marina :)

allow me to guide you through this as though you care about this as much as i do.

imagine it is november 30, 2025. you are playing through kirby air riders, and want to listen to the soundtrack.

first problem: it will not be released until march. you have six songs you may listen to until then.

okay, so youve waited just over three months. you want to listen to, let's say, checker knights from kirby air ride GCN. that game isnt on nintendo music yet, but all the classic maps that returned in air riders also have their music on the air riders upload.

okay. you open the app. you fumble around uselessly for like 20 seconds because the only way to actually find game soundtracks is by checking the "search" tab. the home tab is just full of useless pick-n-mix playlists.

you select the air riders ost. okay. now. good luck actually finding the soundtrack listing. the "all tracks" button is this tiny little grey thing nested between "top tracks" and more useless fucking playlists (why does this app love playlists so much?).

you find the playlist. you scroll down to the listing for the air ride tracks, which are easy to navigate because all track listings use in-game screenshots and artwork (i don't like this aesthetically, but i'll admit that it is useful). okay... now notice that checker knights isnt there.

why isnt checker knights there? why, it's because it's a track that originated from the kirby anime! does the app tell you this? does any official source tell you this? does anything at all mention that the soundtrack is incomplete? nope! TEN tracks are missing for this reason, and that accounts for LESS THAN HALF of the total missing tracks from the game. who was asleep at the fucking wheel here?

okay. whatever. you'll listen to one of the variations of starlit journey instead. you think it's really cool how such totally different songs all use the same lyrics; recontextualising them and totally changing their meaning. there is a problem. the app does not have a lyrics feature. there is no official source for starlit journey's lyrics.

let's say you pick a different track instead. maybe "boxes raining down". you'd really like to listen to boxes raining down on loop until you get bored.

one of the great features of nintendo music is that it allows you to loop songs with seamless looping like they have in-game, meaning you can essentially make an extension out of any song designed to loop. okay. delightful. you cannot loop indefinitely.

your options for extensions are in blocks of 5, 10, 15, 30, and 60 minutes. there are no other options. if you want to keep it going for 2 hours, you will have to just suck up a seam midway through the 60 minutes extension. this is arguably the most minor problem so far, but why does it even exist? why not just allow seamless looping while using the 🔂 feature that is already IN the player??? why is everything in this app so half-assed?????????????

an interesting thing about boxes raining down is that it sounds extremely faithful to the anime-era tracks for the original air ride. you wonder if that's because they share a composer. well keep on wondering asshole, because the app won't tell you shit about who actually MADE the songs youre listening to. the mainline kirby games are better at conveying who made what, because they know that long-time fans care a lot about keeping track of the series' composers. sucks that nintendo doesnt!

this entire product is so baffling. they put in such an inordinate amount of work into barely trying. we dont even have the dk bananza soundtrack yet.

we dont even have dk bananza. they hate me. nintendo wants me personally to die.

The truth is, I’ve actually thought the same thing myself quite a few times, especially in the context of being a bonus feature in DTF. Spectra Star is, after all, the text from which a lot of the game’s ideas are ultimately derived. Even if I don’t consider it actually canon or anything, there’s no issue with the IDEA of including it.

The more I think about it though, the more issues crop up. For a start, it’s not written in a way that I think reflects how far my writing ability has come, so it would require major editing for me to consider releasing it as part of a paid, finished, cohesive work.

If I’m going to edit it, suddenly it becomes a huge feature that risks dividing player attention and effort... A lot of players might be frustrated by what feels like an additional huge burden of reading material just to get extra context, etc.

Hi, thanks for asking!

The Steam page is currently up as coming soon, and you can find it here. The game itself is a while from being done, but it's more finished than unfinished by quite a significant margin.

So, sooner than you'd expect, really, but it has no solid release date.

You can find the news webpage here for news updates as they come out, which should be monthly. Also here's the website for more information on the game and the characters.

And here's a link to a picture of a shrew.

And here's me thanking you for your interest :)