Random: Masahiro Sakurai Shares Kirby Air Ride Stories In Latest Video

Would love to play it again but it's so expensive these days...

I want to play this game but I do not have the time. My first Kirby game was forgotten land.

That game got inflated price on Ebay yet when I saw the gameplay from YouTube, I didn't even feel interested with the gameplay.

They need to make a new one with online City Trial (a few extra maps also wouldn't hurt)

I enjoyed filling out the checklist in Air Ride - completing it feels like the "main objective" of the game if you can only play singleplayer.

As a multiplayer racing game, it's fun too, but I think Mario Kart is generally preferred by most players.

@Dom_31 What? The love for Kirby Air Ride is far, FAR from an act. I talk fondly about City Trial because it's some of the most fun I've ever had with a video game. I STILL have fun with it, almost 20 years later. Why do you look at one mode in the game being more popular than the others as a negative? What's the problem? What game with multiple modes doesn't have one that's more of a fan favorite than the others? I don't understand implication that infatuation with City Trial means someone doesn't actually like Kirby Air Ride.

Yes, Top Ride isn't very fun and only has five courses and two stars. No, nobody plays the base race mode once they finish the challenge grid. But why does that matter? Why does that mean the game is overrated? City Trial still gave me hundreds of hours of enjoyment as a kid and is even more fun today with mods that let you play online and change up the game. I'd kill for a sequel or remake, and yes, I'd once again focus on City Trial. Long live City Trial. Long live Kirby Air Ride.

City Trial is definitely the star of Air Ride and everything else feels like bonus to mess with. As much as people want to say it like it's a bad thing, City Trial being memorable and celebrated is for good reason. For all the issues Air Ride may have had with development and some execution, the core experience of City Trial plays into a strength Sakurai and HAL devs had for multiplayer experiences like that. Much like Kid Icarus' online mode and rounds of Smash Brothers, City Trial distinctly has that "HAVE TO GO ONE MORE ROUND" fun feeling. Especially when played with others. There's just something fun about the variety packed into one map, that created different scenarios every play through.

On a list of top 100 games voted in Japan, Sakurai directed games like Air Ride, Smash Brothers, Super Star made the list. People still play Air Ride till this day competitively. There's something in the core of that game worth understanding from a game design stand point.

ASLO just so people know there is an online community for playing Air Ride. Try checking out their discord. I know access to the game is limited now and there was never any online but this could be an option for folks.

@Dom_31 City Trial mode alone provided so many hours of fun that it just doesn't matter to me that I played the other modes less. If someone designed a game that I got THAT much fun out of and could STILL play then that mode alone is worth the whole package. I was still getting my money's and time's worth.

There were games with more modes I've played less than Air Ride.

Kirby Air Ride was the first game for which I paid full price. I loved how the checklists provided a continual stream of unlockables while challenging you to play in different ways. As others have said, City Trial stood out as the best mode, but I have fond memories of each mode, even if nostalgia has an influence on my opinion.

I’d love to see a sequel helmed by Sakurai or even just a remaster.

@Dom_31

Totally get your opinion, and many critics at the time agreed with you. The Kirby fandom just happens to be an unforgiving beast.

All I'm gonna say is I probably had more fun in City Trial than I did in Smash Run.

@JimNorman Did you know that Kirby's Air Ride began development as one of the first N64 games, but ended up released in the middle of the GC's lifespan?

I have a City Trial-sized hole in my heart to this day!

I want an Air Ride 2 so bad. City Trial online would be absolute madness that I would be there for.

I barely remember the events after the City Trails timer ended. My nephew wasn't so hot at actually racing in the game, but loved causing all sorts of havoc in that city.

That kind of chaos online is what we need to erase the stain of Kirby's Dream Buffet.

@Bret Just because YOU don't like Air Ride and Top Ride, doesn't mean 'nobody' does, or 'nobody' bothers to play it again after completing the checklist. I and many of my friends have beat the entire game like five times. The deal is all three game modes have their own niche, but City Trial is just one that resonates more broadly. Also Air Ride is basically also embedded within City Trial, since you can set that as a stadium event. The three game modes along with all their settings makes Kirby Air Ride, like Smash Bros., infinitely re-playable.

