Game music has the power to earworm its way into your heart long after you put the controller down. Each week in Game That Tune, we highlight a great tune from a great game (or a great tune from a just-okay game).

Songs: “Green Greens”, “Peanut Plain,” “Grape Garden,” and “Meta-Knight’s Revenge”
Composers: Jun Ishikawa, Dan Miyakawa
Game: Kirby Super Star Ultra (2008)

I once asked Andy Runton, creator of the hit series of “Owly” children’s graphic novels, how he manages to make his illustrations so unrelentingly cute. His response was that one simply needs to let go of their inhibitions, accept that cute is a good thing, and the rest will come naturally. I’ve never asked anybody at HAL Laboratory about their beloved Kirby series, but there simply has to be a similar philosophy at hand. How else could one explain the impossible cuteness that soaks through nearly every aspect of the pink puffball’s games?

This live medley of favorite tunes from the series’ history was released alongside Kirby Super Star Ultra a few years ago, but seems even more appropriate now that the series is celebrating its 20th anniversary. The classic melody of “Green Greens” is made all the peppier with the bright and lively woodwinds, as they counter the warm filtered fuzz of an alto melodica. The woodblock gets its moments of comic relief in “Peanut Plain.” The playful strums of the ukulele find “Grape Garden” even closer to the shoreline than it ever was in Kirby’s Adventure, as a quartet of flutes glitter like the sun’s reflection across the coastline. The mod-action horns of “Meta-Knight’s Revenge” are great, of course, but “Grape Garden” so effortlessly makes you want to lean back in a lawn chair, sipping a cool lemonade in the sun.

It’s no wonder Kirby’s such a bright shade of pink. I’d have an eternal sunburn too if I had such a pleasant soundtrack following me everywhere I went.