Kirby Air Riders Wiki

Kirby Air Riders

Kirby Air Riders is an action racing game developed by Sora Ltd. and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch 2, a full follow-up to the 2003 GameCube cult favourite Kirby Air Ride. Races are deliberately simple to control but hard to master: riders steer with the stick, charge and release boosts, and drift through corners while inhaling Copy Abilities on the track to change how their machine moves and attacks. The game brings back the series defining City Trial format, an open city where riders spend a set time hunting power-ups and machine parts before a randomly drawn stadium event decides the winner. A wide roster of Kirby series riders is paired with an expanded garage of Air Ride machines that differ sharply in top speed, acceleration, turning and glide, plus the legendary machine parts that can be assembled into a winning machine mid-session. It was released worldwide for the Nintendo Switch 2 in November 2025.

• Single-Button Action Racing: Riders control their machine with the stick and a small set of buttons, holding A to build a charged boost and releasing it for a burst of speed, while B brakes and slides through corners. The depth comes from reading the course, timing boosts and managing drift rather than from a complex control scheme.
• City Trial: The signature open-city mode returns. Riders roam a walled city for a fixed time collecting power-ups, item boxes and machine parts, then compete in a randomly drawn stadium event, so a session can be won by racing, battling or gliding depending on what the roulette lands on.
• Copy Abilities On The Track: Kirby can inhale Course abilities and enemies during a race, temporarily copying powers such as Fire, Sword, Wheel or Wing. Copy Abilities alter attacks and movement, making them a live tactical decision inside a race rather than a side collectible.
• Machine Stats And Trade-Offs: Every Air Ride machine is defined by its top speed, acceleration, turning and glide, and no machine is strong everywhere. Heavy machines such as the Bulk Star build enormous top speed while struggling to turn, while lightweight machines trade speed for agility and air control.
• City Trial Power-Ups: Green power-up patches scattered through the city permanently raise a stat for the current session, from top speed and acceleration to turning, glide, weight, offence and defence. Stacking the right patches for the stadium event that is finally drawn is the core strategic layer of the mode.
• Legendary Machines And Part Assembly: Rare parts found in the city can be assembled into legendary machines mid-session, most famously the Dragoon and the Hydra. Assembling one turns the rest of the run into a scavenger hunt for the remaining parts before rivals do the same.
• Party Racing With Friends: Races and City Trial sessions support local multiplayer on one system as well as online play, keeping the mode structure cooperative and competitive at the same time.