The early 2018 Switch game Kirby Star Allies improved a lot over the past year thanks to a stream of free downloadable updates. Some significant parts of those updates weren’t originally planned, according to the game’s developers at Kirby studio HAL.

Kirby Star Allies launched on Switch in March, and it was decent, but a significant drop in quality from 2016’s Kirby: Planet Robobot. Since then, Nintendo has given the game several significant updates. Combined, they have made Star Allies a vastly better game.

Earlier this year, I foolishly thought Nintendo and the people at HAL Laboratory might allow 2018 to be something less than another luxurious year to be a Kirby fan. How wrong I was. Maybe some non-Kirby fans can find some hope in what’s gone down with Kirby these last few months, if it’s any indication of how other largely offline Nintendo games will be updated after release.

As of this writing, a couple hundred people are collectively controlling Mario via a Twitch broadcast. And despite the inherent chaos of Twitch chat, these players are actually making progress in Super Mario Odyssey.

It's been a quietly unprecedented week for Nintendo, and one that should change players' expectations for the company's games going forward.

I like Kirby games, but I would not consider myself an advanced Kirbyologist. I was therefore surprised to learn a few weeks ago that Kirby games I'd played on the 3DS contained hidden messages. The first letter of each of the games' worlds spelled a word. Neat! Surely, I figured, the new Kirby Switch game would do the same.