Nightmare, often referred to as Lord Nightmare or the Nightmare Wizard, is a recurring antagonist in the Kirby franchise. He is a demonic wizard who desires to spread darkness and nightmares throughout the galaxy, including Planet Popstar, the home planet of Kirby.
He serves as the main antagonist of Kirby's Adventure and its remake Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land, and the anime Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, and makes various appearances in other games as well.
Nightmare is a powerful entity who serves as the final boss in both Kirby's Adventure and its remake. In both games, he can only be defeated by the powerful Star Rod that Kirby collects in both games.
In these games, Nightmare takes control of the Fountain of Dreams in an attempt to extend his control over Dream Land. Trying to prevent this, King Dedede breaks the Star Rod and scatters it around Dream Land, temporarily leaving Nightmare unable to take control and seems to trap him inside the Fountain of Dreams. However, Kirby was unaware of Dedede's intentions, believing that he was up to trouble, so he restores the Star Rod and places it back in the fountain. With the Star Rod back in place, Nightmare reveals himself. Nightmare and Kirby then fly into space.
In his initial orb form, Nightmare stays on the right side of the screen for the most part, shooting empty blue stars at Kirby. The fight is similar to the fight with Kabula in Kirby's Dream Land, but with a time limit, for the entire battle takes place in the planet's atmosphere as the two are falling to Pop Star's surface. As such, if Kirby augments Nightmare's health bar in time, Nightmare will flee and Kirby will crash into the ground and lose a life. After the final blow is struck, Nightmare retreats and flies to Pop Star's moon. Kirby follows close behind on a Warp Star.
As Kirby pursues him, the Power Orb suddenly metamorphoses into his true form. After knocking Kirby from his Warp Star and onto the surface of the moon, Nightmare teleports in close to finish him off, effectively beginning the second phase of the battle. In his second form, Nightmare attacks Kirby by shooting stars at him, ramming into him, and using his tornado-like core to drill into him. He takes fewer hits to defeat than in his first form, but can only be damaged by hitting his weak spot, the accumulation of darkness at his core, which is usually protected by his impenetrable cloak. He briefly reveals his weak spot during each of his attacks. After Kirby lands the finishing blow, Nightmare's body explodes, destroying a huge portion of the moon as a result. After this, Kirby returns to the Fountain of Dreams, places the Star Rod back in there, and everything returns back to normal.
Nightmare himself does not appear in the game. However, his Power Ball form makes a minor cameo at the Fountain of Dreams stage.
In Kirby: Canvas Curse, Nightmare makes a cameo as a painting in Paint Panic. He is the hardest painting to draw, with a total of four stages.
Additionally, Nightmare's battle theme from the previous game theme received a remix that plays in the penultimate stage in the game, Spectacle Space.
Nightmare appears in Kirby Mass Attack as the final boss of the Strato Patrol EOS sub-game. In his orb form, he attacks by teleporting around the area and firing stars and energy blades until he takes sufficient damage. In his second form, like in Kirby's Adventure and its remake, he only takes damage when his weak point is open. However, this time around his attacks are almost completely changed. He commonly attacks by releasing energy orbs that follow the Kirbies until they disappear. He also conjures pointed meteors to collide with them, but they can be destroyed before he even drops them. The meteors will also break up into smaller rocks when fired at, which the Kirbies must then avoid. Later in the battle, Nightmare will try to fire energy beams and star barrages at the Kirbies. His defeat animation parallels the one in Kirby's Adventure and its remake.
And he is voiced by Frank Welker in the English dub and Banjo Ginga in the Japanese dub.