When the Nintendo Switch 2 launched, I thought for sure that Mario Kart World would be console’s racing game of choice for the foreseeable future. However, one of God’s most perfect creatures might have something to say about that.
I’m talking about Kirby, of course. Perhaps the single most lovable little dude in video game history (he’s flawless and I won’t hear otherwise) is speeding onto Switch 2 in November with Kirby Air Riders, a surprising follow-up to a cult classic Nintendo GameCube game from 20 years ago. Yesterday, I had the chance to get some hands-on time with the wacky vehicular nonsense dispenser that is Air Riders. Nintendo also showed off the game during a 45-minute livestream, and after this brief preview, I came away impressed and very hungry for more.
To put it succinctly, this is a video game for people who like it when brightly colored BS is happening all over the screen at all times. I am one of those people.
Kirby Air Riders is deceptively simple
Credit: Nintendo
As I mentioned already, Air Riders is a sequel to 2003’s Kirby Air Ride. Rather excitingly, it’s directed by Masahiro Sakurai, who you may know as the dude behind Super Smash Bros. He actually created Kirby way back in the day, and Air Riders is his first direct involvement in a Kirby game in two decades. (If those details are bringing out your inner Nintendo nerd, then you’ll want to watch the Kirby Air Riders Direct livestream with Sakurai.)
As a sidenote, can you imagine being able to tell people you created Kirby? I’d never shut up about it.
Credit: Nintendo / YouTube
Anyway, the Smash energy is off the charts in Air Riders. The menus look and feel almost identical to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and it has a potent pick-up-and-play quality that is evident from the first time you put your hands on the controller. Like the GameCube original, this is a racing game where your vehicle accelerates for you. No need to hold down a button or anything like that. You just focus on steering and attacking your rival racers, which is for the best because it only takes about 10 seconds in any given scenario for Air Riders to become a chaotic mess of candy-colored explosions occurring at very high speeds.
One other central mechanic taken from the 2003 game is a brake button that also acts as a boost. You can hold it down to build up a big burst of speed, but of course, doing that will slow you down for a second. It’s useful for rounding corners, but not so much on a straightaway. When you’re not drifting, you can pick up speed by attacking NPC enemies on each course or riding on a shiny line left behind by other racers that stays on the track for a few seconds.
Credit: Nintendo
Where Air Riders diverges from its original source material is that there are a bunch of other playable characters besides Kirby. Series favorites like King Dedede and Meta Knight are here, of course, and they’re joined by various enemies and villains from other Kirby titles. Each character has their own stats and their own special move, which is activated by the press of a button at the player’s discretion as long as their special meter is full. Specials can range from big screen-clearing attacks to gigantic speed boosts, so figuring out which one you like the most will be paramount to success.
I was honestly not a huge fan of the original Air Ride because it was mechanically thin, but adding a whole roster of racers with unique traits and special moves adds a couple of much-needed layers of complexity to races. It feels adequately divergent from Mario Kart World, which is vital since the two games are coming out so close to one another. I honestly think Air Riders might have a higher skill ceiling and a little more going on overall than Mario Kart, which is cool.
As one would expect from a game starring Kirby, the music I heard in the demo was also fantastically catchy, and the visuals are gorgeous all around. It’s a very, very fun game to look at and listen to as well as play.
City Trial is a contender for best multiplayer mode of the year
Credit: Nintendo
Another way Air Riders takes after its predecessor is that the actual races aren’t really what you’re there for. I did have fun in the two short races I got to play, but City Trial is where the real action is.
For the unfamiliar, City Trial is a returning mode from Air Ride that’s like a mix between a racing game and a battle royale, to use the parlance of our times. Up to 16 players can roam freely around a big sandbox level with a bunch of different areas to explore for exactly five minutes. During those five minutes, it’s up to you to find a machine you like (there are a bunch of different ones and they all feel very different from one another), ride around the map collecting power-ups that slowly build up different stats, and prepare your machine for the endgame.
Said endgame involves Stadiums, which are basically little multiplayer minigames that use every part of the Air Riders mechanical formula. One of them is just a drag race that favors machines with high top speed, while another challenges players to fly as far as they can off of a big ramp, and that naturally caters to machines with a high flying stat. The strategy, then, is to collect specific types of stat boosts during the sandbox portion so you can specialize in one thing, rather than blindly collecting as many as you can. One of the cooler ideas here is that power-ups can cancel each other out if they have opposite effects; you don’t want to beef up both your flight and weight stats at the same time because they’re antithetical to each other, for instance.
Credit: Nintendo / YouTube
Credit: Nintendo
I got to play three matches of City Trial and had a genuine blast the entire time. The five-minute duration is perfect, as it somehow flies by quickly while also delivering copious amounts of bedlam that make it feel longer than it is. Random events occur constantly in City Trial. Sometimes big boss monsters pop up that every player can work together to defeat for big rewards, while other times the opportunity to participate in a short race within the City Trial map will appear. I also encountered dangerous meteor showers and instances where every player became tiny for a while. It really keeps you on your toes, which I appreciate.
By the time the five minutes are up, you might have a machine that’s so fast that you can barely control it, or so powerful that it’s unstoppable in the more combat-focused Stadium minigames. No two City Trial games feel the same. It’s a little magical.
I only got to play Air Riders for about an hour, but as you can probably tell, I’m very keen to play more of it. It makes Mario Kart World look sedate by comparison, which I didn’t think was possible. Count me all the way in on this one.
Kirby Air Riders launches exclusively on Nintendo Switch 2 on Nov. 20. You can pre-order the game now via Nintendo and Game Stop.
Kirby Air Riders (Digital)
Kirby Air Riders
