Kirby Air Riders Direct summary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtkHiB7WKf4

• Many playable characters. In the first game, Meta Knight and Dedede existed as hidden characters and treated as their own machine, but now any character can ride any machine. They have unique stats and abilities, but every character can use copy powers, for the sake of balance. You may wildly speculate on lore implications.
• Now a 2 button game. Y activates your character's Special when your meter is full.
• New machine type alongside Stars and Bikes, Chariots. These have two large wheels.
• Machines leave behind a star trail, opponents will speed up if they follow this trail. Interesting way to make rubberbanding still require some skill. The leader does benefit from speed boosts from defeating enemies, so this is probably needed to balance that out since they'll be the one clearing out all the fodder.
• Air Ride races go up to 6 players.
• Not mentioned, but on the results screen the player earns currency. Wonder what kind of unlocks it's for?
• City Trial still has only one map, but it's much much much larger. Set on a massive floating island.
• Instead of needing to dismount, you can swap machines by pressing Y. If you lose your machine, you move much faster to find a new one.
• City Trial goes up to 16 players. Local is limited to 8, but you can add CPUs.
• If you pick up an item while you already have one, the old item will go into reserve, allowing you to retain two.
• New type of showdown event. A countdown will begin to get to the event area, then those who do participate in a timed event similar to the final Stadium minigames. Winner gets additional powerups. Events shown were a deathmatch and a mini race through the city.
• More bosses, Dyna Blade is back and Kracko was shown too.
• At the end of City Trial, you get to pick from one of four randomly selected Stadiums. You'll split up and compete with however many players picked the same Stadium as you. There are some mindgames here, do you want to go for the event that's best for you, or one fewer opponents might pick? If more than 8 players pick a Stadium, it'll be split into two instances. If you're the only one who picks a Stadium, you get an automatic win (and then get to play it against CPUs anyway if you want). Also sometimes the game may forego this, announce a Stadium prediction (10% chance of a lie like in the original!), and you'll just be forced into that.
• Final teaser shows Dark Matter as a racer.
• 11/20/2025