Kirby Development History, Part 1: How Twinkle Popo Became Kirby’s Dream Land, and Its Product Code DMG-KYJ

Kirby made his debut on a monochrome screen. 星のカービィ (Hoshi no Kirby) came out on the Game Boy in Japan on 27 April 1992, published by Nintendo and developed by HAL Laboratory, and reached North America in August 1992 as Kirby’s Dream Land. It very nearly came out under a different name, from a different publisher. This guide covers how HAL’s Twinkle Popo became a Nintendo game, why the first Kirby was white in America, and how to find the Japanese cartridge by the code on its label.

• Japanese release: 27 April 1992 on Game Boy, product code DMG-KYJ — published by Nintendo, developed by HAL Laboratory
• The game began as ティンクルポポ (Twinkle Popo), which HAL planned to publish itself
• Masahiro Sakurai drew up the plan around May 1990, when he was 19; it was his first game as director
• There are no copy abilities yet — those came with the next game
• On 14 September 2026, Suruga-ya’s own used copies ranged from ¥320 to ¥4,570, and a Buyee search for DMG-KYJ returned only this game

How Did Twinkle Popo Become Kirby’s Dream Land?

Sakurai has written that he planned the game around May 1990, at 19, and that development took about a year. It was built on what Sakurai calls the “Game Maker”: a Twin Famicom fitted with a HAL-made trackball, loading HAL’s own development tool from the Disk System. There was no keyboard, so Sakurai entered hexadecimal values by moving a cursor. The brief was a game for people new to games. Instead of losing a life at the first hit, Kirby has a vitality meter, and Sakurai described the aim as a game anyone could finish.

Its working title was ティンクルポポ, Twinkle Popo. Satoru Iwata told the website Hobonichi in 2005 that HAL had planned to release it as a Game Boy title under that name, and had already taken orders for 26,000 copies. Then Shigeru Miyamoto said it would be a waste to put it out that way; the game was reworked and became Nintendo’s 星のカービィ. Sakurai, in a 1999 interview, put the orders at about 20,000. The two accounts differ on the number, but both describe the same thing: on its own, HAL found little demand for the game.

What changed when Nintendo took over was smaller than you might expect. Writing on X in 2011, Sakurai said he was grateful that Nintendo had rescued a game HAL could not get enough orders for, but that the actual changes came down to three: the ROM capacity doubled, which let them add a second round, and the title changed. Nintendo did not change the game’s content or advise on its balance. The finished game sold more than five million copies worldwide, according to both Sakurai and Iwata.

Why Was Kirby White in America?

On a Game Boy, Kirby has no colour at all, so the box was the only place his colour could show. Sakurai chose pink, and the Japanese box shows him pink. The first overseas box did not. In a 2000 interview in Nintendo’s web magazine, Sakurai pointed out that the Kirby on the overseas packaging of the first game is white, and guessed why: on a Game Boy, nobody outside Japan could know his colour unless Japan told them. Iwata said the same of the American cover in a 1993 interview.

The English name has its own story, usually told as “named after a lawyer” — John Kirby, who defended Nintendo in its lawsuit with Universal. Miyamoto, asked about it by Game Informer in 2011, put it more carefully: the name was “partially chosen in connection to him, but it wasn’t named after him”. Kirby was one name on a list they were looking at.

What Is DMG-KYJ and How Do You Search for It?

DMG-KYJ is printed on the cartridge label, at the top right. The manual’s cover carries a longer form, DMG-KYJ-JPN-2. A later production run, with circuit boards dated 1995 and 1996, still has DMG-KYJ on its label, so the code tells you which game you have, not which print run.

On Suruga-ya, search the short form. On 14 September 2026, DMG-KYJ returned two listings, both the Game Boy 星のカービィ, while DMG-KYJ-JPN returned nothing. Suruga-ya’s own used copies were priced from ¥320 to ¥4,570. Not every copy is filed under the code, though: that day, a loose cartridge with no box or manual, at ¥1,500, only turned up in a search by the Japanese title.

On Buyee the code works too, which is not always the case. On the same day, DMG-KYJ returned 30 listings, and every one was the original Game Boy 星のカービィ (two were the manual on its own). Searching 星のカービィ ゲームボーイ instead returned 716 listings, mostly Kirby’s Dream Land 2 and Game Boy Advance games; only about one in ten was the original on its own. Auction listings change every day, so treat these as that day’s numbers.

What Makes the First Kirby Different?

Kirby inhales enemies and spits them back out — and that is all. Copy abilities, the power-stealing that later defined the series, are not here yet; Sakurai has said he came up with them for the next game, 星のカービィ 夢の泉の物語. The adventure is five stages long. The last, Mt. DEDEDE, sends Kirby back through the bosses he has already beaten before the fight with King Dedede, according to the official manual.

It is a short, simple game by design, made so that people who had never finished a game could reach the ending.

Is the Nintendo Power Version the Same Thing?

No. In the Nintendo Power service, Japanese convenience stores wrote games onto a blank memory cartridge. Nintendo’s October 1999 magazine listed 星のカービィ among the titles for the Game Boy service’s planned start on 1 November 1999. Nintendo then postponed the Game Boy service to 1 March 2000, because the 21 September 1999 earthquake in Taiwan had delayed production of the GB Memory Cartridges. A rewritten memory cartridge is not DMG-KYJ. The Kataban catalog lists it as a separate entry, dated 1999 and with no product code.

The game has also been re-released digitally. It came to the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console in Japan on 7 June 2011 and to Game Boy – Nintendo Switch Online on 9 February 2023. It was also one of the six games in the Wii’s 星のカービィ 20周年スペシャルコレクション (19 July 2012). Any of these is the easy way to play it. If it is the 1992 cartridge you want, look for DMG-KYJ.

Kirby’s Dream Land · 星のカービィ · Game Boy · 1992 · Nintendo (developed by HAL Laboratory) · product code DMG-KYJ

Where to buy: Suruga-ya.jp (by product code) · Suruga-ya.jp (by Japanese title) · Buyee (by product code)

This is Part 1 of a five-part series on Kirby’s development history.