Kirby's Return to Dream Land

[Boo Destroyer]

Spin Attack with the Sword ability
Hold the 1 button with this ability to charge up for a spinning slash move, just like Link in Zelda.

Cannon maze shortcut
In Level 4-1 (a snowy world), there's a part in there where Kirby (and co) blast out of floating cannons, a lot like DKC.

But there's a DKC1 reference here. Apparently, on the bottom of one area, there's a shortcut cannon that takes you through it faster.

[Prince~Of~Light]

/Gaww, so that's why there was that other passage which had Walkie... (-i~i-);/

Poles and Party Ball

In 4-4 (White Wafers), at one area ya get to use Snow Bowl. The area has some icy poles with stars on the centers, which can be rolled through. There's also Party Balls which wait after the few lines of poles.


If you break all the poles successfully, the Party Ball opens and makes the same sound as in Smash Bros-series.

[nocturnal YL]

I think I mentioned party balls before on Air Ride, which was not accepted because that was more of a Japanese culture reference than a Melee thing. Don't know if the SFX counts though.

EDIT - the sound effect it gives, and even its look, doesn't really resemble the SSB party ball. If the Air Ride one doesn't count, this one shouldn't either.

[Yamato.EXE V2]

Kine The Fish's Theme is heard in Level 3.

[The Qu]

If, on the off change that the Animal Friends count, the Animal Friend rock easter egg returns from KSSU. At least, I think KSSU had it.

[Boo Destroyer]

There's a stone form that's made up of all three of them together here.

[Prince~Of~Light]

Dragoon is also a stone form (colored bronze), as well as Little Jester-form Marx, Wham Bam Rock and most awesome of them all, a Golden 8-Bit Kirby Sprite.

(My brother discovered that golden one up)

[Boo Destroyer]

[nocturnal YL]

This one's a bit too far-fetched (for NinDB; it's still good as a piece of trivia, I suppose), but in the Japanese version, Egg Engines is called "Egger Engines" which may or may not be a reference to Eggerland. (At the same time, "Egger" could simply be referring to the chicken...)

Grand Hammer is Gigaton Hammer in the Japanese version. Umm.... in-series reference to Gigaton Punch? Again, too far-fetched, I guess.

[nocturnal YL]

Okay, now that I've completed the game, here is a list of references I can think of.

(I'll be putting whatever I think is a reference here; not that I'm following NinDB's somewhat stricter standard.)

Needless to say, heavy spoilers ahead.


General look-and-feel (not enough to be NinDB-reference):
- The menu is in the style of the more recent 3D HAL games, like Melee, Air Ride and Brawl
- The menu has multiple music like Melee, Brawl and Ultra
- The music sound very Kirby-like, some using parts from Kirby Super Star, Kirby 3, Kirby 64 and Kirby Air Ride

Game modes:
- The Arena and The True Arena; The True Arena even has its final 5 waiting rooms different from the earlier ones, similar to Kirby Super Star Ultra
- Extra mode, with less HP like Kirby's Adventure; it also has more enemies and coming in different sizes, but it does not resemble the change seen in KDL1

Stages:
- Nutty Noon stage 5 ~ Kirby's Adventure, Rainbow Resort stage 2: both are "boss towers" with a secret entrance to the "hard" version of the stage above the main entrance
- Dangerous Dinner stage 3 ~ Spring Breeze, Bubbly Clouds / Revenge of the King, Crash Clouds: at the end of the stage, a little planetoid above the exit door (leading to a bonus room) can be entered
- Cookie Country stage 4 / Egg Engines stage 5 ~ Kirby's Adventure, Vegetable Valley stage 2 / Revenge of the King, Crash Clouds: the HAL rooms are back, this time there're two of them
- Nutty Noon stage 2 ~ The Great Cave Offensive, Sub-Tree Area / Kirby & the Amazing Mirror, Moonlight Mansion: by now this kind of trap shouldn't fool long-time Kirby players anymore...
- There is a "level 8" accessible after the level 7 boss but not from the map, much like Kirby's Adventure

Abilities:
- Sword - as Boo mentioned above, Sword Kirby now has the Spin Attack of Link's
- Stone - see the vid Boo posted; there are the KDL2 animal friends, Marx, Dragoon, Kirby's Adventure Kirby sprite, Whan Bam Jewel, Meta Knight/Galacta Knight, Star Rod/Three-Star Cane/Magic Paintbrush and the HAL logo
- Ninja - the new design is obviously copying from a certain anime
- Fighter - down, forward, 1, HADOKEN!

