Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land

Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland is a portable remake of Kirby's Adventure, with the obvious updates (including the graphics, now matching the more recent games) and several new changes.

HAL Zone
The HAL easter egg from Kirby's Adventure in 1-2-1 (room ) is still present, but because the game works very differently internally, the method to access it from the original game won't work.

To access the HAL zone, Kirby has to go to the right of the Warp Star, then the player has to turn on and turn off the two codes:

The Warp Star will then take off and crash ahead of the screen, allowing Kirby to move forward to the HAL zone.

It remains unchanged from Kirby's Adventure, the only difference being the lack of a Broom Hatter on the L. Kirby will also not be able to run after the Warp Star crashes.

Debug Rooms


Many debug rooms remain in the ROM, all with a specific purpose.

Room 149


The main debug hub. Eight doors are present, but only five of them work. The ones that work lead to, from left to right: Room 14A, Room 14B, Room 14C, Room 150, Room 151.

Room 14A


Seems to be a general test of level building and tiles. Both doors lead back to the main hub.

Room 14B


A test room for various slope types. Both doors lead back to the main hub.

Room 14C


Test room for breakable blocks as well as the Fire Lion. The text on the blocks of the top level, which can be broken with any attack, translate as "Directly/Easily". The text on the strong blocks by the Fire Lion means "Hammer", and the text on the bomb blocks is, predictably, "bomb". Both doors lead back to the main hub.

Room 14D


Inaccessible from the debug hub, this room tests air and water currents. Both doors lead to Room 14E, though the underwater door is nearly impossible to access.

Room 14E


A debugging room for icy surfaces and spikes. The door leads back to Room 14D.

Room 14F


Cannon test room, both for testing the general functionality of cannons and the vertical scrolling of Kirby after he has been fired from one. There is no way in or out of this room without cheating.

Room 150


A debug room possibly used to test Kirby's interactions with various surfaces when near the bottom of the screen. The door leads back to the debug hub.

Room 151


Obviously a miniboss test room. The door leads back to, unsurprisingly, the debug hub.

Room 152


A general test room for the most common of tile types. No way in or out of this room.

Room 153


A test room for, presumably, testing Kirby's interactions with various surfaces while near the top of the screen. Note that tiles with the red background cannot be accessed, as the screen borders cut them off.

Ability Icon


An icon found among the rest of the HUD graphics. Note that this is a poor recolor of it and the actual icon uses more colors of an unknown palette. The text translates as "fire", but it's spelled in a different way than the actual Fire ability's icon (closer to "fiyah").

The final version, for comparison.

Debug Rooms
Even the debug tileset has unused tiles. These tiles might have been used in earlier versions of debugging rooms.



A variety of tile types go unused.



Interestingly, most of the unused tiles are lifted directly from Kirby's Dream Land 3! For whatever reason, Nightmare in Dream Land borrows heavily from that game's debug tileset.



In addition to the above tiles, there are more unused tiles with Japanese text. They translate as, from left to right: Fire, Stone, Ice, Needle, Broom, Umbrella, Electricity, Cutter. These were the abilities from Kirby's Dream Land 3.