~Dani is absolutely thrilled with Kirby Air Riders at gamescom. It shows just how much chaos you can cause with just two buttons and a stick!
When I first heard about Kirby Air Riders, I thought to myself: oh, it’s like Mario Kart with fewer buttons, that’ll be easy. But holy Kirby pipe, was I wrong.
There is so much more to Kirby Air Riders that I finally understand why my GamePro colleague Basti spent hundreds of hours playing the original 20 years ago.
With simplified controls and two modes in which lap races play only a secondary role, Kirby Air Riders manages to create an incredibly complex and fun experience. I played it for about an hour at gamescom 2025.
What the hell is Kirby Air Riders anyway?
The Kirby racing game is not a classic racing game – and to understand the fascination behind it, you shouldn’t treat it like one. Instead of accelerating or braking yourself at the push of a button, everything happens automatically.
You only need two buttons: one for your special ability and one to charge your boost. The boost automatically slows you down a little, and you can use this moment of reduced speed to drift around corners or build momentum for a speed boost.
If there are opponents (whether other riders or NPCs) in front of you, you simultaneously suck them in to acquire their abilities and then spit them out again like a projectile.
You can see what this looks like in the game here:
In short: you press a button and a lot of things happen at once, which you have to take into account and incorporate depending on the situation. Because so much depends on a single button and everything happens at once, timing and proper control of your vehicle are incredibly important.
You use these controls in the two modes available in the remake of the 20-year-old Gamecube classic. One is a classic racing mode where you simply have to overtake your opponents and be the first to cross the finish line.
Like Smash Bros on wheels at double speed
However, the real star of the game is not the racing mode, but the City Trails, which won the hearts of fans 20 years ago. This is a mode in which you compete against up to 16 players.
It is divided into two phases:
- In phase 1, you cruise around a large island for five minutes and collect boosts for various status values (attack, top speed, flight power, weight). Depending on which boosters you have collected, you can then…
- …choose one of four game modes in phase 2, in which you then compete against others who have chosen the same mode. Whoever wins this mode wins the Trails.
While you are collecting boosters on the island, events occur that you can participate in, but don’t have to. For example, short races pop up here and there, and if you win, you get a lot of boosters. Alternatively, you have to fight bosses together or dodge giant meteorites.
Once you’ve collected a few boosters, you’ll notice the difference even during phase 1: your kart will become faster and your attacks more powerful. In most cases, you’ll be so powerful shortly before the 5 minutes are up that you’ll be flying across the map at breakneck speed, and collecting the remaining boosters or taking out your opponents will become a real test of skill.
Of course, the fun factor increases in proportion to the chaos, because opponents are racing past everywhere, things are exploding, or you suddenly find yourself (un)intentionally catapulted into the air. The fun reaches its peak in the modes from phase two, where you have advantages or disadvantages depending on the boosts you’ve collected.
Mix & Match
The last exciting and complex component in this chaotic mix is the choice of rider and machine. Depending on which rider you choose, you not only use a different special ability, but your appearance also affects your kart (or, as Kirby calls it, your “machine”) in terms of weight and other factors.
Of course, each model has its own stats. But what’s more exciting about the machines is the way they drive. While one machine is particularly agile in the air, the box van is very sturdy and maneuverable, but can’t slide around corners, so you have to steer it very differently than the plane.
Kirby Air Riders creator Masahiro Sakurai also explains more about the machines and their capabilities in the 45-minute Nintendo Direct (starting at minute 38):
Editor’s conclusion
With Kirby Air Riders, I had to forget everything I had learned from Mario Kart. Playing with only three buttons sounds super easy at first, but it’s not at all when you’re actually playing. I have to time very precisely when I want to boost, how I take the corners, and when it’s time to attack. You learn the controls quickly after a short time, but it probably takes hours to really master them. This is partly because it plays so differently from all other racing games.
The first few rounds of City Trials quickly reveal who has mastered the controls and who still needs a little practice. It’s nice that you can’t fly over the edge into the abyss like in Mario Kart and similar games. Instead, you bounce off an invisible barrier. Here, too, if you unlearn what you’ve learned from other games and take advantage of this barrier mechanic, you can quickly gain an edge over others.
I’ll be honest: I went into the preview session without high expectations and came out really excited about the game. Even though it’s not an open world like Mario Kart World and the modes themselves are fairly straightforward, you can easily sink several hundred hours of fun into this game while learning new tricks or trying out even more cunning strategies.