Kirby Air Riders Global Test Ride Times - When Is The Online Demo Happening?

Top Ride is back!

It's disappointing. A demo shouldn't be a way to give players FOMO and incite them to subscribe to an online service.

After these long shows, I‘ve got the feeling there are no secrets about this game anymore. If somebody tells you every detail of their life in the first three dates, in most cases you quickly loose interest in that person. Let’s see how this will turn out!

I'll just wait for the full game to release. I'm excited! The game is so chockful of stuff to unlock and do. It feels a bit like this is how Mario Kart World should have been, which is both sad and good at the same time.

@Max_the_German Sakurai-San could talk for hours and I'd still be interested in all he has to say. The Direct sure didn't feel like an hour to me, at least. But I'm a fan of the man, so I'm biased as heck.

I'm very excited to try out Kirby Air Riders. I never played the original on GameCube back in the day. This game looks like a labor of love. Thank you, Sakurai and everyone else who worked on it.

@Cloudman Dude, those demos are to test online play. What audience is more fitting than the one that plays online? I really doubt that they had in mind getting many new subscriptions because of a Demo, they just expect the public that plays online to be interested in a new, big multiplayer game.

This was amazing! I'm more hyped than ever!

All doubts eliminated. This is gonna be a good ass game

@Cloudman Oh no, you got to have an online subscription to play an online global test run, FOMO! "FOMO" is quickly losing it's meaning.

I have yet to watch the second Direct, but while the first did nothing to get me excited for the game... I won't turn down a free demo! 😆

If I had a Switch 2, of course I wouldn't hesitate to try Air Riders before launch.
Can we expect a Global Test Smash for a future Smash Bros.?

Now, it wasn't mentioned, but with the Air Ride courses, can we expect to see the Top Ride courses as well? Probably not if past Sakurai showings are anything to go by.

Slightly off-topic: I love how the 2nd batch of Kirby Air Riders in Nintendo Music added the original versions of City Trial and The Legendary Air Ride Machine.
Makes me hopeful they can add the songs from the original game that were sourced from the anime, such as Dyna Blade Intro (Destruction! Nightmare's Giant Fortress) or Checker Knights (Strong Star Warrior).

Looking forward to the demo, the game's looking very promising from what's been showed so far.

I'm already sold on the game but I wanna dip my toes in with the demo, so I'm excited! I never did play the original game so this will be a completely fresh experience for me!

Geez, just release a demo, guys! I don't want to have to bend over backwards just so I can try your game and see if I want to spend $70 on it.

Oooh, very nice. Looking forward to trying this demo ahead of the full game!

NINTENDO should be concentrating on MKW this year not more racing games. Give us some information please

@Cloudman.
Just... What?

How on earth does one find a way to complain about an opportunity to try the game out before purchasing.

Great. I’m gonna buy but great that I can try.
This will help those on the fence

Dude...I am not a Kirby fan and I never even played the original...but this looks like the first great Switch 2 game. I think they got me.

I've been converted from a skeptic to a true believer in this game.

@Max_the_German "I‘ve got the feeling there are no secrets about this game anymore."

Except yes there are. More information does not inherently equal "nothing is secret"

Can't wait! Everything they showed looked absolutely amazing and they added in some crazy stuff makes me feel there is not really anything more you could wish for in this game. And somehow there are still a few people able to find something te be sour about. Some people just can't be pleased 😂

@Cloudman so we're getting mad about things Nintendo's been doing since 2015 now. Okay then.

Might give the demo a look to see if it sells me on it, didn't care for the original so not been paying much attention to this one.

No Adeleine? Guess I'm not buying the game. I was really looking forward to this one too. Oh well...

Where are the other news about this game? We need a summary now!
The presentantion was honestly AMAZING. It blew the first one by a lot, and shows how content-complete the game is looking. Good luck for the Global Test Ride!

@YunoboCo we don't know that yet.

Yessssssssssssss can’t wait. This game looks extremely amazing and built with the utmost care and a boat-load of childlike wonder.
Bring. It. On!

Really looking forward to this! I hope there's a decent number of characters, machines and tracks available for the demo.

@1UP_MARIO Yep. That is me. LOVE Kirby games, but not really into racing games. This will help me figure it out.

@Cloudman I don't think anyone else has really cared to elaborate and just went to sassy comments.

