The Planet Popstar has featured throughout the Kirby series ever since its inception, acting as both a “home base” for the pink puffball hero and a land of conflict in some games. At the start of it all, Planet Popstar is tossed into a chaotic state when the selfish King Dedede steals all the planet’s food and hoards it inside his castle. There are numerous games in which Planet Popstar is the main focus, forcing Kirby to adventure across its lands to restore peace to the area.
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Because it features so prominently throughout the series, there have been a lot of design choices and lore crafted and changed for the planet. Some of these things are a bit strange, even for aKirbytitle. Here’s a look at some fo the weirder things and trivia that players may not know about Kirby’s homeworld.
7It’s Possibly Located Near Planet Zebes
Those that played the Adventure Mode of Super Smash Bros. Melee extensively may have noticed a curious transition during the escape portion of the experience. It appears as if the Planet Zebes, and Planet Popstar, exist fairly close to one another. This would imply that Kirby’s home world exists in the FS-176 star system featured prominently in the Metroid series. It’s hard to imagine Samus and the pink puffball as neighbors.
It’s definitely important for players to take this potential trivia with a grain of salt, as Super Smash Bros.Masahiro Sakurai has stated in the past that the events of the Super Smash Bros. series aren’t exactly canon to any of the games tied within them.
6It Has Rings
Those that haveseen Planet Popstar throughout the Kirby serieswill likely notice two unique things about the location. One, it takes the shape of a large five-pointed star, and two, it has rings surrounding it. Although Kirby is definitely a fictitious title that has very little lore rooted in reality, it’s still curious that the solid-star planet has rings. This is because space-faring scientists have ascertained that planets that are usually comprised of gas (helium and hydrogen) have rings surrounding them, not solid-style as is found in the Kirby series.
This isn’t the only strange thing concerning Planet Popstar’s rings, either…
5Its Rings Change Color And Number Throughout The Series
The fact thatPlanet Popstarhas rings isn’t the only strange thing about the light surrounding the star-shaped landmass. The planet originally began with two white-hued rings surrounding it. This changed in Kirby’s Dream Land 3, as players who were able to obtain the Good Ending would notice that Planet Popstar’s rings increased to three, and were colored blue, green, and red. This design choice remained for quite some time throughout the series but recent titles have seen it revert to its two-ring white coloring, although some feature streaks of teal sprinkled throughout the white color.
In some titles, like Kirby Battle Royale, the rings are rainbow-colored (as in the Rocket Rumble game mode).
4It’s Star-Shaped With Other Star Shapes On It
The most easily identifiable thing about Planet Popstar is that it’s shaped like a traditional five-pointed star. This shape coincides with a lot of the imagery found in the Kirby series, with the pink puffball even riding off on stars throughout many of his adventures. But some artwork shows that Planet Popstar is even more complex if players peer closer to its surface. For example, in Kirby’s Super Star Stacker, a 90s puzzle game, the planet appears to have many smaller stars (the exact same shape) littering the landmass.
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3What It Is Exactly Is A Bit Murky
Although many players know Popstar as a planet, its actual lore is a bit more mysterious than that. Most games seem to use the planet moniker, signifying that the solid star-shaped land is a large object orbiting a sun. But theKirby: Right Back At Ya! animesees things differently. Many characters within the show often refer to Popstar as, well, a star itself. In fact, in the anime, Popstar is shown to have other planets orbiting around it. It’s possible it even has its own moons, making it an even stranger anomaly.
2It Briefly Turned Into A Mechanized Planet
Although most players are used to seeing Planet Popstar as a vibrant planet filled with curious creatures and one hungry puffball, it actually managed to change its form quite a bit in one title. During the events of Kirby: Planet Robobot, Popstar is attacked by the Haltmann Works Company, which manages to dig its nefarious claws into the star-shaped landmass and actually mechanized it, birthing new and strange zones that the pink protagonist must move through on a quest to return Popstar to its original shape, color, and design.
1It’s Pretty Large
Although players don’t have a clear-cut look at exactly how big Planet Popstar is, theKirby game seriesat least gives them a fairly good idea of its scale thanks to the absolute abundance of levels, zones, and regions that are sprinkled throughout it. Over the years, many titles in the Kirby franchise have explored Planet Popstar, showcasing a wide array of levels that take place in Icy biomes, lava-filled areas, picturesque plains, water-logged islands, and many more strange and unique locales. It’s difficult to say just how big Planet Popstar is, but if players combine all of the different levels littering its surface in each Kirby game, it’s definitely pretty big.
