10 Video Game Kisses We Can’t Forget

Kotaku staff writer Isaiah Colbert still thinks about Kirby giving their buddies a healthy kiss on the lips, a practice Ian Walker notes in a Kotaku article began in the 1996 anthology Kirby Super Star.

A quick peek at the game’s North American instruction manual shows this move referred to as ‘lend[ing] a helping hand,’ but come on,” he writes. “Lending a helping hand,” in Kirby Super Star looks like Kirby picking up a useful item, doing a quick about-face, and pressing their pudgy face into a companion’s. Seems suspiciously hands-free, if you ask me.

The practice let Kirby turn health restorative items like cherries in co-op games into touching Lady and the Tramp moments, and “subsequently appeared under different names like ‘Face-to-Face’ and ‘Item Share,’” Walker writes. And in case you’re having doubts that this kiss is definitely a kiss, like big Nintendo seems to want you to, “The Kirby Fighters spin-off series solidified what we all knew to be true by adding a large ‘SMOOCH’ graphic above the characters’ heads whenever they, well, smooched,” Walker says. Case closed.

What makes it unforgettable: It’s an unconventionally chaste and utilitarian kiss, you don’t see those every day. And it’s important to kiss your homies, like watering a plant.