Items:
- Spike shoe is much like Goomba's Shoe in SMB3
- Picking up keys make Scarfies and Mumbies chase without Kirby doing whatever other actions that would make them attack, possibly a reference to SMB2U

Boss patterns:
- Magolor: shoots lassive laser beam, warps, launches black holes to draw Kirby in, and has a "soul" form with a move that makes him burst upwards from the ground - that's so much like Marx
- HR-D3: shoots missles that slowly fall down, swings hand, shoots laser - much like HR-H
- Lor EX: shoots consecutive shots from the background, similar to 02

Cinematics:
- Staff Credits (Extra): various icons of Kirby doing different jobs are shown along the role names of the staff, like the staff roll of The Milky Way Wishes
- Kirby Master: just like Ultra, this cutsecene is shown upon total completion of the game, once again showing the villains congratulating the heroes (and Meta Knight is dancing!)


And I'll leave the rest to TV Tropes.

[Boo Destroyer]

You forgot World 4's boss, Goriath. His battle is a nod to another popular anime.

[The Qu]

That volcano one is a building. I *think* it might be either Nintendo or HAL's hq.

[nocturnal YL]

Hmm. More references (again, not by NinDB standard):

Game modes:
- Ninja Dojo: the traditional timing minigame seen in most Kirby games
- Also, the Dojo's entrance (via Lor) has a vertical wooden board saying "HAL Dojo" in the JP version, and simply "HAL" in the overseas versions
- The challenge areas in Lor lock you to a single ability, complete with the hexagonal design of the entrances, which is somewhat like the challenges in Canvas Curse
- Not a reference to anything: breaking Kirby tradition, this game has only 2 minigames as opposed to the traditional 3, not counting boss games (well, Kirby Super Star did have 2 minigames, so this is not a first-timer)
- The True Arena has one of the two copy pedestrals being Sleep, same as The True Arena in Ultra
- Regular tomatoes replace Maxim Tomatoes after they're eaten, like the original Arena in Super Star/Ultra; The True Arena here does not provide regular tomatoes only though, but rather gives fewer Maxim Tomatoes that get replaced like usual

Game mechanics:
- The goal game gives 30 1-UPs if you get 7→6→5→4→3→2→1 in that order, which is exactly the same as Kirby's Adventure and Kirby NiD

Music:
- Needless to say, the SFX and of this game is very Kirby-like; series-wide recurring themes are not mentioned here
- Stage 3-1 BGM = Kine's theme in KDL2
- Stage 5-5 BGM = Dedede's theme, which made the stage resembling 7-2 in NiD further
- HAL rooms and Item Challenge have Green Greens theme
- This one is pretty well-known by now: the Another Dimension BGM and Magolor Soul's theme contains bits from the second Revenge of Meta Knight BGM (which is used in the "Marx defeated" theme as well)
- The Arena's initial ability room has the Rest Area (Super Star/Melee/Ultra) music
- The True Arena's final lobbies have the Iceberg stage select theme from KDL3
(Other than these, this game doesn't reuse much music from the earlier games)

... Minor update:
- Nutty Noon BGM contains small parts of KDL3 1-1/1-5/1-6 towards the end of the loop
- Menu 3 contains portions of notes from one of the stage BGMs from Kirby's Adventure (the one from the first stage of Vegetable Valley and some others)

[Boo Destroyer]

Bumped. I don't know if these really count, but here goes anyway:

-Meta Knight's Shuttle Loop from Smash Bros. Brawl is used in this game.
-King Dedede's midair hammer twirling (among other attacks) are similar to how he plays in Brawl too.
-The keys and locked gates you see work exactly like the ones in Brawl's SSE mode.
-Super Abilities are conceptually similar to Final Smashes.



And on another note, the new Halberd design introduced in Brawl was also later used in Super Star Ultra. Meta Knight's Mach Tornado too (at least by name).