Trivia / Kirby's Halloween Adventure

• Acting for Two: Game example. Many enemy variants were made using the same AI for both characters, but using the existing code for Blade/Sword Knight to allow for multiple sprite variants of one same enemy.
• Author Appeal: Kirb-Star admitted many times this game was basically an excuse to use all of his normally unused knowledge of Kirby enemies into an actual tangible project to bank on representing more niche enemies that the fandom normally overlook.
• Blooper: The initial release made the mistake of using an unusable door tile on one of its earliest levels, leaving most of the game unplayable. It got fixed in patch 1.1.
• Christmas Rushed: Or Halloween Rushed, you may say. Version 1.2 was submitted in August to SAGE 2020, continuing to get edits until the September release, with plenty of intended areas rushed out the door. Patch 1.3 was released a month after to compensate for this, with Bonkerstein getting added in as well.
• Converted Fanboy: Real-life example. While researching for enemies in the series to add to the game, the overlooked enemy Flapper from Dream Land was considered, but being rejected in favor of Babut from Dream Land 3 and Return to Dream Land because the 8-bit sprite was too creepy and large to fit in the required pixel count. Then while developing patch 1.2, the author would see the artwork version of Flapper and model a new bat sprite after it instead. Flappers have been the author's favorite Kirby enemy ever since.
• Creator Backlash: The author doesn't think very highly of versions 1.0 or 1.1, as they mostly limited to just enemy sprite replacements with (limited) Palette Swaps. That said, he wishes he didn't throw away the old versions (as the only old version currently archived in the modern release is 1.3).
• Dummied Out: Cannons were removed from the game to make more room for enemy sprites.
  • Warp Star Stations were replaced with much simpler ones for similar reasons, to add more space for enemy sprites.
• Follow the Leader: Kirb-Star admitted that one of his two main motivations for making the 1.2 patch was watching the Mario's Mystery Meat stream from Web Video/Vinesauce, and being so impressed of the work that he used that as motivation to go beyond his previous self-imposed limits from earlier patches.
• George Lucas Altered Version: Mostly what patches 1.3 and 1.4 boil down to, still making drastic changes while keeping some of the flow of the previous patch better.
• Inspiration for the Work: As stated above, Mystery Meat was the main factor behind the development of 1.2, the other factor was Youtube channel Ant Dude featuring the romhack on one of his videos, inspiring Kirb-Star to make a more impressive work to live up to the video.
  • Mystery Meat's presence can be seen with the Meat Vineshroom enemy, added in 1.2 to homage the romhack that inspired this work to be continued.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Patches 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2 haven't been archived properly. The latest download has both the old 1.3 version and the final one.
• Meaningful Release Date: Every version minus 1.1 has been released around fall season, usually early October in case somebody wanted to celebrate Halloween early.
• Missing Trailer Scene: Retroactive example, as trailers for 1.0 and 1.2 contain shots from now removed or edited levels.
• Out of Holiday Episode: Defied, as none of the patches were released on October 31st to give people enough time in advance to let them plan if they wanted to play the game on their holiday or not. The game would end up released always on Fall season... except 1.1, which was made around March 2019.
• Postscript Season: The game's development was intended to end twice. First with the October 2018 release of patch 1.0, which got a brief revision in 2019 as 1.1, with the work not being revisited until 2020, where a new patch was developed. 1.3 was meant to be the last version to release, but dissatisfaction by some aspects of the work ended up making him revisit the project in 2021, where the final patch has been issued.
• Production Nickname: Several of the game's levels had simple codenames while in production, such as Sunken City for Hades Harbor's 2nd stage or Bad Taste Aquarium for Terror Tower's 2nd level.
• Prop Recycling: Many of the game's assets are actually repurposed enemy sprites from Kirby's Dream Land and Kirby's Dream Land 2, both using the same 16x16 style of sprites that Kirby's Adventure used.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: Infamously, the once planned Haunted Harbor had to be renamed to Hallow Harbor due to name screen limitations... only for the intro-screen to corrupt and look like a complete mess in versions 1.0 and 1.1. When work was being made in 1.2, the code inside of the game was rewritten to change the world's name to hopefully uncorrupt the data, and it worked. In the honor of this notorious visual glitch, the level got renamed to Hades Harbor (meant as euphemism for Hell Harbor due to being a huge headache to work with).
  • Because the new name made no sense for the world's theming (a haunted Port Town), a new tileset was made to tie with the new name, with greco-roman temple ruins being chosen due to the Hades namesake, and theme the area closer with volcanoes whenever ships weren't involved.
• Spared by the Cut: The unused Dummied Out Hammer enemy (discovered to be a Mace Knight) was re-added in one of this romhack's museums.
  • The Dummied Out cave tileset intended for the Light ability was rescued here for the underground gallery levels.
