One of the best things to come out of GDC was the Kirby presentation slides

By Hope Bellingham
published

My life changed after I saw human Kirby

Kirby Mouthful Mode car
(Image credit: Nintendo)

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2023 took place this week, and one of the biggest takeaways we got was that Kirby has a human form and is "okay to stretch." 

Let us explain: during GDC, Kirby creator HAL Laboratory gave a presentation during the five-day event in which a director at the company, Tatsuya Kamiyama, shared an insight into bringing the adorable pink puffball from the 2D world to 3D. 

During the presentation, Kamiyama shared some slides that featured various sketches of Kirby that helped to illustrate the developer's points. To the rest of us outside of that exhibition hall though, the slides are hilarious out of context. Some of them have been shared online, thanks to some of the attendees, so we've collated the best ones below. 

Thanks to IGN's Rebekah Valentine, who attended GDC this year, we now know that HAL Laboratory had something called "The Hovering Dilemma" when converting Kirby's adventures from 2D games to 3D. Valentine thankfully gave more context to this dilemma in a story, where it was revealed that the studio's biggest problem with Kirby's 3D transition came down to the fact he is round - among a few other things. 

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Another attendee - in the form of Megan Farokhmanesh of Wired - shared images of another of Kamiyama's slides, this time one detailing what Kirby can do. This particular slide features a 2D Kirby in the middle of the screen with the caption "Kirby is…" above it. Surrounding it are three other Kirbys all in different formations. For example: "It's ok to twist," "it's okay to be flat", and "It's okay to stretch" - except, the expression on Kirby's face is telling us that it really isn't okay to stretch. 

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Finally, thanks to someone on Resetera, we got our first official glimpse of human Kirby. You read that right, HAL Laboratory has designed a human version of Kirby, most probably just for use in the presentation. The Kirby in question has been designed as a Superman-looking figure with pink hair and a pink and blue super suit which is decorated with Kirby's famous star. It doesn't stop there either, as HAL Laboratory has also given Magolor its own human forms too. 

In the mood to play one of the pink blob's adventures now? Take a look at our best Kirby games list.

Hope Bellingham
Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.