Nostalgic Reviews: Kirby Air Ride

Rating: E

Score: 9.0/10

“Nostalgic Reviews” is a new series I’ve begun, where I will review older games. Why? Because there are some games that received less credit than they deserved. Some games were not appreciated as they were considered minor characters in a minor game. Kirby Air Ride is the second in this series of reviews.

Kirby is hardly a small name. He has been one of Nintendo’s biggest characters ever since Kirby’s Adventures way back on the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo’s first home console). Kirby Air Ride, even today, stands tall as Kirby’s first, and only, pure racing game, only available for the Gamecube.

The gameplay is very different than other games in the series. Kirby drops the platforming-action for some racing this time around. You race in three modes: Air Ride, Top Ride, and City Trail, each presenting like a whole different game. This isn’t the first time Kirby had multiple different games in one; Kirby Super Star did the same (and Kirby Super Star is famous for being the best Kirby game out there, even today). I’ll explain each individually:

Air Ride was simple racing around a track. It was different from normal racing games for a few reasons, the biggest one being Kirby’s “ride”. Every vehicle floated off the ground a little. There was no “shifting gears” or anything like that, but there was drifting. Drifting is performed by pressing the one button that does everything (that’s right, Atari controls. Analog Stick and button was all that’s needed here). When you press A, Kirby puts all of his weight on one side of the vehicle, and the vehicle starts touching the ground. Once it does this, it builds energy, which is released by releasing the A button (Kirby releasing his weight from one side of the vehicle). Your vehicle can also fly through the air. Some shortcuts need flight to be able to access, which adds a sense of balance between choosing a good glider and a fast vehicle. It’s a simple button scheme, and it works well. Some complained that it was over-simplified, but those people need to wake up and realize that the whole Kirby series is over-simplified fun.

Another big difference between this game and other racing games was Kirby’s special power: Eating enemies. When an enemy was close enough, you could eat them whole and take whatever powers they possessed. If Kirby ate a snowman enemy, he would be able to freeze people by blowing freezing air at them. It is how the whole Kirby series has used it’s getting-power-ups system for 17 years now.

The last big difference is the checkbox system. Like Xbox/PC achievements and PS3 Trophies, you get rewarded for doing random things. These rewards range from nothing, to a new character used for racing, to new vehicles (which there’s a lot of vehicles in the game), to having new music. Once you check off one of the 120 checkbox (on a 12 by 12 grid), you can see the ones directly beside that one. This is useful if you want to check off all the checkboxes for all the stuff.

In Top Ride, you play Air Ride with a top-down view (meaning it’s like you’re looking down at the scene, as opposed to a third-person view). As opposed to the enemies you eat, you get normal power-ups for destroying the competition. You can also collect things like missiles, cake (that makes you large, and you can flatten others), rockets, and flamethrowers. This is much more like a mini-game than a normal game, but it’s still an extremely addictive, simple game. This game also uses a checkbox system, like Air Ride, but it has its own requirements.

City Trail is more complex. It adds the element of upgrading different “stats” for your vehicle, such as Top Speed, Handling, and Flight. You can also find other vehicles lying around, which you can take. You’ll find three types of boxes: Blue ones hold stat upgrades, Red ones hold weapons (which can be used to knock stat upgrades out of your opponents), and Green ones hold temporary upgrades such as super speed and extra weight, which slow your vehicle to a crawl (that’s right, you can find negative items. You can also find grey stat upgrades that lower a stat.) Random events will also occur, such as Meteor Showers, and items that spontaneously turn bouncy and hard to get. After the timer expires, you change to a stadium match, which can range from drag races to circuits to deathmatches to contests where you attempt to fly the farthest. This game, as well, has the checkbox system. That’s 360 checkmarks total for the whole game.

This game was assaulted for being too simple, and was given horrid scores. It, in fact, wasn’t abnormally simple for a Kirby game at all, and we were fine before. This game deserves more praise. If addictive, simple play is your idea of fun, then this is your game.