narrative, but instead earned a large piece of fruit. More confusion followed.
After four boss fights and earning all the apple slices, I was ready for the big boss, who started out as the Kirby-standard Sphere Doomer, but after a swift defeat, he transitioned into a cross between The Lord of The Rings’ Sauron and a giant tree with butterfly wings.
From that moment, I knew we were a dimension away from the source material. Who was this random dude? What connection did he have with Kirby or Magolor? What gives with the butterfly wings? Alas, no rest—or answers—for the wicked. The boss match ended and Magolor jumped through a star portal to another undisclosed location. And just like that, the credits rolled and all I had to show for my journey was an unlocked mask to use in the mini-game-filled Merry Magoland.
Regardless of the abrupt ending and my love for Kirby, Magolor’s plight won me over. I completely forgot that this guy had tried to kill me a few hours prior, which meant that I was either a sucker, or that Magolor’s magical charm was too potent to withstand. It wasn’t that I was rooting for the bad guy, per se, more like relating to one who’d fallen from grace.
For all of Kirby’s snow-white (pink, whatever) goodness, there was something appealing and very human about Magolor’s shades of gray. Perhaps it was Magolor who ultimately had the better story to tell. After all, “long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light”. Or, you at know, at least back up to Planet Popstar.
