The Kirby Air Riders Direct stream brought a bit one hour drop of new information about Masuhiro Sakurai’s latest game, digging into changes both big and small for the game, revealing Top Ride and the brand new Road Trip mode, digging into specific menu settings, revealing a big set of Amiibo, and more.
A global online demo is set to take place at two points in November, on 8th-9th November and on 15th-16th November at 8AM-2PM UK time (UTC) on the first day, and then 12AM-6AM and 3PM-9PM on the second.
Top Ride, the top-down racing style, has returned alongside the more kart racer-style Air Ride, and the vehicular combat stylings of City Trial. Compared to the GameCube original, there’s now a follow cam and the ability for all players to have their own view of the world, which will really help with the scale and the scope of the many stages featured in the game. Additionally, since this now uses the full selection Air Ride vehicles, and has two control methods so you can race however feels more natural.
Air Ride is the main racing mode, though, and there’s some big news here as well. There’s nine original circuits for this game, but there’s also all nine of the original game’s circuits included as well, from Fantasy meadows and Celestial Valley to Sky Sands. You’ll need to earn these original circuits, but they’ve all been rebuilt in their original layouts with new graphics – given the faster cruising speed in this sequel, the lap times will be a bit faster.
City Trial is the vehicular combat mode, gathering up stat points to enhance your vehicle before a final Stadium battle takes place. A new Team Battle mode takes the 16-player lobbies and splits them into two teams to work together, and then everyone to face off in the same Stadium.
A new game mode, Road Trip, which combines Air Ride, Top Ride and City Trial together in a string of challenges to take on, going head-to-head with rival characters. It builds up to encounters with a mysterious figure that provides some narrative impetus to this game’s solo play.
Of course, a lot of this is meant to be enjoyed in multiplayer. There’s up to four player split screen, and when with two players you can choose the direction of the split-screen, which is neat. What’s good to hear is that Switch 1 controllers and the GameCube recreation controller will all be supported.
Heading online, you can do so socially, meeting up with friends in the Paddock, a lobby space where you run around, get to watch a big screen, select music and just hang.
For competitively minded players, you’ll have an online license that shows your Global Power Rating – literally a number of how many people you’re better than – and a coloured shape that acts as your rank. This rank is set individually per game mode, and can affect how City Trial matches play out. You’ll be able to customise your license with fresh backgrounds, and even sparkles.
Beyond all this, Sakurai-san regularly diverted to share new copy abilities, vehicles and riders. There’s a lot of characters to choose from here, including… Rock (the literal rock) and Rick, the hamster. There’s also a Transform Star vehicle, which swaps between star form and bike form modes (which feels a bit OP?), top speed Formula Star, jumping Hop Star, and so many more.
A full set of five Kirby Air Rider amiibo are on the way for Kirby, Bandana Waddle Dee, Meta Knight, King Dedede, and Chef Kawasaki, all with swappable Star vehicles. The Tank Star can also have its tracks reoriented. The amiibo let you save and train up an AI, but can also just be scanned to change the pose and models featured in your main menu cursor.
Here’s some more bullet point details:
- All localisation languages have both male and female announcers.
- You can set a different announcer for matches and story narration.
- Time Trial records are tracked per machine.
- There are no online leaderboards.
- City Trial has a Free Run mode to let you explore Skyah, test vehicles and more. Field Events won’t happen in this mode, though.
- A Photo Mode is available throughout the game.
- A Stadiums-only mode is available separate from City Trial
- You can remove stadiums from City Trial, if you don’t like them, or set filters.
- The VS. King Dedede Stadium has been reimagined as VS. Boss against the transforming Robo Dedede.
- The Checklist returns with rewards for certain game missions and achievements, filling in a picture puzzle.
- There’s a new vehicle decoration feature called My Machine.
- A Machine Market lets you use earned currency to buy the designs of other players.
- Riders can also be styled up with headware.
- The earned currency is Miles from actively driving.
- You’ll earn “gummies” from defeating rivals, and can mess around with them like a gummy-obsessed Scrooge McDuck.
- The soundtrack comes from Shogo Sakai and Noriyuki Iwadare.
- You can customise how likely tracks are to be played.
- The main menu is themed after a desk
- You can remap buttons, to the extend you could play the game one-handed.
- Colour filters are in place to help with colourblindness.
- You can change the FOV, reduce camera shake and more.
- DLC is not planned for Kirby Air Riders – everything they want to put in the game is already there.
