Nintendo knows it’s facing a huge challenge, but the company is confident that the success of Mario Kart: World won’t eclipse the arrival of Kirby Air Riders. In a detailed presentation, the company has revealed what to expect from its next major Switch 2 exclusive, scheduled for release on November 20.

Nintendo Switch 2 has made an explosive debut. According to official figures, 5.82 million units have been sold as of June 30, most of them bundled with Mario Kart: World. That means thousands of players have entered this new generation through the most chaotic racing title in the industry. One might assume Nintendo doesn’t need another racer—but the company is charging ahead with Kirby Air Riders. Masahiro Sakurai, the mind behind the game, promises it’ll be very different from Mario Kart.

Sakurai, the creator of Kirby and Super Smash Bros., is back behind the wheel to direct Kirby Air Riders. In the recent Nintendo Direct, he addressed a key question: does it even make sense to launch another racer when Mario Kart: World is dominating sales? His answer is yes. “The true appeal of the game doesn’t lie in the racing.”

As revealed during the Direct, the controls in Kirby Air Riders differ radically from what we’re used to in Mario Kart. The vehicles—various star-shaped crafts—accelerate automatically. Players don’t need to press any button to move forward. The core mechanic is managing the boost and making use of unique character abilities—including Kirby’s iconic power to copy his enemies. Unlike the old GameCube Kirby Air Ride, which only featured Kirby, Meta Knight, and King Dedede, this new title expands the roster significantly, adding new characters like Starman.

Vehicle options are also much more varied. Players can choose both their rider and their star or bike, each with its own quirks. Want a vehicle with massive boosts? It’s in. How about one that runs on fuel? It’s weird—but real. Or one that only moves in a straight line? Yep, that exists too.

But Kirby Air Riders isn’t just about wild races (which are capped at six players, to avoid full Mario Kart-level chaos). A big part of the game is the Urban Trials mode, which features minigames, challenges, PvP clashes, surprise events, and bizarre twists like meteor showers, giant enemy invasions, and secret rooms. All of it keeps the game dynamic and unpredictable.

This isn’t just Sakurai’s passion project—Nintendo itself asked him to bring Kirby’s racing game back.

As revealed during the presentation, the game exists not just because Sakurai wanted to revisit Kirby’s racing roots, but because Nintendo actively pushed for a revival. “You might be wondering why I ended up creating a new Kirby Air Ride game… [Shinya] Takahashi, Nintendo’s head of software development, and [Satoshi] Mitsuhara, president of HAL Laboratory at the time, strongly requested it,” Sakurai said. “At the time, I was working on Smash DLC and couldn’t get started right away. But I still managed to put together a proposal lightning fast.”

Nintendo and Sakurai are going all-in on Kirby’s return to the racetrack. Kirby Air Riders launches November 20 as one of the big bets of the Switch 2 era. Whether it’ll thrive under Mario Kart’s long shadow remains to be seen, but Nintendo clearly believes it has a unique ride on its hands.

Source: 3djuegos