In a recently released video, Masahiro Sakurai discusses the development of Kirby Air Ride as well as the reasons for his decision to build a racing game on the Kirby brand. He was responsible for both the direction and design of the project.
Developing Kirby Air Ride
Sakurai was the one who first brought up the idea of releasing additional games to correspond with the Kirby: Right Back at Ya anime. When compared to a standard action game, the development time for a racing game is much shorter. Other games for were also already in the planning stages, one of which was intended to be a mainstream entry for GameCube but was ultimately scrapped.
The idea of Kirby Air Ride was based on the premise that drifting is entertaining because it combines elements of danger and reward. Sakurai aimed to make the game even more pleasant by increasing the amount of boost you get. In addition, the objective of the game was not to achieve perfection but rather to broaden the range of gameplay options available.
During the course of development, things did not go according to plan. One year after development was assigned, Sakurai claims that “not even a single Warp Star functioned perfectly.” In the end, Sakurai resumed his previous position as director, and “the game was remade from the ground up.” You won’t believe how quickly it was completed: only three and a half months. This was due, in part, to the fact that assets like courses and machinery could still be used for the game’s ultimate release.
Another detail that Sakurai divulged was the fact that the scrapped version of Kirby Air Ride on the N64 had nothing to do with Kirby Air Ride. It would seem that the core ideas behind these two titles are extremely different. The N64 game offered a more authentic snowboarding simulation than any other option.
About Kirby Air Ride
Vehicles may be found in a wide variety of forms and dimensions. In actuality, one of them does not take the form of a large, yellow star with five points. But in Kirby Air Ride, everyone’s favorite happy blob zooms around some magnificent courses on exactly that: a large yellow star with five points.
What is the result? Some of the most addicting and original racing games on the Nintendo GameCube to date. You will be riding about on Kirby’s Warp Star engine, which gets its name from the enormous yellow star with five points, as you make your way through the roller coaster courses in Dream Land.
Each player takes control of a uniquely colored version of Kirby (the person holding Controller 1 always gets the original pink hero), and they slide and glide along courses littered with shortcuts while using Kirby’s signature mouth-hoovering move to grab abilities that allow them to defeat other players. The brand-new control system is mind-bogglingly easy to use yet provides unfathomable levels of depth, which is the secret to the genius of Kirby Air Ride.
Because – and this is important – there is no button for accelerating. The A Button takes care of everything else but the steering, and it causes Kirby to go ahead automatically. You may utilize the powers you sucked up by tapping it. Push it to brake. Keep your finger on it to charge up as you go around a corner, and then let go to get a boost after the turn. Simple, inventive, simple to learn, gratifying to master, and well suited for the wonderfully sized A Button on the Nintendo GameCube.
As you get the hang of the controls, which are simple enough that even people who struggle with hand-eye coordination should have no trouble with them, you’ll soon be’screeching’ around corners at an angle of ninety degrees, using ramps to leap into shortcuts, activating boost pads that send a speed-flattened Kirby screaming into the distance, and tipping the Control Stick back and forth to make the most of the Warp Star’s dreamy mid-air drifting and glid
Making one of the approximately 15 distinct Warp Stars your particular speciality is half of the joy of playing the game. The Warp Stars are gifted with dramatically varying peak speeds, gliding abilities, and turning skills. Things are made even more intriguing by the presence of a trackful of suck-upable critters, all of whom have clearly chosen a particularly poor area for their leisurely walk. If you hoover one of these items into your gob, an icon will float above it, indicating the capacity to hinder your opponents’ play that you will get as a result. Kirby is able to transform his appearance in accordance with the majority of his abilities. For example, when firing fireballs, he will don a blazing crown; when increasing his ability to glide, he will don impressive wings; and when wielding a powerful sword, he will dress up as none other than Link.
In multiplayer, the never-ending jostling for position – which is partly a result of steering ability, but mostly a consequence of “friends” lining each other up in their sights before letting loose a flurry of laser shots or a bomb the size of Finland – will keep the laughter and the tears coming for hours on end. Steering ability plays a part in this, but it is primarily the result of “friends” lining each other up in their sights before unleashing a Back-markers don’t have to stay that way for very long since there are so many cunning shortcuts dispersed throughout the many different courses. For example, in one course, Kirby hops atop a beanstalk huge wheel and is transported to a later piece of track.
In point of fact, each and every one of the courses is flawless. In Fantasy Meadows, go for the power-ups as you skim across the simple green pastures; in Frozen Hillside, test your skills with slippy-slidy turns on the ice floes; and in Checker Knights, gently tap your jaw back into place after witnessing the looping multicolored tightropes that loop around in the sky before plunging you into a ghostly underwater city at breathtaking speed. Enjoy the journey through Kirby’s universe, which has always been breathtaking in its own right. You are going to be playing the normal Air Ride mode for a very long time since there are so many other alternative routes to discover and racing lines to master.
However, this is not all. Top Ride is a zany, top-down, two-dimensional race for up to four Kirbys that competes head-to-head with the Air Ride mode in terms of the number of button presses and opponents vanquished. And the City Trial puts you and your pals in a competition to collect power-ups before putting you all in the same room for a massive fight that will leave you physically drained. All of it was a great day spent with friends. It is not often that a racing game comes up with a novel idea, and it is extremely uncommon when messing with the typical two-button accelerate/brake scheme delivers anything other than mouth-droppingly terrible consequences. However, one particular racing game did just that.
The competition that results from Kirby Air Ride’s bold attempt at something novel is nothing but unadulterated, unadulterated enjoyment for the players. Onward, Kirby!
Kirby Air Ride was ultimately developed for the Nintendo GameCube and made its debut in 2003.
