Kirby Air Riders

Genre: Racing / Misc.

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local Split-Screen), 2-8 Competitive (Local Wireless), 2-16 Competitive (Online)

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Review:

When Kirby creator Masahiro Sakurai surprised gamers by announcing that his hiatus from game development had ended some time ago and that he had already been hard at work for some time on his next project, many expected that project to be the next game in the super Smash Bros. series, or perhaps a sequel or port of Kid Icarus: Uprising, or maybe an entirely new project with some new IP. When the Nintendo Switch 2 was fully unveiled and we discovered his secret new game was a sequel to the 2003 GameCube game Kirby Air Ride, I think pretty much everyone was stunned.

Kirby Air Ride wasn’t exactly what you would consider a hit for Nintendo. An odd sort of simplified take on a cartoony Racing Game, reviews of Kirby Air Ride were middling, with many players and critics put off by the game’s simple one-button control scheme and dismissing it as something only for young children. And while the game did get a cult following largely due to its chaotic city trial game mode, I don’t think anyone was under any illusions that this game would receive a sequel.

Yet here we are in 2025 and that’s exactly what we’ve received in the form of Kirby Air Riders on Nintendo Switch 2. Much in line with its predecessor, Kirby Air Riders is a Racing Game that is vaguely similar to a Kart Racer, but really plays like nothing else in the genre. Once again, the core of the gameplay here brings back the original Kirby Air Ride’s “always moving forward” game mechanic, as well as its one-button gameplay, now supplemented with an additional button for swapping vehicles in the returning city trial mode or using your ultimate attack move.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that Kirby’s cutesy appeal and the game’s simplified control scheme means this game won’t be much to look at. Simply put, Kirby Air Riders is visually-stunning, with each of the game’s race courses designed to be a roller coaster ride of set piece after set piece. In one early level, you race through corridors surrounded by water thrusting upwards like in Charlton Heston’s The Ten Commandments, only to shortly afterwards find yourself careening around a pathway of rushing water flowing like a high-speed river in the sky. In another level, you’re rushing through crystal caves sparkling in the light with players blasting through a kaleidoscope tunnel. All of this is with a pretty good sense of speed, and the feeling that you’re not even able to take everything in as it blasts by you. The visual fireworks here are paired with some true creative design to make just watching this game a sumptuous spectacle.

The soundtrack for Kirby Air Riders is a wonderful mix of new themes and classics reworked in a variety of styles, ranging from orchestral and jazzy to rocking electric guitar and mellow synth. For some good examples, check out Vegetable Valley, Waveflow Waters, Crystalline Fissure, The Great Cave Offensive, Mount Amberfalls, Dark Mind’s (Second Form), C-R-O-W-N-E-D, Sky Sands, Rainbow Resort, Flower, Air, Stadium: Gourmet Race, Legendary Air Ride Machine, and Boss Battle: Zero Two.

As for the gameplay, the main idea here is that you’re barreling forward on a race course and pressing B to brake for turns, releasing it again for a speed boost However, this button is also used for attacks, some of which also require you to hold the button down to charge them. So in theory, you’ll need to be mindful of the multiple purposes the button has as you use it to put it to the most use.

In practice, this is just utter chaos, and I can’t help but feel like the “one button” concept is something this game marries itself to even though it would give players better control to have functions split between multiple buttons. Heck, one attack you do by wiggling the left analog stick left and right is one you’ll repeatedly find yourself activating on accident just by making adjustments to your steering. What’s more, it feels like the game’s use of a second button for ultimate attacks and vehicle-swapping is a concession made not because it’s better for the gameplay but simply because they could no longer justify piling more things onto one button anymore.

It’s a pity this gameplay is harmed by the forced control simplicity, because there’s just so much here to love otherwise. Super Smash Bros. players will recognize a lot of Kirby Air Riders’ overall game structure and gameplay loop, with a similar achievement board, plenty of unlockable characters, vehicles, courses, and more. In addition to the standard Air Ride mode with straightforward Racing, there’s the Top-Down Racing Top Ride mode, The Road Trip mode where players progress through a campaign by selecting one of three minigames to play at each stage, and of course City Trial mode, where players scurry around an area building up stats for a final minigame-based challenge that is akin to Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS‘ Smash Run game mode.

With the beautiful visuals, tons of content, and gameplay that is fundamentally fun, I can’t help but feel like Kirby Air Riders takes what could have been a potentially great game and renders it merely good with its arbitrarily simple control scheme that results in his game being far more chaotic and difficult-to-control than it should be. I do still think this is an enjoyable game, but it’s frustrating that this stubborn refusal to abandon this one concept results in a game that feels so needlessly flawed.

tl;dr – Kirby Air Riders is a Racing Game that’s a bit like a Kart Racer, but is largely unlike anything else out there, thanks largely to its odd one-button (or two-button, for a few things) control scheme. Unfortunately, it is the game’s stubborn adherence to these overly-simple controls that takes what would otherwise be a spectacular game with a gorgeous presentation and tons of content and leaves it feeling like a flawed shadow of what it could have been.

Grade: B-

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