Every Kirby Game, Ranked

– March 31, 2022

Updated March 2023 to add Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe

First appearing in 1992, the Kirby game franchise has gone on to span 15 main games and over a dozen spinoffs, with cumulative sales ranking it among the best-selling game properties of all time despite (or because of) being limited to Nintendo devices. Those games center on the titular character, a cute 8-inch-tall pink sphere (his species has no official name) hailing from the Planet Popstar and created on our planet by Masahiro Sakurai (then of HAL Laboratory, the Japanese developer of several Nintendo-exclusive series that continues to make Kirby games to this day).

Games in the main Kirby series are platformers (typically side-scrollers) that are usually distinguished from the competition by Kirby's unique abilities including inhaling his enemies and copying their powers. In the gallery on this page, we rank all 15 of the games in the series from worst to best by Metascore, which captures the consensus views of professional critics. (And, at the very end of the gallery, we rank all of those spinoffs as well.)

All photos courtesy of Nintendo unless otherwise indicated.

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80 Kirby: Triple Deluxe (3DS, 2014)

(tied at #7) The franchise's first appearance on the 3DS retains the 2.5D perspective of other recent Kirby releases (but uses the device's 3D capabilities to have attacks appear to come toward or move away from the viewer) and features gameplay similar to that in Return to Dream Land. New additions include the Super Smash Bros.-esque minigame Kirby Fighters. An enhanced version of that minigame, rebranded as Kirby Fighters Deluxe, would also get a stand-alone digital release (as well as a direct sequel in 2020).

“Triple Deluxe is a solid platformer bookended by some great extras, even if it is pretty easy, give or take a couple of tricky boss encounters. It lacks the sense of wonderment that Epic Yarn generated with its incredible use of texture, humour and verve, yet is still well worth a look -and is perhaps the finest handheld outing for the cerise sucker.” —God Is a Geek

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