Dawg there's no way 😭😭 where did yall get your license Make A Wish??😭 weakest Constitution dissenter.

We have Sonic Drift at home! Not really, not really. It does have Smash Melee's UI and SFX 🫢 a lot of elements were brought back in some form in Smash. I think Sakurai really likes Air Ride. Just a hunch. Air Ride's claim to fame is its famous portrayal of the west vs east mentality, what I mean by this is the contrast between box arts. Kirby you are not you when you are hungry, LUCKILY he's actually able to suck and get new abilities mid race. Sakurai has great priorities. There's not a humongous number of them, but truth is Kirby's on a diet. Indeed, that is why he's getting into baby's first sport. Yeah boi enjoy ur baby warp star, the "fuck it we ball drunk & driving" phase is very far away, but that doesnt mean it'll never happen. How many crimes has the pink puffball done? HOLY GUACAMOLEEE pulls out comically long video scrolling through war crimes.

The easiest stray compliment Air Ride can get is its presentation. The races design, progression and scenery all make a fine cake. You'll need more than one try to tame the beast. It appears however that I be pregnant cuz my ass is expectin. As I am beholden to this earthly shell and realize my time on Earth is slipping away, it has come to my attention that the lack of mechanics and the minimalist control scheme truly put the "L" in "Kirby Air Ride". It just gets old fast, unfortunately. it has to rely on the challenges checkboard and that's a telltale sign you will be stuffed to the brim! Hey now, for "Air" riding, the invisible walls trapping us in course jail have the tendency to make aerial control a gamble. The issue can be mitigated if you consume thoses races like crack, but as it stands for a new player, you pick a god and pray you don't facetime a wall of translucid concrete expeditiously.

Of the three gamemodes, the 2nd is a weird one. Top Ride has a niche fanbase, but nothing to quite put the capital R in it. It's meant to be chaotic as heck, clearly capitalising on multiplayer. You don't see shit tho 😂 get me a beer son! it's like watching an underground chickens race. Which can be pretty funny, sometimes I'm just wonderin why the invincibility candy is just a regular candy, gives me a lot to ponder about. I can't imagine myself trying to complete the checklist for that one. I'd be driven cuckoo so fast. Are a few music tracks and being able to ride a Toyota worth the grind. The "Air Grind" if you will. Ah! This is a sub mode in Nightmare in Dream Land ahah. Atleast we know what Korby Air Ride would be like as a mobile game my brethrens

Ok and for last, we have City Trial. Notice how it's not called Cities Trials because there is a singular city and only one struggle. It is like a Mario Party where no skill is required and only luck is involved, the apocalyptic events got me tweaking they are very uncanny Mario tier, Dyna Blade can just decide your life license is forfeit and no council can overthrow the decision. There are gift wrapped stats boosters across the one map, some might say performance enhancing doping not being frowned upon in the Kirby universe is quite the bold statement, yet I can only say "but of course.". It's about the journey not the destination and they were so right! The concept of gathering upgrades for a minigame showdown is very cool, too bad all the minigames are unbalanced and not my cup of tea to put it mildly. This racing business may not be Kirby's strongest suit, we goin back to fighting games and low effort 3DS apps with this one 💤

Sakurai is one of those gameplay auteurs who manages to showcase absolute mastery of how to challenge himself and then still bring out a great sense of depth and fun at every turn. This time it's, "hey what if we literally made a racing game around ONE button (and an analog stick i guess)"

That's the beauty of Kirby Air Ride, it's a rip roaring time with 3 solid game modes that utilize the most of the depth of its mechanics while also being a solid party game to play on the side. Whether you play on the well structured and designed race tracks in classic Air Ride with a multitude of different but very distinct karts, the minigame nature although probably weakest component known as Top Ride, or the total stat-grind rush and general party randomness structure of City Ride, you will have a shitton of fun to experience.

It manages to be more interesting than most racing games in general, especially with racing powerups that don't rely on luck factor as much as they do knowledge of the game (even the "random" obtaining powerups actually just come down to timing) and have more depth to show. It's also just incredibly accessible to jump in on, with a skill floor low enough that anyone can enter in.

It's a crazy good time that I'd recommend playing at any point you can, especially with friends through Parsec.

I think it's absolutely hilarious that the titular Air Ride -- the only mode in the entire game that gets non in-game footage in the opening cinematic -- is some of the most unenjoyable "racing" I've ever had the displeasure of playing through. Thankfully the two "side" modes (Top Ride and City Trial) rule, but it's also probably why there's never been a sequel. Hard to get your boss to greenlight Air Ride 2 when even people who love the first avoid the main attraction like it's year-old expired milk at the back of the fridge.

