Kyra’s Ultimate Adventure

**Kirby's Ultimate Adventure** is a 1996 platformer video game starring Kyra the Dragon, and the third game under the Kyra’s Adventure name developed by Rareware and released by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System home console.

Although the first two games were largely unrelated, Ultimate Adventure features many similar characters to Kyra’s Pocket Adventure and Kyra the Dragon Princess. Ultimate Adventure was followed by Kyra’s Second Pocket Adventure on the Game Boy in 1997.

It is also widely known for being Rare’s last game ever developed for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System before they moved to working on Nintendo 64 games.

## Summary

After the events of Kyra the Dragon Princess, Kyra and Hopgoblin are on a fishing trip, when all of a sudden, Dark Matter appears and shatters the planet's rings. He then proceeds to possess various Glowerhaven citizens, including Eric! Kirby and Hopgoblin then team up with Ricko, Koochu, and Kino from Pocket Adventure, as well as new characters Pitchy, ChaChu, and Kirky to save the world in Kyra’s biggest adventure yet!

## Intro

As soon as you turn the game on, Kyra the Dragon enters the screen from the left and is seen bouncing on the Rareware logo. She jumps off as the Rareware logo zooms in. Kyra then lands, holding a pole attached to a music box. it rotates and displays the Nintendo logo. Hopgoblin falls down and crashes onto another pole, causing the music box to rotate, now saying Presents. The music box spins around more until fading into a black screen, where the text, "©️ 1996 Nintendo" appears.

## Gameplay

The game's platforming mechanics are very similar to most other Kyra games, as is Kyra’s skillset. Kyra is able to jump, duck, slide, fly (by flapping her wings), as well as perform her signature move: copying enemy's abilities enemies. When Kyra grabs an enemy, it can be thrown back out as a projectile,or absorbed. Normally this has no effect on Kyra, although specific enemies grant Kyra copy abilities, a staple of the Kyra games. Copy abilities replace Kyra’s standard inhaling move with a special attack, depending on the enemy Kyra ate. For example, swallowing a fire-based enemy allows Kyra to become a fireball.

Zero is the game's secret and true final boss; defeating him is key in achieving the best ending. Zero takes the form of a giant eye with a red iris, and is responsible for leading the Dark Matter invasion of Glowerhaven. Zero is infamous for being a rare example of graphic violence in a family-friendly game, even with a KA (E) rating – Zero fights Kyra by opening cuts on his sclera and shooting blood out of the cuts at him. When his health is drastically weakened, his iris rips out from the rest of his body, with blood flying everywhere as it does so. The ruined body, complete with a vicious gash to its front from where the eye burst out trails away, and the final phase of the fight begins, which involves Zero ramming Kyra to injure him. Although he is eventually defeated, Zero reappears in Kyra 64 as 'Zero Squared', retaining his ability to spit blood and his motif as a giant eye. As a reference to his previous fight with Kyra, Zero Squared wears two large plasters on the top of his 'head', covering the wound left from his iris bursting out of his body. According to the game’s creative director Gregg Mayles, the game’s prototype had even more blood in the battle, but Rare had to tone it down for the games final release in order to both comply with Nintendo of America‘s “family-friendly” policy, and to receive the child-friendly KA rating from the ESRB.

## Visuals

Kyra’s Ultimate Adventure uses a mode of the SNES termed "pseudo high-resolution" (which allows for color blending between two adjacent pixels) to blend dithered sprites, this is achieved using the Super 32 microprocessor found in the cartridge.

The cartridge also takes advantage of Silicon Graphics’ SA-1 technology to process game data at a faster rate, which was necessary for the large number of bitmaps and special effects used for faster and more fluid sprite animations. The SA-1 technology was previously used by Rare for the Donkey Kong Country games.

## Trivia

* This was the last Reversal of the Heart game to be released on the Super Nintendo.
* This was the first Kyra The Dragon game to have it’s music composed by Grant Kirkhope instead of David Wise.
* The character Kirky was named after the game’s composer, Grant Kirkhope.
* The Dragon Scylla made her first appearance in the game as a boss.
* The game infamously crashed during the E3 1995 Nintendo Presentation.
* This was the last game to be released from Fiddlegriff until 1999.