If you’d listed every possible game and franchise that Nintendo could revive in the year 2025 for the Switch 2, there are dozens of options I would’ve guessed before ever getting to, “Masahiro Sakurai is bringing back Kirby Air Ride.” Clearly, that’s why I’m not one of the visionaries working on the console, because that’s exactly what’s happened.
Kirby Air Riders acts as something mid-way between a sequel and a remake, bringing the GameCube classic’s three modes to a modern audience, alongside a brand new mode, online multiplayer, and a much larger pool of vehicles and riders than the original.
Each mode offers a distinctly different play experience; Air Ride is the core mode of Kirby Air Riders, providing a classic lap-based race common to any racing game, while Top Ride offers a top-down, simplified version of Air Ride’s selection of tracks for a different angle on gameplay. City Trial is perhaps the most chaotic mode, opening with a hectic free-for-all to collect boosts to your ride’s nine different stats, before engaging in a deathmatch free-for-all.
The big new addition though is the Road Trip mode, which delivers its story as a reward for completing mini-challenges drawn from all the other modes. These can range from single-lap races to battle arenas, mini-games like a longest glide competition, or laser evasion. As you drive along the road of each stage, you’ll have three racers blocking your path with different challenges and stat-boost rewards on offer to choose from. It’s an interesting proposition each time, whether to base your choice on the stat you want to improve, or just the challenge you most (or least) want to do. At the outset it feels like the slowest game in the world, but after a few dozen stat increases your races feel completely different.
I appreciate that Road Trip never feels like it presents a challenge you can’t win unless you chose the “right” stats to juice up – with technique and the right vehicle, anything is possible. As you complete each stage of Road Trip mode, you’ll begin to unlock memory crystals showcasing the game’s overarching narrative; while brief, they slowly build on one another to reveal the story. As fun of a draw as this is, it does feel like a lot of work going through all the challenges for a very brief reward each time. After working my way through five stages in Road Trip mode, I was surprised to see my playtime was less than an hour – it felt like a lot longer.
The biggest thing that separates Kirby Air Riders from other racers is its unique control scheme; for me, that was where the trouble started. Your ride is always moving forward without a button press, letting you focus on handling turns and taking out your opponents. This part of it is great – saves me from holding down the right trigger the whole race like in Mario Kart. The challenge, though, comes from how the rest of the action is handled. In Air Riders you can hold down the B button to slow down and charge a boost or drift round a turn, tap B to suck up an enemy or use a copy ability, or you can perform a basic attack by wiggling the analog stick – the same analog stick you’re using to steer.
As someone who never played the original Kirby Air Ride, this whole layout feels completely baffling and very counter-intuitive. Bizarrely, while Air Riders does allow some key rebinding, you cannot change how this attack is performed. You can enable an option to also attack by shaking your controller, but this doesn’t feel any more precise to me. While I’m no racing game expert, the whole layout felt sloppy and imprecise while I was playing – I never truly felt in control of my rider, because the controls felt like they were working against me more than anything. I would love to be able to even move the attack to the right analog (reserved for pivoting the camera mid-race, for some reason) but I guess that’s deemed too unfaithful to the source material.
Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by Mario Kart World on Switch 2 already, but a lot of the racing tracks also felt very cramped to me. While there are plenty of wide-open spaces here and there, so many races felt like I was just slamming through turn after turn to challenge my drifting abilities rather than learning or mastering a track overall. There’s also a LOT of visual spectacle in many courses, to the point I found it hard to even track what was going on or where to go (Wavefront Waters being the biggest offender).
It also feels odd to me that despite how invested Kirby Air Riders is in online multiplayer – including an excellent live display of connection speed and stability – there’s nothing in the way of a Grand Prix or multi-track competition mode to play in. The game’s online is focused on the Paddock as a sort of game lobby, allowing you to set up a public or private space and then launch into various modes for individual races or battles. Even then each mode has a different maximum number of players, meaning not everyone in your Paddock can participate every time.
One part of Kirby Air Riders that did spark joy however was its ride customisation. Each vehicle can be modified to a surprising degree, with a wide variety of visual customisations ranging from a classic spoiler or hanging keychain, to devil wings and neon underlighting. On top of this, the base vehicles can also be customised in different colours, textures and patterns as you unlock them in each game mode.
While these are purely vanity changes – your vehicles base stats won’t change – it does feel exciting to build my very own custom Warp Star to proudly display on and offline. There’s also a selection of accessories to attach to your rider as well, so I can’t wait to see what bizarre creations will pop up once Air Riders arrives on November 20.
While Air Riders might not be my personal cup of tea, it feels like a faithful and loving reward for all the folks who loved the original Kirby Air Ride. Without the benefit of nostalgia, though, you may find it harder to get up to speed.
Kirby Air Riders was reviewed using a promotional code on Nintendo Switch 2, as provided by the publisher. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.
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