Trivia / Kirby Star Allies

• Acting for Two:
  • Makiko Ohmoto reprises her roles as Kirby and Susie.
  • Though credited as general director, Shinya Kumazaki plays King Dedede (and by extension Parallel Dedede) and Void Termina.
  • Composer Hirokazu Ando voices Magolor, Taranza and Void Termina.
• Ascended Fanon: The Waddle Dee from Kirby 64 was commonly interpreted by fans as Bandana Dee from Super Star Ultra onwards, prior to having a finalized design. Adeleine & Ribbon's trailer appears to confirm this theory, with Bandana Dee showing up at the end alongside Kirby, Dedede, Adeleine, and Ribbon.
• Content Leak: Shortly after Wave One of Dream Friends released, dataminers were able to uncover the next two waves, revealing all of the upcoming Dream Friends, with only Ribbon remaining a surprise due to her being a duo with Adeleine.
• Creator-Driven Successor: Star Allies actually sticks closer to the cancelled Kirby GCN game than the actual successor, Kirby's Return to Dream Land, not only featuring the return of Helpers and the use of them for four-player co-op, but also featuring the scrapped Knight design with Morpho Knight.
• Descended Creator: Composers Hirokazu Ando and Yuuta Ogasawara provided the uncredited voices for Void Termina, along with general director Shinya Kumazaki and Team Kirby Clash Deluxe director Yumi Todo.
• Development Gag:
  • The superboss, Morpho Knight, was originally supposed to appear in the cancelled Kirby GameCube game, albeit with a different sword.
  • Star Allies Sparkler's Japanese name, Twinkle Star Allies, is a direct reference to Kirby's Dream Land's working title, Twinkle Popo.
• Dummied Out: While he is a Bonus Legacy Boss Battle in the Heroes in Another Dimension credits, there is data in the game files for a proper boss fight with Marx, including a boss health bar and a battle theme tagged to it, though they go unused and were likely added as a way to make sure that he is still fightable like every other boss. The Game Mod to re-implement it did not take long. Curiously, he is tagged as a Mini-Boss.
• Fandom Nod:
  • The game gives some credit to a common fan theory, that the anime also used, specifically the one that Kirby is actually a friendly Eldritch Abomination. When fighting Void Termina, the dark god of chaos worshiped by the game's cult, its core forms a face that looks almost exactly like Kirby's, color scheme and all. The pause screen description calls this Void Termina's true form. And that's not even getting into the Dark Matter/Zero connections.
  • An Adeleine and Ribbon focused trailer seems seems to have given credence to a popular theory regarding Bandana Waddle Dee being the same Waddle Dee as the one that starred in Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. In the end, the trailer has Kirby, Adeleine, Ribbon, King Dedede, and Bandana Waddle Dee all running together with Adeleine painting food for everyone, just as she did for the gang back in Kirby 64. However, a similar interaction on the title screen & main menu features Parasol Waddle Dee instead. On the other hand, Bandana Waddle Dee can also appear in the interaction. Make of that what you will.
• Milestone Celebration: A year late, but all the iconic characters over the course of the series being Promoted to Playable plus the option to turn Kirby back to his very first design when you beat Soul Melter EX in The Ultimate Choice point to this game being a 25th anniversary celebration.
• Production Nickname: Like most of the Kirby games, Star Allies was given a development nickname: in this case, "Eclair".
• Refitted for Sequel:
  • The idea of Zero making a reappearance was originally meant to be in Planet Robobot. Star Dream's first form was originally meant to be a roboticized version of the creature, as shown in that game's concept art. For one reason or another, however, the idea was scrapped in favor of connecting it with Nova, and the Zero-related ideas were retooled into Void Termina.
  • Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards was originally intended to feature Adeleine as a playable character^note (and Waddle Dee, who got his chance in Kirby's Return to Dream Land as Bandana Waddle Dee) while the game was developed for the Nintendo 64DD, and was in fact playable in beta builds. The idea was scrapped however, when the game moved from being a 64DD game to a regular Nintendo 64 cartridge due to the failure of the former. Fortunately, and 18 years later, Adeleine (alongside Ribbon) would finally have her playable debut in this game as part of the third wave of Dream Friends.
  • Morpho Knight was originally planned to be used in the cancelled GameCube game.
• Two Voices, One Character: Void Termina is voiced by Hirokazu Ando, Yuuta Ogasawara, Shinya Kumazaki and Yumi Todo reciting the Iroha poem in unison, with the idea behind it being to make it sound like a Voice of the Legion.
• What Could Have Been:
  • According to some game production info revealed in an issue of Nintendo Dream, the team had considered giving Adeleine voice acting, even considering picking a staff member to voice her, but decided against it so that she wouldn't feel too much like a different character.
  • Early datamines of the game found empty textboxes attributed to Magolor, implying he would've had a more important role in the game's story rather than being just another Dream Friend — though it's also entirely possible they were just left over from Kirby's Return to Dream Land.
  • More datamined files pointed towards Hyness, of all characters, being playable at some point, complete with fully finished recolors for all four playable slots. These files were removed from the version 4.0.0. update, and HAL later confirmed that this update would be the last.
  • Director Shinya Kumazaki stated that there were other characters they wanted to incorporate as Dream Friends, including Drawcia, Elline, Shadow Kirby, and Galacta Knight. These and other characters were ultimately excluded, deciding that only one Dream Friend should represent each game and that only mainline games (meaning no spinoffs or remakes) would be represented.
  • Unused code in the game shows that at one point, the Helper system was based on Kirby Super Star, with Kirby summoning a Helper from his Copy Ability (though the game doesn't actually clear Kirby's Copy Ability due to the code for that being skipped over).
  • Driblee and Floaty the Cell Core underwent multiple changes as can be seen here◊, here◊, here◊, and here◊.
• Working Title: The game was initially announced as Kirby for Nintendo Switch.

---