Top Ride is probably the "best" mode as far as feeling like a fully-baked idea goes. It's a chaotic minute or two of good old fashioned top-down racing fun, and it really makes the 1 button + 1 stick control scheme sing. My only complaint about Top Ride is that there's only 7 tracks compared to Air Ride's 9. They should have made 16 Top Ride tracks and deleted Air Ride from the game.

Not to say the side modes are perfect either. City Trial is a blast with all the random events, vehicle swapping, and PvP shenanigans, and the minigames that follow up your time powering up your ride are mostly a good time. Unfortunately, sometimes that minigame is a 1 lap traditional Air Ride race. And since you only play one minigame after each city phase before starting fresh on a new run, getting a bad minigame (or even one your ride and stats just aren't meant for) can be a bit of a let down.

Oh, and they didn't let King Dedede or Meta Knight ride the Air Rides. Not cool HAL, not cool.

Kirby Air Ride earned critical disdain at release. it just wasn't good at what it was expected to do. it ended up as a cult classic for its buried brilliance. in that, there's a lesson to learn;
if a game mode goes hard, dont bury it under/with other garbage unless you have soda drinker pro/glittermitten grove energy.
Kirby Air Ride fails itself by improperly acknowledging the most admirable part of the game. it's a misguided game that presents itself as something it never was, and overshadows its true genius in the process.

if i was new to Kirby Air Ride, i would have lot of high expectations. this game has kirby, and i love kirby. i got this game when i was younger because it was the only kirby game available on gamecube. it's also directed by masahiro sakurai. to this day, he has never missed...well, except for smash tour...and a lot in this game.
i would also think i'd be getting into a racing game. if i really wanted a racing game, i'd be in for a massive disappointment.

the titular mode, air ride, is pretty bad. if you want a non-traditional racing game on your gc, go play sonic riders or f-zero gx over this. the game's central mechanic (and only mechanic) is turning your brakes for almost all the vehicles in this game into a charged boost. in a standard race, it just feels like im yanking around my car to get tiny moments of speed. jerky janky. according to his game concepts video on this, he wanted to make a unique form of drifting. his chimera of simplicity in boosting and breaking makes the drift lose my favorite piece: the preservation of momentum. drifting in other games lets you give up control and just flow at a high speed through a turn. in the air ride mode, drift doesnt just sacrifice the flow for control; it is your only trick that you can use. you're pulling back on every curve that feels less like pulling a slingshot and more like you're some poor schmuck in a wwe match bouncing off ropes. if you mess up and run into a wall, the game drags you along by the collar into that lame feel anyways. you just get bounced back in the general direction you need to go with no loss in momentum. the driving is just too oversimple and unsatisfying.
the tracks dont help at all. awkward annoyances galore. claustrophobic corridors, invisible walls, and opaque gimmicks plague this game. celestial valley and frozen hillside were the only levels that felt cohesive and competent. the rest are only enjoyable if you're chipping away at them in time trials.
the third strike against this mode are the awful abilities. air ride's abilities are the worst items ive personally experienced in any racing game. half are stubby and only useful when you were about to pass someone anyways. some require you to hit the breakboost button and ruin your flow. plasma is just overpowered in every race and not even satisfying to build up. the last two make your machine choice irrelevant. also fuck the mic im just trying to race goddammit
strike out for this mode. nothing is fun about plain ol racing in this game, unless...

top ride is still racing, but something is clearly better here. it's the most ignored part of this game but the mode is put together far better than air ride. the camera angle works better with the mechanics and it allows for some havoc to develop. there's some seriously underwhelming side game energy here from the limited choices, making it all too soft, but at least theres faint fun to be had. this mode mightve been pretty solid with some more content, and maybe it wouldve been cooler if it was introduced as a side mode in another kirby game. as is, top ride is a pop fly and the 2nd out.

nothing is fun about plain ol racing in this game, unless...it's a quick lap you didnt even know was going to be happening. city trial is unrefined chaotic bliss delegated to the bottom of the game's menu. pretty much everyone else i knew who grew up with this game had the exact same experience as me, which is city trial and nothing else. this game mode singlehandedly sustains the admiration that props this game up as a gamecube gem. twisted metal, cel damage, and wreckfest can all eat their puny hearts out because this is the best vehicular party game you're getting.
your goal in city trial: scavenge a vehicle, gather all sorts of stat stuffs, and avoid all of the batshit that the world throws at you. after all that, pray that you got yourself dressed for the right event, because thats how you win.
the mode even makes the baffling control decisions make sense. the simple driving mechanics actually work here because they almost feel made for an open area. you can turn in all directions pretty quickly and get a boost when you figure out your direction. it's also pretty easy to figure out exactly what a vehicle is good at when you find one because there arent many functions to test.
the abilities mesh well with the open world environment, as you're a lot more likely to be running into others, wanting a temporary new movement option, dodging spark, or mic lol.
i refuse to believe the mechanics werent designed or at least predominantly balanced around this mode.
every part of the way is fun. slowly building your character, getting destroyed by some gimmick, or even just vibing around the city are all fun. this is one of the few games where it's pure joy in the mayhem even when my luck isnt so great. everything that happens is so absurd and sudden that even when im getting screwed over, the fun overtakes it all. city trial pulls off a home run for the game, bringing it all together into something good.

