Trivia / Kirby's Return to Dream Land

• Content Leak: About a month before Deluxe was released, a Canadian GameStop employee got ahold of the back of the game's box◊, revealing the Magolor Epilogue before its official reveal in a Nintendo Direct about a week later.
• Completely Different Title: The original Wii version's European title is Kirby's Adventure Wii.
• Development Gag:
  • Seeing how long it took for this game to be released, there are quite a few of these, notably HR-D3 being a retooled model of the Dedede Robot from the E3 2005 trailer for the canceled GameCube game (and Kirby Quest).
  • The music from the E3 2005 trailer for the canceled GameCube game, "Road to Victory," was also used as The Arena's battle theme for this game, which itself uses a recurring leitmotif present in Return to Dream Land, suggesting it was lifted from the GameCube as well. Another track, "Exploring the Cave," was later found out to have also been originally used for the GameCube game, after more footage of the E3 event surfaced.
  • Several backgrounds from the GameCube iteration were used, most notably the one used for the Mid-Bosses in The Arena.
  • Also from the GameCube game, it shows the ability to stack multiple players/helpers before this game uses it.
  • The updated artstyle of Deluxe seems to be a reference to an early prototype of the game that had a pop-up book artstyle, shown in an Iwata Asks interview.
• Dummied Out: There are various unused data in the game, including early versions of used music or different music altogether. There's also data for two unused Super Abilities, Super Spark and Super Cutter, the former with only a single texture. The latter is mostly complete, having a fully-modeled hat and unique attack animations, but is speculated to be unused because it would have been too similar to Ultra Sword.
• Market-Based Title: Was originally called Kirby Wii, although the game's final Japanese title is "Hoshi no Kirby Wii", the European version is "Kirby's Adventure Wii" and the Korean title is "Byeol-ui Kirby Wii". The Switch version retains the Kirby's Return to Dream Land name for the European translations, albeit with promotional material still using the Kirby's Adventure Wii name when referring to the original Wii version, in a similar manner to what happened with Kirby's Fun Pak and Kirby Super Star Ultra.
• Milestone Celebration: The Video Game Remake, Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe, is one of several games made to commemorate Kirby's 30th anniversary. The game acknowledges this by bringing back the Festival ability from the previous anniversary game.
• Moved to the Next Console: The game is what ultimately became of the scrapped GameCube game.
• Newbie Boom: The game's success gave rise to a new generation of Kirby fans, and even older fans consider the game to be the start of the "modern" phase of the franchise in part because of this.
• The Other Darrin: Dedede goes from being voiced by Masahiro Sakurai to Shinya Kumazaki (who first voiced the character in Kirby Super Star Ultra), while Meta Knight goes from being voiced by Atsushi Kisaichi to an anonymous HAL Laboratory staff member. They do a good job imitating their predecessors, so it can be hard to tell.
• Recycled Script: This game is essentially the gameplay of Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards merged with the plot of Milky Way Wishes. There are 120 energy spheres scattered throughout the game that require skill, paying attention, and/or having the right power to collect them. Two of Kirby's enemies team up with him. As for the plot, Magolor asks you to collect the lost parts of his ship so that he can return home, then he offers to take you there. Once there, you retrieve a dangerously powerful artifact, which Magolor steals from you to rule the galaxy, and you have to stop him.
• Refitted for Sequel:
  • Trailers for the GameCube iteration of this game prominently featured a Humongous Mecha in King Dedede's likeness. That mecha returns as an enemy in Kirby Mass Attack's Kirby Quest sub-game, and in the final version of Return to Dream Land, a similar-looking palette swapped robot named HR-D3 appears as a surprise superboss in the Extra Mode.
  • One of the cancelled attempts to make the game before the final version is a stage that is played in full 3D. Later on, this concept is revisited in Kirby: Planet Robobot's "Kirby 3D Rumble" and its standalone eShop title, Kirby's Blowout Blast. A full 3D Kirby game would finally come to fruition with Kirby and the Forgotten Land.
  • A character designed for the GameCube iteration, Morpho Knight, was held off until making its surprise debut in Kirby Star Allies.
• Role Reprise: Although it wasn't strictly necessary, all of the playable characters received new voice clips in Deluxe; while Kirby (Makiko Ohmoto) and King Dedede (Shinya Kumazaki) get new voice clips regularly, Meta Knight also has new clips from his anonymous HAL Laboratory voice actor for the first time since 2017's Kirby Battle Royale. For the Dress-Up Masks, Makiko Ohmoto also provides new voices for Queen Sectonia and Susie for the first time since their respective debuts (2014 and 2016).
• Saved from Development Hell: This game started as a Nintendo GameCube title, was scrapped, then went through several re-imaginings until this became the final product. According to this interview, development started as soon as Kirby 64 was completed, meaning it took eleven years for it to be released. That said, the actual game that became Return to Dream Land had a fairly brisk development time of only a year and a half, in part thanks to all the reused assets from the previous versions.
• Sequel Gap: Discounting spin-offs, Return to Dream Land was the first Kirby game on a console since Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, which came out 11 years prior. It was also the first Kirby game that wasn't a spin-off or remake since Kirby: Squeak Squad, which came out 5 years prior.
• Swan Song: The remake was the last game developed by Vanpool, before shutting down on May 31, 2023.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Magolor went through a few concept designs, including one where he was a girl◊. Another one of these designs uncannily resembles President Haltmann from the later-released Kirby: Planet Robobot.
  • The scene after beating Magolor in which the Master Crown shatters and he disappears into light was originally going to only be viewable to players who got all 120 Energy Spheres as a good ending, but the developers decided they couldn't "leave Magolor's liberation from his crimes out of the main storyline."
  • The GameCube version would have had new enemies/helpers such as Heat Phanphan for Fire (returning from Kirby Air Ride) and a tiny, beach ball-riding enemy for Bomb, Golems returning since Kirby & the Amazing Mirror as the enemy/helper for Stone (now as Mighty Glaciers) along with Cleaning (which wouldn't return until Kirby Star Allies) with Broom Hatter being the enemy/helper, the ability for Kirby and his allies to ride on top of each other in a tower-like fashion and Water having its look from Kirby: Right Back at Ya! and having the ability to spray bubbles around from his mouth and an early precursor to Pluid as the enemy/helper and Hammer gaining a miner's hat.
• Working Title: It was announced under the name Kirby Wii, a literal translation of the Japanese name, Hoshi no Kirby Wii (Hoshi no Kirby, meaning "Kirby of the Stars", is the series' Japanese name). According to a Miiverse post from Shinya Kumazaki (via Satoshi Ishida's account), this was a truncation of the longer proposed title Kirby Wii: Super Friends, the subtitle of which emphasized the super abilities and four-player co-op.

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