Today’s Kirby Air Riders Direct featured game director Masahiro Sakurai giving an in-depth look at the upcoming Switch 2 title, set to arrive on November 20, 2025. Sakurai started off the presentation by admitting his original proposal to Nintendo was basically a Mario Kart game, but if you know Sakurai, there was no way the finished product would just be a Mario Kart clone. While Kirby Air Riders is an arcade-style racer at its core, it focuses more on frantic action than Mario Kart and the City Trial mode really sets it apart.
This follow-up to the 2003 original, Kirby Air Ride, comes from Sakurai’s studio, Sora, and Bandai Namco Studios, the same teams responsible for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. You can see it in the game’s UI style, along with the variety of modes, power-ups, and gameplay. It’s clear the teams took inspiration from the Super Smash Bros. series and focused on fun and game feel, with a bit of Mario Party influence in City Trial. After watching the 45-minute presentation, it’s obvious Kirby Air Riders is quite different from Mario Kart.
The game features multiple riders and machines, which players can mix and match. Once again, it uses a simple control scheme in which the machine automatically accelerates and players only need to steer. The B button handles Boost Charge and braking, which also controls drifting, while Specials are activated with the Y button. Naturally, the machine and rider combination affects overall stats, whether the player wants to focus on acceleration, handling, attack, etc. Copy Abilities are prevalent in Kirby Air Riders, and to level the playing field, all riders can capture an enemy’s abilities.
For those who played Kirby Air Ride, you’ll be happy to hear City Trial returns and is designed to be “the main event,” as Sakurai calls it. Expanded and enhanced with more room to explore, City Trial takes place on a floating island called Skyah. On it, players can freely ride to collect power-ups, swap machines, participate in random Field Events, and more. During the first five-minute phase of City Trial, the goal is to gather power-ups to build the rider and machine combo you plan to use in the second phase. Sakurai said players may not want to simply grab every power-up but instead focus on specific stats that synergize.
The second phase takes players and their enhanced machines to a Stadium, where they’ll compete in a challenge to be crowned the winner. Each Stadium offers different challenges that favor certain machine archetypes, and players will need to strategically choose which to enter based on their power-ups. The game will give recommendations based on the machine build if players have trouble deciding which one to choose. Voting does not always occur, and some Stadiums pack every competitor into the same event. City Trial supports up to 16 players online or up to eight via local wireless.
Along with City Trial, Kirby Air Riders offers the more traditional Air Ride Mode, which is essentially a race with up to six riders. There is also a collection of Lessons to teach the game’s basic and advanced mechanics.
If you are interested in Kirby Air Riders, it is worth spending 45 minutes to watch the Kirby Air Riders Direct. If you followed along with the development of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate or watched Sakurai’s YouTube channel, you’ll know what to expect. The director goes into detail on all the features and even includes a couple of full play sessions showing each gameplay mode. City Trial definitely looks like a ton of fun, and we cannot wait to get our hands on it this November.
