Kirby has the ability to put everyone in a good mood, right? I mean, I've been in a lovely mood thanks to the pink puffball (and Nintendo), as I was lucky enough to go hands-on with the upcoming racer Kirby Air Riders for the Nintendo Switch 2 at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany.
As a surprising sequel to Kirby Air Ride on the GameCube, it's a really fascinating game, and it does, as director Masahiro Sakurai said in yesterday's Nintendo Direct, feel very different to Mario Kart World. So let me run you through what I got to play during my behind-closed-doors session.
I, along with around 20 or so other people, were all shuffled into a room together where, to my surprise, we got to watch the Direct together. Here is where I started really falling for this game. This was the first time we'd seen any gameplay, and it looked great. But the way Sakurai presents and goes into so much detail is what really did it for me.
Right after the Direct, I got to go hands-on with the game, where I started off with some Lessons covering how to boost dash, drift, fly, land, capture enemies, etc. I only got to try a handful of these (through numbers three to nine) but these were really nice and helped me get to grips with the controls and movement.
If you've played Kirby Air Ride before, then you'll be familiar with the controls, but I haven't. The GameCube game only came out a year after I was born (Ouch, I feel my back creaking... Ed~); of course, I could have gone back and played it (though it's not exactly the cheapest game), but I was never really intrigued to check it out. However, now the new one is on the way? My goodness.
Anyway, I had to learn how to turn, which sounds a bit silly, but in Kirby Air Riders and its predecessor, you don't need to accelerate with the 'A' button, you just... go. So that took some getting used to. In the original game, you only used one button for everything, including to stop so you could turn your vehicle (called machines) around and then boost ahead. But in Air Riders, the devs have added a second button — yes, very exciting — which allows your racer to use their Special move.
Learning all of this didn't take very long, and I also found out by tilting the left stick side-to-side, you can do a spin attack and ram into other opponents. You can even inhale other characters and copy them. There's a lot of stuff going on.
After Lessons, we were all thrown into two regular races in Air Ride mode. I got to race on Floral Fields and Wave Flow Waters and I was really impressed by both courses. I tried out some different combos of characters and machines, too. For one of the pairings, my turns were really slow but had good speed otherwise, plus my character had an excellent special which helped me win the second race, even though we were playing with bots.
That all changed when we dived into City Trial, the big, meaty event for Kirby Air Riders. Here, we got to play three times and we were against three other people. This was a hugely popular mode in the original game, but here, it's been fleshed out and improved massively. In Air Riders, for example, you can simply switch karts seamlessly driving into them and pressing 'Y' rather than jumping off one and on another, and you get little suggestions on the screen that tell you what you might want to do next. And, at the end of a City Trial session, you all get to vote on the final minigame which you're all building up to.
'But wait, Felix, building up? Changing karts? What are you talking about?' Well, in City Trial, you're driving around on this big island called Skyah, and it is really big, and you need to find a vehicle to upgrade to from your basic Warp Star. Then you drive around and collect all sorts of different power-ups — you can increase speed, air-time, boost your attack, defense, there are so many things to collect.
While I was collecting these upgrades and messing around, I discovered something that Sakurai also briefly stumbled upon during the Direct, a sort of glass-looking satellite in the sky which I thought was really cool. Not only are there secrets to find, but there are also multiple events taking place on the map too like big spiky balls falling from the sky, Kracko making an appearance, or a quick race where the winner in first-place will win lots of power-ups.
All of this is meant to get you to build the best possible vehicle for the final minigame in the Stadium. This can be a handful of options from Air Rider, which tests you on who can fly the farthest, or it can be a big brawl in Dustup Derby. It can even be a Gourmet Race, which tasks you with eating the most food. It's all really varied and exciting.
I think my biggest issue with City Trial is that you have five-minutes to go and collect all these power-ups, which to me is a little bit too long. Now it looks like there's lots of customisation in this game, so I'm hoping that means we can change or lower the time. It might be better when you're playing with 16 real people, but it felt a little anticlimactic when I played with just three others as, when we got to the final challenge, because we each voted on different minigames every time, we'd end up racing CPU-controlled rivals. We did eventually team up and vote for the same challenge for the last one, and , well, I actually won that one!
Another problem I had was that sometimes you can go so fast that it's hard to even know what's happening on the screen. Maybe it's my fault for aiming for the quickest stats, but this is where I started to experience a little bit of motion sickness. Now, you know I've also struggled with this in Donkey Kong Bananza, but with Kirby, it's not only me as one of the Nintendo representatives said that they actually got motion sickness playing the game, too.
It also might have to do with the fact we were sitting really close to a big TV (they were close together and we were advised to sit back if we could, which I did) so our whole depth-of-field was just Kirby Air Riders at maximum speed going left and right. So I'll have to see how I cope when the game launches.
There's a lot we still haven't seen, but even this early on, there's so much variety. In the character roster, for instance, not only are there many cool and weird picks like Susie (from Planet Robobot) and Gooey (from Kirby's Dream Land 2 and 3) but they all have multiple costumes. Kirby comes in pink, yellow, purple, and one other colour, while King Dedede has his standard red robes alongside a blue robe and a pink one. Some only have two, while Kirby has the most at four (for now). I also really love that all of the characters, not just Kirby, can copy abilities, this alone makes it feel different than Mario Kart, and I can't wait to see what Meta Knight looks like holding a microphone.
Right now, I'm worried that City Trial will get old and I think it's a little odd that the final minigame splits your group of 16 into four different groups — there's the option to vote for a random challenge, which will then just throw you into a random minigame or group at the end, so I think the voting system is the best solution we have right now for variety. On the whole, though, I enjoyed Air Ride mode the most because I felt the adrenaline rush more.
Graphically and musically, however, this game is fantastically phenomenal, it's got that Sakurai magic. The colours pop, the animations are bold and expressive, and the orchestral songs and remixes are all brilliant. The sparkling, explosions, and all the other sound effects really help bring everything together.
So, in case you case you couldn't tell, I think that Kirby Air Riders is shaping up to be really great. I had a really nice time racing with others and the controls feel extremely natural and easy to learn. Kirby is having a heck of a year on Switch 2, I can't wait to see more of this game when it launches on 20th November 2025.
Video and words provided by Felix Sanchez, text transcribed and edited by Alana Hagues.
Are you excited for Kirby Air Riders? Let us know in the comments.