  • The unused clock enemy from Kirby & the Amazing Mirror: Tokkon, would be rescued for this game as the mid-boss for the Mike ability (replacing Mr. Tick Tock).
• Throw It In!: The Frozen Meat enemies were originally a mistake from loading the Chilly enemy AI on rooms where Cappy sprites were loaded, but the result ended with a convincing enemy animation that it was left in by the end.
• What Could Have Been: The game was once intended to use the usual Fun with Acronyms naming scheme the series is known for, but it got dropped in favor of names easier to understand at first glance to non-fans.
  • One of the proposed naming schemes was going to be be Horror Hills, Abyssmal Afloat, Undead Uprise, Nightly Nebula, Terrifying Terrain, Eerie Estuary, Dark Dreamland (H-A-U-N-T-E-D; suggested by user HEXELECTRON and approved for use, but unfortunately went unused by the end).
  • While the non acronym names for the first 3 worlds stuck, Worlds 4 through 7 had different ones: Night Neighborhood, Mist Mountain, Halloween Harbour, Graveyard Garden, but name limitations on the NES couldn't support them.
  • Whispy Woods was supposed to get both a custom arena and an angry face like his expression in Kirby's Dream Land 3, but technical difficulties proved the latter impossible, as his face uses the same sprite for his eyes and mouth. A custom arena with platforms and water/spikes was considered and tested once, but they proved incompatible with the victory dance and the ending demo.
  • Paint Roller was once intended to be replaced by Squashini or Wiz at one point, but he was left unedited through the first revisions of the game. When 1.2 came to replace him, Adeleine was chosen in their favor, but both runner ups would get homages in later patches.
  • Mr. Bright & Mr. Shine were once intended to have custom designs based on the Sun & Moon from Soul Eater, but the faces were deemed too complex for the sprite sizes.
  • For version 1.4, the third enemy intended for Quick Draw was meant to be Gim from Kirby Super Star, but was dropped due to difficulties lining up his body and cap in-game, as revealed in a tweet. He'd end up replaced by an in-game enemy: Whippy the clown.
  • While developing 1.4, Keke was going to be exclusive to just the Crane Game at one point, as the author couldn't find any flying enemies that could make a good match for her broom. During development, the author noticed Starman's glide worked perfect as a stand-in, and decided to add her at the last minute.
  • Whippy and Blopper (clown and cake) were intended to be used on the flying circus level, but their enemy slots accidentally took the place of one of Kirby's animations in the Hub, so their roles were dialed a lot to just very infrequent enemies in other areas.
  • The game was planned to have custom music on its start, but plans for this fell through, given the author wasn't very knowledgeable of music editing while writing the original document in 2018. Kirb-Star attempted to port the theme of Moonlight Mansion from the Kirby's Adventure romhack by Puresabe, but he couldn't figure a method how to.
  • Documents of 2018 intended to replace Bugzzy with a Mothman inspired mid-boss, but plans fell short as his sprite sheet was too complex to edit on the rom, leading to his edit consisting of just two hairy antennae. Version 1.4 would finally realize this design with Mother Moth's introduction.
  • Grand Wheelie is the only left out mid-boss from getting aesthetic changes. It was planned to sprite them closer to their design in Triple Deluxe, but plans fell through after it was discovered the character's sprite tiles were flipped to make a perfect wheel shape, and remains the only unchanged mid-boss.
  • The castle stage of Stage 3 of Ghostly Graves was intended to be the final level and be the game's longest level as a proper final challenge, but the ROM's memory was running out more and more with each change, so the final version had to be dimmed down a whole ton and moved in favor of keeping the Nostalgia Level as the final stage.
    • The level based on Kirby's Dream Land 2 was gonna have a different Deliberately Monochrome palette per room, mimicking the Super Game Boy version of that game, but plans fell through after the HUD seemed impossible to edit accordingly alongside the level palettes.
    • A final battle with the Meta-Knights using an unused fight for them at the top of Dark Castle (for the Nostalgia Level) was considered heavily, but the layour deemed too difficult for untrained players to fight on, and the game didn't have enough rooms with the white HUD to have this one in.
  • Talks of a sequel to this romhack were considered many times, with an attempted start with Kirby's Christmas Adventure in 2020 putting Kirby through winter tropes and enemies, but was cancelled due to difficulty editing enemy sprites to make winter variants for them (many requiring potential hats the sprites aren't accommodated for), and overall the theme of winter and Christmas not being as broad to work with as Halloween (or Horror).
    • The 2nd sequel project that was conceived was Kirby's Holiday Adventure, pitting Kirby through different holidays for each world (skipping Halloween obviously) and ending with Christmas, but Kirb-Star getting involved in other projects likely mean these won't see the light of day.