Kirby Star Allies Assignment: Audio

I was afraid that I would have nothing to say about the sound effects (interactive audio) in KSA. Unless a game is some really innovative musical experience, sfx is never what you remember after completing it. Most of the time, the sfx either works and doesn't call attention to itself, or it is distractingly bad. Kirby's sound effects are iconic, they're fun and cartoony and contribute greatly to the charm of the series; but because I've grown up with this series, these sounds are normal to me. Many of them call back to the sound effects from the 8-bit Kirby games; that chiptuney sound is a defining feature of Kirby. Return to Dreamland introduced a sound effect that is common to all moves that involve charging up for an attack, which helps the gameplay by making it easy to tell what is a charging move.

The clearest example of "adaptive audio" in Kirby Star Allies is with the final boss. It has four phases: a ground phase, a short phase in the belly of the beast, a phase in which it grows wings and attacks from the air, and the final phase against its "core". The music changes when the phase changes. The songs for each phase are all movements in the same orchestral suite, and they transition smoothly into eachother; you might think they are all the same song. The final phase/movement is an up-beat rock song.

An example of "dynamic audio" would be the title screen and main menu. Both screens play the same melody, but the instruments change when the user navigates to one or the other. The title screen has a full orchestra, with a focus on brass instruments. The main menu just has a keyboard, an acoustic guiter, a bass, a hi-hat, and a woodwind instrument with a kind-of accordian/harmonica sound (sorry, I don't know my instruments very well).