Kirby Air Ride
Developer(s)	HAL Laboratory
Publisher(s)	Nintendo
Designer(s)	Masahiro Sakurai
Series	Kirby
Release date(s)	JPN July 11, 2003 NA October 13, 2003 EUR February 22, 2004
Genre(s)	Racing
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: E (Everyone)
Platform(s)	GameCube
Media	1 × GameCube Optical Disc

Kirby Air Ride (カービィのエアライド, Kābī no Ea Raido^?) is a racing video game developed by HAL Laboratory, Inc. and published by Nintendo for the GameCube video game console starring Kirby, HAL Laboratory's mascot. It was first released in Japan on July 11, 2003, and was later released in North America on October 13, 2003 and in Europe on February 22, 2004.

Rather than racing in cars, Kirby Air Ride has the players and computer-controlled racers ride on air ride machines. Kirby Air Ride supports up to four players, and was the first GameCube title to support LAN play using broadband adapters and up to four GameCubes.

Masahiro Sakurai, the game designer behind most of the games in 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.^[1][2]

Gameplay

Kirby Air Ride is played primarily through use of a vehicle, many of which are taken from previous Kirby games, such as the Warpstar. Players take control of Kirby or any of his multicolored counterparts to compete in races or other minigames.

The simple controls are a defining feature of Kirby Air Ride. Unlike most racers, no input is necessary for the craft to move forward. Other than the use of the analog stick to steer, a single button performs all other actions in the game, including braking, charging up for a boost, sucking in nearby enemies and thereafter using the powers absorbed from them. Gliding is also a definitive feature of the game, as the player can control the crafts' altitude when they go airborne.^[3]

Each of the three modes of the game has a "checklist" associated with it. These are large grids which contain 120 squares each, all of which are initially blank. Each square has a hidden goal contained inside it, and certain goals also have unlockable content attached to them, such as alternate machines, new items and courses, new characters, and music tracks for the sound test. When you complete a goal, its square fills in and you become able to read the goals in any adjacent squares. In practice, this system of discovering unknown goals is balanced out by several goals which are relatively easy to obtain, such as "finish a race three times," "race on every course," and various other goals which only require the accrual of play time; these, in turn, make it easier to find out what other, more specific goals are, since each goal you complete allows you to see up to four more.

Modes of play

Air Ride

Air Ride is a basic, back-view racing mode. The player chooses a racing machine and races against up to three other human or computer players via split-screen or LAN. There are two ways to play a typical Air Ride race:

1. Laps: Laps is the default mode, where the player finishes the race by completing a set number of laps around the course. The number of laps can be custom set from 1 to 99, or kept at the track's default. The default number of laps may depend on the current course.
2. Time: In Time mode, players race for a set amount of time, and the player that goes the farthest down the track wins the match.

In both modes, the Kirbys may swallow and acquire the abilities of enemies strewn along the track and use those powers against their rivals. Doing so will slow Kirby's enemies down and potentially do damage to them (if the Health Bar is activated for the race.)

In addition to the racing mode, Air Ride also has the option of Time Trial mode, where a single player races around a track (with the track's default number of laps.) Lastly, a single player can also race Free Run mode, an endless race with the sole purpose of reaching the fastest possible Lap Time.

Top Ride

Top Ride is an overhead racing mode on smaller, simpler tracks. Due to the decreased track size, the default number of laps is increased per track. Top Ride has only two vehicles to choose from; the red Free Star moves in the direction the Control Stick is tilted, while the blue Steer Star rotates clockwise or counterclockwise based on tilting the Control Stick right or left.

Like Air Ride, Top Ride also has Time Trial and Free Run modes. There are seven courses total, based on seven different themes: Grass, Sand, Sky, Fire, Light, Water and Metal.

