Kirby Air Ride

Kirby Air Ride
Protagonist(s): Kirby Genre(s): Racing Fighting Rating(s): ESRB: Everyone CERO: All Ages Platform(s): Nintendo GameCube Release Date: Japan: July 11, 2003 Worldwide: October 13, 2003 Developer(s): HAL Laboratory Publisher(s): Nintendo Country: Japan Series: Kirby

Kirby Air Ride is a spin-off title and a racing released only on Nintendo GameCube as the only game to do so. The game was released on July 11, 2003 in Japan and on October 13, 2003 worldwide.

Qualities That Deserve a Sweet Little Air Ride

1. The game is not just a typical Mario Kart racing game, it also has gimmicks that are not in the game. For example, players can attack others while bumping or using copy abilities.
2. The intro is great, focusing on Kirbys riding their respective machines while fighting
3. The game is a Super Smash Bros.-esque racing game but with Kirby characters.
4. There are copy abilities found in this game, and this will help players to defeat opponents:
   • For example, if players use the Wheel ability, it zooms fast, or using the Sword ability can slash the sword in circles to attack opponents.
5. Most tracks include rails to rail grind them to prevent getting attacked by opponents.
6. The game has customizable machines to use before starting the race, like the well-balanced Warpstar, the high-speed, but low handling, Formula Star, or even Wheelies.
   • Hydra and Dragoon are powerful machines exclusive to City Trial, but they can be used to overpower opponents once they assemble one of their legendary machines' parts.
7. Creative tracks, like Celestial Valley, Checkered Knights, and Frozen Hillside.
8. Top Ride is similar to go-kart racing in real life, but with machines and the view is now overhead. However, to accommodate this, it cannot allow players to use copy abilities and they can select a few machines.
9. It even has a battle track called City Trial, a large open-world area containing patches to upgrade machines and compete in a mini-stadium event at the end of City Trial by competing in other modes.
10. In Stadium mode, players can play different sets of challenges, such as racing straight in Drag Race or defeating opponents in Destruction Derby.
11. After players defeat King Dedede, there is a special video about City Trial and its machines appearing in this game.
12. There are two credits, one (Air Ride) which is cinematic while the other (Top Ride) is hilarious due to the credits getting bumped on the wall.
13. The checklist shows achievements and missions that can do certain tasks in order to unlock color palettes for characters, customizable machines, and sound tests.
14. Great soundtrack.
15. The graphics are really good for their time, the game even look like a early Wii game, this is because of the great art style and the colorful colors palette.

Qualities That Doesn't Deserve a Sweet Little Air Ride

1. Sadly, there are only three characters to play from, which are Kirby, Meta Knight, and King Dedede.
   • There is a missed opportunity to include other characters from the Kirby series, such as Waddle Dee, Rick, Kine, Coo, Marx, Gooey, and Adeleine.
2. Finishing all the checklists is quite a chore because there are a total of 360 objectives in a game, which is tedious.
3. The City Trial can be a bit confusing due to the controls of the Air Ride machines.

Trivia

• This is the last Kirby game that is directed by Masahiro Sakurai, few months before he left in HAL Laboratory.
• In the American box art, Kirby's face is more serious while in the Japanese box art, his face is more joyful.
• The Checklist will be foreshadowed in Super Smash Bros. Brawl onwards, which is known as Challenges.
  • The game itself has some elements from the Super Smash Bros. series:
    • The special video is reminiscent of the special video from Melee'.
    • The frantic credits scene seen in the Top Ride credits is reminiscent of the Super Smash Bros. game credits, mostly the first two games.
    • City Trial foreshadows Smash Run in Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 3DS.
    • They were directed by Masahiro Sakurai.
• A trailer for Kirby Air Ride was included on the bonus disc that came with preorders for Mario Kart: Double Dash!! The trailer starts off with a trailer for Kirby: Right Back at Ya! before transitioning to footage of Kirby Air Ride.

Reception

At its release, the game received mixed reviews according to Metacritic's review aggregator, scoring 61/100 in Metacritic.

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