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Kirby Air Ride

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Kirby Air Ride
Kirby Air Ride box cover
Kirby Air Ride box cover
Developer(s)HAL Laboratory
Publisher(s)Nintendo
Platform(s)GameCube
ReleaseJapan July 11, 2003
North America October 13, 2003
Europe February 22, 2004
Genre(s)Racing
Mode(s)Single player, multiplayer

Kirby Air Ride (or Kirby's Air Ride, as it was known in pre-GameCube development) is a 2003 racing video game featuring Nintendo's pink puffball, Kirby. Rather than racing in cars, the players and computer-controlled racers ride on air ride machines. It was originally intended to be released on the Nintendo 64, but went through numerous delays before being cancelled. But like Star Fox Adventures, it was brought back for the GameCube. The game supports up to four players, and also supports LAN play using broadband adapters and up to four GameCubes.

Modes

There are three modes of play:

  1. Air Ride: A basic back view racing mode. Choose a machine and race against up to three other people via split-screen or LAN, bots, or in a single-person time trial. There are nine separate courses total.
  2. Top Ride: A wild overhead racing mode on smaller, simpler tracks, with two machines to choose from. There are seven courses total.
  3. City Trial: A larger mode where players must navigate a massive city, along with a few more sections such as a forest, cave, and volcano, grabbing air ride machine upgrade items and hopping on new vehicles. Players can even collect rare machine pieces to fuse together into "legendary machines". Features events such as falling meteors, UFOs, Dynablade, station fires, bouncing items, and more. At the end players face off in a small competition that test how well your machine ended up. These competitions can vary from racing a single lap on one of the Air Ride courses, a drag race down a long, varying path, a brawl between other players, a gliding contest, or one of many other games that must be unlocked.

Courses

Air Ride

  • Fantasy Meadows - A short circular course, very basic.
  • Celestial Valley - A long, twisting course with jumps, buttons, and many choices. Part of the track is a river.
  • Sky Sands - A desert course with many twists and turns. It has a few secret passages.
  • Frozen Hillside - An ice course floating in the sky, with a long stretch of grinding rails. Not a good choice for bikes.
  • Magma Flows - A course filled with lava, jumps, and flaming dragons. Almost a labyrinth, with many forks in the road.
  • Beanstalk Park - This course is a maze also, floating in the sky. It has many alternative paths, including a ferris wheel, with a lot of rails and buttons.
  • Machine Passage - A course located in a floating factory which appears to be the Halberd (Meta Knight's Ship), by far the most menacing course. It has many abrupt turns, varying paths, and even a cannon that shoots you across a gap in the track. There are many moving parts.
  • Checker Knights - A long course with two distinct parts. One is a castle/stone part, with hidden shortcuts and curving paths. The other part is a neon half-pipe with moving parts and rails.
  • Nebula Belt - A very long, uneventful course floating in space. There are many ramps and copy ability icons. Has to be unlocked to race on.

Top Ride

  • Grass - A crazy, short course with exploding fruit and hidden boost panels.
  • Sand - A desert course with collapsing bridges, quicksand, and a falling rock statue. The main feature of the course is "Ant Doom", the cactus-like plant that eats players, causes earthquakes, and throws rocks.
  • Sky - A floating course with jump panels, conveyor belts, and a spinning platform with blockade-like figures.
  • Fire - A crazy course with air-burst shortcuts and lava spews.
  • Light - A futuristic course located on a giant piece of glass. There are item boxes and randomly changing grind rails to carry the player further.
  • Water - A course surrounded by water. It is very curvy, with waterfalls and creeks flowing over the track that can slow you down.
  • Metal - A wild course located in a factory, with giant gears, spinning obstacles, and buttons that control them, along with violent wind.

Features

The game features incredibly simple controls, using only the control stick and the A button. You can also use L or R in place of A.

The game also features soundtracks from the Japanese version of Kirby: Right Back At Ya!. There are also tracks from Kirby Super Star and other Kirby games.

Masahiro Sakurai, the game designer behind the Kirby series, resigned only days after giving a public interview where he openly criticized Nintendo for circumstances surrounding the development of Kirby Air Ride.

The game also supports LAN multiplayer with up to four Nintendo GameCube systems

Trivia

File:Kirby64.jpg
An early screenshot of Kirby's Air Ride for Nintendo 64.
  • Dynablade first appeared in Kirby Super Star, released for the SNES.
  • The Wind Fish from The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening appears at Frozen Hills.
  • There is alternate music available for unlocking in the game. Some of them are remixed tracks from past Kirby titles. This feature was in turn borrowed from Super Smash Bros. Melee. In fact, the "Vehicle Introductions" video uses music straight from SSBM.
  • The Wheelie Bike's appearance was taken from a partner from Kirby Super Star, simply named Wheelie. TAC also came from Kirby Super Star.
  • The Formula Star, Rocket Star, Winged Star, and Shadow Star all appear in the first two parts of the five-part series finale of Kirby: Right Back At Ya!, where Kirby tangles with the four, piloted by villains from a UFO. When the game was released in America, the first two parts of the finale were shown early in order to promote the release. (They would later be released along with the last three parts in condensed form as the direct-to-video film Kirby: Fright to the Finish).
  • In City Trial, sometimes players can find Food to heal his or her HP. Each piece of Food, being from the same publisher, can also be found in Super Smash Bros. Melee. Also, the Ability Cap for Freeze is the same as the Ability Cap for Ice Climber, as in Nightmare in Dream Land. However, while the Sword Ability Cap is obviously modelled after Link, it appeared since Kirby Super Star, which was made before any Super Smash Bros. game.
  • The game features many more subtle references to Kirby: Right Back At Ya!, such as the ability to destroy Whispy Woods in City Trial mode and ending up with a golf course. (Dedede often schemes to do such a thing on the show.)

Development

Kirby Air Ride (known as Kirby's Air Ride at the time) was orignally going to be released in 2000 for the Nintendo 64. But it went through delays. It eventually was scrapped and development moved to the Gamecube. It was then released in 2003. Even though the original Kirby's Air Ride had a new mode, Make Your Own Course Mode, this new mode had bugs.

Reaction

The game was met with mixed reviews upon its release, many of them praising it for the smooth visuals and orchestrated music, but criticizing it for its overly simple gameplay and lack of extended appeal. Many fans support it for being a fairly easy and quick-to-learn game, allowing the player to have fun in a high-speed racing experience and be able to relax rather than playing games that require ridiculous button mashing to succeed.

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