City Trial

City Trial is a larger mode where players must navigate a city, along with several more sections such as a forest, cave, and volcano, while grabbing Air Ride machine upgrade items, such as boosts, top speeds, charges, offense and defense, and more. Various Air Ride vehicles are randomly scattered throughout the city, allowing the player to switch vehicles at any time in the game. Players can even collect rare machine pieces to fuse together into "legendary machines". This mode also features random events such as falling meteors, UFOs, Dyna Blade, rail station fires, bouncing items, and more. When time expires, players face off in a small competition that tests how well your machine ended up, which can vary between a short race, a brawl, a contest to destroy the most enemies, a gliding game, and even more.

Playable characters

Kirby is the only playable character available from the start of the game. He's the only one who can ride different machines and is also the only character with his signature ability to suck up enemies and copy their abilities. Multiple players are represented of different colors of Kirby.

Meta Knight, Kirby's rival, is an unlockable character. He doesn't ride machines, but instead uses his wings to float above the ground. He controls like a combination of Wing Kirby and Sword Kirby, as he uses sword attacks automatically when he approaches enemies or other players. King Dedede is also unlockable. He rides a bike similar to the Wheelie Bike machine. Controlling him is almost exactly like using the Wheelie Bike, except he can attack automatically with his hammer, similar to Meta Knight's attack.

Development

Kirby Air Ride (known as Kirby's Air Ride at the time) was originally in development during the early days of the Nintendo 64 video game console.^[4] It went through many changes during its elongated development period before eventually being cancelled and then resurfacing on the GameCube in the form of a short video preview in March 2003 at the annual DICE summit in Las Vegas, and was renamed from. This preview received a mainly negative reception due to slow speeds and poor graphics.^[5]

Kirby Air Ride was first seen in playable form at E3 in May later that year. The demo contained five playable tracks and three different game modes. The reception to the playable demo was more positive than they were from previous showings, but when it was released, it was criticized for a lack of depth and a sense of speed.^[6]

Sound

The sound was composed by four different sound composers - Jun Ishikawa (the original sound composer from Kirby's Dream Land), Hirokazu Ando, Shogo Sakai, and Tadashi Ikegami.

Kirby Air Ride also features soundtracks from the Japanese version of Kirby: Right Back At Ya!. There are also tracks from other Kirby video games, such as Kirby Super Star.

Reaction

Kirby Air Ride 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.^{[citation needed]} Kirby Air Ride's similarity to other titles released for the GameCube around the same time (such as F-Zero GX and Mario Kart: Double Dash!!) resulted in it being categorized as a rather throwaway title.^[7]

Anime series tie-ins

Kirby's Air Ride, along with Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land were both released while the Kirby anime series Kirby: Right Back at Ya! was being aired in Japan and the US. As such there are numerous references between the two.

Episodes 96 and 97 of the original run were a two-part episode entitled Air-Ride in Style (originally Crisis of the Warp Star) in which four of the Air Ride Machines from the game, specifically the Formula, Winged, Rocket and Shadow Stars, were featured. The game's actual release in Japan coincided with an earlier two-part episode that had the characters participating in a race.

The game also had references back to the TV show. Many of the tracks, including the main theme for the Checker Knights course and many of the City Trial events were taken directly from the original soundtrack for the anime scored by Akira Miyagawa.^[8] (This was not immediately noticeable to fans in the US, as the English dub of the anime had all the original music removed.) Some of the remixes of other Kirby games that appeared in Air Ride were also actually used in the anime first, many months before the game's release.

Other references were more subtle. In the City Trial mode, Whispy Woods appears in a small forest. It is possibly to destroy the surrounding trees. The player is then left with a golf course- King Dedede in the anime was constantly plotting to destroy Whispy Woods to build his own private Country Club. Also, one City Trial event has a massive, disk-shaped ship appear overhead. It is identical to ones called Destrayar that appeared in the final episodes of the anime.

References

External links

• Kirby Air Ride at Nintendo.com
• Kirby Air Ride at MobyGames
• Kirby Air Ride guide at StrategyWiki

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