At long last, it’s finally happened. Kirby Air Ride is getting a sequel: Kirby Air Riders for the Nintendo Switch 2 later this year.
We don’t know much about the game yet, but seeing the newly refreshed graphics is enough. The game is being directed by the man, the myth, the legend himself, Masahiro Sakurai, who also directed the original game (and is, y’know, Kirby’s original creator). Notably, this was the last Kirby game Sakurai directed, moving on to direct the Super Smash Bros. series starting with Brawl in 2008.
If you’re not hip to one of the best multiplayer games for the GameCube, let me break it down for you. Kirby Air Ride is a fast-paced racing game where you don’t press any button to accelerate — your warp stars and rides are running fast and hot on their own. You are controlling which directions the rides are going, and pivotal to any Kirby game, you can suck up enemies to copy their abilities and take out your allies. There’s beautiful winding paths, great music, and just overall great vibes.
But the meat of Kirby Air Ride that set it apart from other racing games was its “City Trial” game mode, where you would be plunked down against three others in a huge city map, and you’ll have five minutes to collect as many power-ups as you can — and if you’re lucky, find the three parts of a legendary air ride machine. After those five minutes of chaos are up, there’ll be a match of some kind, whether it’s a race, a duel, a contest to see who can take out the most enemies, etc. Whoever wins that, wins the game! That being said, you don’t really know which mini-game will appear at the end, so your investment into a ride that can glide infinitely may be wasted when it turns out you have to fight King Dedede.
That being said, the new look for Kirby Air Riders didn’t show off any new version of City Trial, but it’ll likely live on in the new title, as it’d be criminal to launch this game without it.
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