This Play Test, still works offline. You can play the Lessons and Air Ride modes (races on 3 tracks) without NSO. The only thing you can't access is the online mode. Hope this is less disappointing for you!

@MTMike87 Thank you for you answer.

Played through all the ‘Lessons’ so far, and the game feels great. Will be there ready to rock tomorrow morning!

Just catching up. Seems like Nintendo is making things more difficult than need be as usual, mashing up a time limited gate locked online experience with an offline no time limit demo.

I'm downloading it now b/c the website let me. Don't have NO but wasn't planning on playing it online a way so I'm probably good. Unless the demo makes me realize it isn't worth $70 for offline only. But at least I'll know.

I play Disney Speedstorm online every day. Game is free(ish) and the online is free. No one will ever convince me that free fames having free online play but $70 games requiring you to pay to play online on console makes sense. PC and mobile are always free to play online. 🤷‍♂️

WHEN IS DEMO FOR KIWIS?!?!

Managed to get some time in on this and while it was nice to test it out I really don't see why the AI racing demo segment needs to be locked behind an active service connection. Definitely the lame part of that, so you really need to plan some time around these service dates if you want to even demo some basics against AI.

the official twitter account for the game posted that this weekend will have different riders and machines available

Oh yeah, this is happening. If I have time I'll try to download it and play, but honestly? Odds are I'll just make some more headway on Age of Imprisonment instead.

I'll probably give this another shot. There's got to be more to this game than what I experienced last time, right?

I honestly don't understand why this game, of all games, is getting this much coverage. Hour long directs and a timed demo event. It's just a basic sequel racer staring the ever loveable Kirby, not a massive open world sequel to the fantastic Forgotten Land.

@NintendoLife @JimNorman

15th November: 4pm - 10pm PT (12am - 6am GMT / 7pm - 1am ET / 1am - 7am CET)

need to add "16th November" to the GMT & CET times, as it's the next day for those timezones

They always pick the most inconvenient times for me (eastern time, here). I might be able to play really late tonight when I get home, and maybe tomorrow at 10am. Hopefully I can get a few races in cause it looks really fun!

I applaud them for this game. Lot of love and detail work clearly went into it. Beautiful stages, fantastic art overall. Technically great, flow is great too. Still I went away from the demo with the feeling that I'd pass... it's too messy for me. So much happening that you barely control. My impression was "if Mario Kart was Smash Bros."

@Tipehtfomottob Wondered the same thing until a week ago, but then again, I never played the original and I am not suupperrr huge into SSB - plus, how many racing games does one need for a launch with Fast Fusion and MKW and Sonic CW!?

Anyways, turns out it genuinely is Sakurai's passion project, very unique ("sequel racer" makes it sound like something EA releases annually and not just every 20+ years ...) and it is definitely not "basic" in any sense of the word. Yeah, it is a racing game, but this games has ... has like frentic momentum, good vibes and tons of stuff they made for it purposefully because they figured it be fun (I did laugh when Sakurai showed of the gummis ... who designs something like this in this day and age of nickle'n'dimming!?)

I'll reserve my judgement whether all the marketing was justified for the final game, but as it stands I came totally around to it: it probably was, because KAR feels like the polar opposite of MK World in terms of it's design approach.

We'll see on 20th, but I everything shown for the game makes me think KAR was designed to actually be played and enjoyed by players. MKW seems more designed to have a bestselling brand product at launch with buzzy-buzzword "open-word" stiched unto it, that cannot justify its existence so it is simply forced unto players whether they digg it and its straight intermissions or not.

That said, it's insane how little marketing Metroid got by comparison. They should have spaced this out a couple of more weeks and give both it's fair share of love!

@Tipehtfomottob I think, semi-seriously, it was kind of like this:
Nintendo: Please, Sakurai, make Super Smash Bros Ultimate, and do tons of coverage for it, and then when we make our next system you can make any thing you want, and we will give you just as much coverage!

I played the demo… I didn’t not enjoy it, but I’m gonna wait for a discount I think.

It’s beautiful, it’s unique and it’s frantic in a good way. I’m very glad it exists. But I dunno, it’s not super clicking like I need it too for the price. Especially when I have Mario Kart World and Fast Fusion to scratch my racing itch.

Glad I skipped Fast Fusion as I don’t need three racing games. This and Mario Kart World will do nicely!