Kirby’s Dream Course

A contender for most underappreciated game ever, Kirby’s Dream Course is usually described as a Kirby golf game, but it’s more accurate to call it a full Kirby game that happens to incorporate golf mechanics. That’s an important distinction, because it makes Dream Course a complete, rewarding, and original title instead of a branded reskin of an existing product. A variety of terrain effects and unusual takes on the protagonist’s copy abilities make the single-player content here an unexpected treat. The level design in particular is sublime; the copy abilities that often ruin the structure of these games are deliberately laid out here to allow the execution of satisfying chain reactions.

Remarkably, Dream Course would be perfectly serviceable even if it was just a straight golf title. The presentation is clean, the audio is enjoyable, and the physics are far more manageable than the more complex 3D systems of today. This makes it possible to consistently pull off impressive shots but leaves enough unpredictability to prevent mechanical repetition. There’s also a surprisingly full-featured two-player mode that adds power- and point-stealing mechanics, inviting the kind of wacky fun you don’t normally get from turn-based gameplay. The controls can be a little confusing (it’s an isometric SNES game after all), and the lone boss fight at the finale is pathetic, but overall, this experiment paid off handsomely.