| Kirby Air Riders | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | DLC & Pre-Order | Review |
Kirby Air Riders sees Masahiro Sakurai back as a game director! Read on to learn how it plays, what it’s about, and everything else we know so far.
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Kirby Air Riders Gameplay
Kirby Air Riders centers on auto-accelerating machines that you steer while managing momentum through a dedicated Boost Charge. Vehicles push toward top speed on their own; braking and cornering are handled by holding the Boost Charge to drift and then releasing to dash. Drafting behind opponents, short hops that convert speed into glide, and aerial control over descent/ascent let you maintain velocity while setting up overtakes. Projectiles and hazards from on-track enemies or item pickups create short windows for offense, but positioning and boost timing remain the primary tools for gaining distance.
Character abilities and Kirby’s copy options layer on top of vehicle handling without replacing it. Copy pickups grant brief, situational tools—ranged shots, shields, or displacement—to secure overtakes or survive pileups, and certain characters have unique specials that slightly shift their ideal play patterns.
Moreover, local play supports up to eight riders and online supports up to sixteen, with rule variations across modes.
Air Ride mode focuses on lap races with attack-enabled jockeying for position. To gain speed, players need to drift-charge and attack opponents; attacks that connect yield stars that increment top speed during a run, while smart drafting along a star trail sustains momentum on straights.
For battles, machines have distinct handling and durability profiles, and riders can unleash character-specific specials or Copy Abilities to stun, displace, or strip rivals of parts in close quarters. These interactions complement the universal Boost Charge loop: braking to bait, drifting to build gauge, then committing a burst to secure hits or disengage. Arena variants, meanwhile, have hazards and sightlines that reward short boost taps for micro-repositioning.
City Trial returns as a timed build-and-compete mode. Players roam a contiguous map—city streets, tunnels, and open air sections—collecting stat patches (top speed, acceleration, offense, defense, gliding) and swapping between scattered machines. Random events such as meteor showers or environmental hazards periodically alter routes and resource density. After the timer ends, the lobby transitions into a Stadium challenge (for example: drag race, destruction quota, glide distance, or a short lap), so the machine you assembled must fit an unknown final test.
Kirby Air Riders Story
The 2003 GameCube title, Kirby Air Ride, was primarily a racing game without a conventional storyline, and Kirby Air Riders for the Nintendo Switch 2 follows this format. Here, players will control Kirby and other characters across various racing modes.
Currently, the playable characters are the following:
⚫︎ Kirby (blue, green, yellow, red, purple)
⚫︎ Meta Knight
⚫︎ King Dedede
⚫︎ Starman
⚫︎ Bandana Waddle Dee
⚫︎ Cappy
⚫︎ Chef Kawasaki
⚫︎ Gooey
⚫︎ Knuckle Joe
⚫︎ Magalor
⚫︎ Susie
⚫︎ Waddle Doo
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