Kirby Air Riders

[S.J.]

There will be a Kirby Air Riders Direct at 9 AM ET, 19 Aug 2025. Has anyone else been looking forward to Kirby Air Riders since its reveal in the Nintendo Direct in April? Given the brief announcement in April, I'm looking forward to actually seeing the game and getting a release date!

Also, did you play Kirby Air Ride? I was hoping to see it come to the Gamecube Nintendo Classics on NSO+Expansion Pack for Switch 2, but oh well!

 

[S.J.]

I was happy with the Direct. I wasn't sure what they could talk about for 45 minutes, but apparently a lot!

Honestly, the game had more depth than I was expecting. I liked quite a lot about it:

• The variety of characters and machines. I thought the addition of Starman was really cute
• Bosses. Always happy to see Dyna Blade
• The announcer, music, and winning/ranking screen visuals being similar to SSBU
• All of the riders being able to use Copy Abilities
• Variety in maps!
• The mechanics of attacking, special moves, gliding, drifting, boosting, and following the star trails to increase speed. There's a lot more built-in than just following the course
• The option to turn on destroying machines! I think that's going to be a lot of fun
• City Trial and Skyah both look good! I can see myself being an absolute failure at City Trial, but it still looks fun

Honestly, so far the only thing that threw me off was that the City Trial power-ups were 2D images, and visually it just looks a bit off to me. Otherwise, I don't have any immediate negative thoughts about it!

Release date is 20 November 2025, so 3 months from now. It's definitely something I'll buy, so I look forward to it!

 

[toxapex]

Can't believe I didn't see more discussion of this game!!! I'm hyped for the release tomorrow, the demo was super fun!

I was sad about no local multiplayer and no normal races though, so I'm looking forward to seeing what each star is like in that mode