there seems to be a problem with letting sakurai's concept shine. he gave this idea another go, but it got stuck on the 3ds with no online play and no ability to interact with other players on the map. it didnt work as well in smash bros, where the game is already a frenzy and this expanded game mode takes away from that a little bit, but it's still a blast even as a fighting game.
there have been indie homages to all sorts of niche game concepts, but i haven't seen one for air ride yet. it's only a matter of time until that day and i cant wait. the concept deserves a full game's focus. until then, i'm totally down to play some city trial via dolphin's netplay. shoot me a message in my usual places and let's get crackin.

Kirby Air Ride is a game that suffers it's own design. What it's meant to be is a game that's very simple to control, but hard to master. As a result though, it can be jarring to use solely the A button to stop alongside powering up a boost. The A button is then also tied to sucking up enemies and activating certain copy abilities. All of this halts your momentum, and at times, it can be aggravating to deal with. Starting and stopping isn't the type of thing you'd probably want, nor expect, from a racing game. It is by far the biggest off put to the game, and it's reasonable to surmise why this didn't catch on.

The game doesn't make a great first impression either. You start off with a Warp Star as your primary vehicle, with other options needing to be unlocked. You might tend to stick to this vehicle since it's the one that's the most balanced. But as a result, you'll find yourself confused how you keep failing to win the race. You may get frustrated, or maybe bored, and decide to try out the other modes. The second mode you come across is a top down racer that's not super interesting or worth noting, and there's something called "City Trial" that you've heard was fun, but you don't know much about. You'll play a few rounds, and you'll probably have your most fun there, but for a game to be a racing game and not be very good as a racing, you'll probably call it quits there.

Kirby Air Ride is not at all a perfect game. It is, however, one of those games that exceeds so, so much at specific mechanics and systems, that it ends up making it one of my favorite games ever. It's weird, it's strange, and it's everything I love about video games.

First of all, City Trial mode. As an entire "side mode" it is by far one of my favorites in existence. It's similar to Smash Run from the 3DS Smash Bros if you're familiar with that, but implemented much more tastefully. It's a relatively open map with many different locations, and your goal is to collect enough power ups for your vehicle to compete in a randomly selected mini-game at the end of the round. What vehicle you find and what power ups you get, as well as your skill at the mini-game, all determine your chances of winning. It's a fantastic party mode that's provided me with countless hours of enjoyment over the years, whether it be with friends or by myself.

Working in tandem with City Trial, along with the rest of the game modes, is the excellent progression system. If you're familiar with future Sakurai games, like Kid Icarus Uprising, or more commonly Smash Bros, the feeling of finding out how to unlock characters and or filling out the checklist for unlocks is an immense joy. Kirby Air Ride is where this progression system was first nailed down, and is probably my favorite implementation of the system. For the uninitiated, the checklist is a list of accomplishes, challenges, and specifications to mark off by completing those goals, and you potentially gain a new unlock from it. These objectives could be things you do naturally within the game to more specific challenges. Once you complete a challenge, the objective gets checked off, and the surrounding 4 blocks around the completed box becomes readable, giving you an idea of how to check off more. The unlockables for these checklists could be something as cool as a color, a vehicle, or even playing as King Dee Dee Dee or Meta Knight! Each mode has their own checklist, and it makes it so rewarding to replay the game to earn specific unlocks for each section. Twice over the years, if I filled out the checklist completely, I would end up deleting my save to do it all over again. This has made the game so much fun to come back and replay.

As you play the game more, you begin to realize that the many different vehicles all serve different play styles to the race tracks. These styles can be tricky to learn, but rewarding to master. They all have their benefits and drawbacks. The Wagon Star has great acceleration and can turn well, but you're sacrificing your ability to boost and drift. The Swerve Star is fast, able to stop at a dime, but you sacrifice being able to control the vehicle without stopping. Some are good for damaging opponents, some are good for gliding, some have specific characteristics that give them advantages over others, like the shadow star gaining a boost when behind other racers. Some are worse than others, no doubt. The Formula Star is probably the worst vehicle in the game given that it has a high top speed but most tracks tend to curve, making you lose that top speed, but in places like City Trial, this can have it's uses with certain events. Depending on what mode you play, your vehicle of choice will have it's own advantages and disadvantages. It's unbalanced at times, but the sheer variety in fun and interesting play styles is something worthy of praise.