@Dom_31 Air Ride probably requires an imagination to get full enjoyment out of since the game doesn't set goals for you, and just gives you a sandbox basically. You played it less than 2 hours, most people that love it have over 1,000 hours on it. It's not overrated, you just don't 'get it'. Like my cousin hated Animal Crossing with a flaming passion, saying how it's not even a game, and not understanding how anyone played it longer than an hour. And yet Animal Crossing fans have thousands of hours on it.

@ArcticEcho It's just hyperbole, I know people play the other modes. But there's no way you can disagree that overall, people consider Top Ride as the weakest mode and City Trial the best by far.

@EliJapan It's a digital-only multiplayer focused spinoff completely different from anything else in the series...if you want a proper taste of the series, Star Allies and Forgotten Land both have demos. Star Allies is the weakest modern mainline game and is much easier to appreciate if you're already into the series, given the focus on fanservice and series lore, though, so I'd recommend the latter.

@ArcticEcho Kirby Air Ride is probably one of my most played games. I constantly come back to it, especially City Trial. Even so, I really don't like the idea that people who don't like it lack an imagination or just "don't get it". Some people having a million hours in a game doesn't mean that game is objectively good to everyone or even to most people.

As much as I love it and have always wanted a sequel, I personally think it's a flawed game in many ways. I think if I were to try to remove my own nostalgia bias, I would maybe give it a 7-7.5. A good game but not best of all time or anything. Just my personal opinion of course.

@PikaPhantom @EliJapan
Not only what PikaPhantom said, but a new version of the Wii game, Return to Dreamland, is also coming next month. The main games are always great, the spinoffs (especially the small ones like Dream Buffet) are the ones that usually hit or miss.

@EliJapan

You should try demo for Forgotten Land, that game is a blast

@EliJapan This is like playing Mario vs. Donkey Kong and deciding that the Super Mario series isn't for you.

Like a few others here, I never understood the appeal of Air Ride. It had no real grand prix mode (that I can recall), and City Trial was fun for all of an hour.

This felt like one of the greatest letdowns of not just Kirby, but Nintendo as a whole. Personally, I rank it alongside Wii Music for absolute duds in Nintendo's catalog.

This game seriously needs a sequel or port. There's no racing game like it

@Browny My cousin said the same thing about Animal Crossing, and I think the same for Breath Of The Wild, and yet both are widely popular. Kirby Air Ride is my most played multiplayer game on Gamecube, far beyond Melee & Mario Kart. It was basically the only thing anyone I knew wanted to play. It might be a timing thing. What age were you when you played it? And what was everyone your age group playing? I'm not saying it's nostalgia based, just that it depends on whether you were with a crowd that made it an engaging game. Same with Mario Party. Mario Party can be super boring, but if you have a group that are all skilled at it, it can be cutthroat and intense on a whole other level.

@ArcticEcho
I would have been about 14 when it launched? With those I played with being the same age or a couple years younger.

The thing is, for my experience, that Kirby Air Ride didn't give us anything to really sink our teeth into. We played the likes of Smash, Mario Kart, Mario Party... nothing of real substance but much more engaging that Air Ride.

Everyone will have had a different experience, which I get. But even looking back now, there's so little meat on this game that outside nostalgia... I just don't get the appeal. Which is fine; even Wii Music had fans, or so I hear.

I was 9 when it came out, everyone aged 7-11 were obsessed with this game, and played it way more than the other big multiplayer games of the time. A big part of it is the checklist and city trial, the fact that vehicles were quirky and interesting to drive, and like Smash it had a lot of custom rules to screw with. Kirby Air Ride is a basically a mish-mash of Smash, Mario Kart, F-Zero, Mario Party, and Pilot Wings. The critics find it unfocused, the fans find it interesting.

One of my first GC games, I'm pretty fond of it and like most others I enjoyed CT the most, followed by the Air Ride mode, and least the Top Ride mode which was kinda alright but the fun only lasted a few minutes there.

He highlights Hot Wheels Unleashed in this and the drifting video and I highly recommend checking it out, its much much better at feeling like F-Zero than all the recent racing games that claim to feel like F-Zero while actually feeling more like Wipeout.