Kirby has been stealing hearts and enemy powers all over Dream Land for 30 years now. The adorable pink blob from the planet Pop Star set out on a mission in 1992 to stop the dreadful King Dedede in Kirby's Dream Land from devouring everything and stealing the treasured Sparkling Stars from Kirby's people. At the time, it was hard to imagine something as simple as a pink alien blob would capture the hearts of players all over the world, but he's carried the torch for nearly three decades. The irony is that Kirby was never actually meant to be a pink blob.

When Masahiro Sakurai was given the job of developing a simple platformer for the original Game Boy, he designed a side-scrolling adventure similar to the popular Super Mario Bros. franchise. It had five levels and plenty of exciting boss battles, but instead of running and jumping, his protagonist would be able to float, which would make map navigation a lot easier. Knowing he had a winner he set out to present his plan to HAL Laboratory.

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Sakurai had no actual character concept in mind when he launched his presentation. In fact, he had added nothing more than a simple placeholder blob to demonstrate the overall idea of the game. Little did he know at the time, HAL Laboratory would fall in love with that little blob and decide to keep him as the game's hero. They made very few alterations to the blob, although it was originally white to stand out on the black and white Game Boy screen.

Kirby Fighters Nintendo

Despite the lacking color capabilities of the handheld Game Boy at the time, there was never any intention of maintaining the white. Sakurai confessed that during creation he had always envisioned Kirby as being pink with blush on the sides of his pudgy face. Nintendo director Shigeru Miyamoto envisioned Kirby as yellow but eventually, Sakurai won them all over and everyone's beloved pink blob was born.

In time, and after many adventures, Nintendo eventually honored Miyamoto's wishes by adding a yellow Kirby to the Kirby Air Ride for the GameCube and to Super Smash Bros. According to the game lore, there are a very limited number of Kirbys in his world. Aside from Kirby, there is also Shadow Kirby, Keeby and a variety of Kirby clones. Keeby is identical to Kirby, save for the fact that he is yellow, while Shadow Kirby is black and gray. Other clones have been colored red, brown, purple, green, yellow, white and blue.

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Another interesting note about their coloring is that the blobs that comprise their feet are generally the same color as their body, but simply a darker shade of the color. Whether the shading is simply due to the shadow of their puffy bodies over their feet or they are actually a different color is hard to tell.

As Nintendo launches into celebrating Kirby's 30th anniversary with a brand new adventure in March 2022, the company has promised there will be plenty more to come as they recognize 30  years of one of their most successful heroes. They've kicked off the celebration with a free wallpaper and say there will be other Kirby-inspired activities and fun to come as the anniversary draws nearer. It's hard to imagine how the anniversary would look, though, if Kirby had never become the adorable pink ball we've all come to know and love him to be.

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