Learning these race tracks and mastering the machines is a really fun feat. It's satisfying to slide on the ground doing a sharp turn and then boosting forward with a shot of speed. The tracks that make the best use of this are some of my favorites. Not all the tracks are the best, I think the first two tracks might be the weakest in the entire game, but there's a lot of enjoyment to be had with them overall. Finding different paths, secret paths, and completing objectives off the checklist help make replaying the game easy to engage with for me.

On top of all of this, the music to this game stands out immensely for me. They're similar to Melee's orchestra, but mixed in with synth music that sounds more in line with Kirby. Everything about it holds a very charming, very Kirby sound. It's not my favorite Kirby soundtrack, but it's insanely memorable and varied.

I love this game. It's such a strange concoction of ideas that somehow manages to work for me. It's one of Sakurai's weirdest games, and for that, I love it. At a very young age, it spawned a great desire to play games that are more on the stranger side mechanically, and it's emblematic of what I think the GameCube best represented; strange ideas that stick out and innovated. They weren't ever perfect, but they were so uniquely fascinating.

Kirby Air Ride is a game people tend to adore, but I'm a bit more tepid on it. I still like it well enough, but I don't think I hold the unequivocal love for it I see from people around my age. Largely, this is because I think Sakurai's two primary experiments with this game failed.

First, the controls. Sakurai wanted to make a racing game easy enough for anyone to play; he did so by reducing all controls to the control stick and the A button. It's a kart racer where you're constantly accelerating, with A being used to break. The emphasis is generally on drifting rather than building up speed. The problem is that this presupposes a certain level of skill when it comes to video games. Kirby Air Ride was one of many games I tried to get my very casual gamer mother to play with me as a kid, but the game's control scheme was so foreign for her that she couldn't wrap her head around it. I think it's a consequence of contrasting mechanical complexity with mechanical behavior. The physical actions you perform in playing Kirby Air Ride are considerably simpler than in, for example, Mario Kart. But Mario Kart is more firmly moored in reality. Much easier for someone to understand "button makes car go, stick makes car turn" than "button makes car stop, stick makes car drift", since the former is more consistent with how cars act in real life.

And to be clear, the issue wasn't that my mother wasn't good at the game. Even years later, she explains it pretty well - she always knew she'd lose playing video games with the rest of the family, but she still had fun trying anyway. She didn't even know how to try in Kirby Air Ride, and that made it frustrating to her.

Second, the different modes - Air Ride, Top Ride, and City Trial. All three have an equally large checklist, which in the game's language would suggest that each is meant to carry the same weight. But it's always always always been wildly lopsided in City Trial's favor. When people talk about Kirby Air Ride, they are specifically thinking about City Trial; when people talk about Air Ride being rereleased or remade, they're specifically missing City Trial. It's a great mode, don't get me wrong - the sandbox design is a ton of fun, there's a lot to explore in the city area, and it's always fun when you've correctly deduced what the final challenge will be and built your Warp Star accordingly. Problem is, it's so great that it outshines Air Ride (traditional races) and Top Ride (arcadey top-down racing). In fact, Air Ride mode is more or less contained within City Trial, since some of the challenges involve races around the Air Ride tracks. Top Ride is completely out of place by consequence, since the change in perspective and the unique Warp Stars make it a separate entity unto itself. I also never thought it was any good, but that might just be me not having a taste for R.C. Pro-Am or other racers of its ilk.

I'll also admit - I've always preferred the Hydra to the Dragoon. I've always found the latter overhyped, particularly when it came to its Smash Bros. appearances. I dunno, I'd much rather scream across racetracks than glide endlessly through the air. You have the Flight Warp Star unlocked from the start for that sort of thing, anyway.

I've been pretty negative on Air Ride, but I do still like it. When it's firing on all cylinders, I think it's really compelling for its cycle of short-form play-and-reward. City Trial remains fantastic, much as I never think I'll care to master the rest of the game it's attached to. Visually, it's one of more surreal takes on Pop Star, with its spiraling beanstalks, checkerboard landscapes, pillars of water, and floating detritus. It's honestly commendable for existing at all, being the ONLY GameCube outing for li'l Kirby (Super Smash Bros. notwithstanding) as well as a coincidental incarnation of a failed N64 title. It's a game I'm glad exists, just not one I think is a forgotten masterpiece.