Remember two months ago when we had a developer Direct for Kirby Air Riders? Today, we got a second developer Direct for the game. You can watch the full video down below.
We'll be going over all of the important details mentioned over the course of the Direct.
Top Ride Mode is Back
The end of the first presentation left some wondering if Top Ride Mode would be back in this game too. According to Masahiro Sakurai, there was so much content in the game already that he thought the team would be forgiven if they took the mode out for this game... before revealing that they added the mode into the game anyway. Really had us in the first half.
Top Ride Mode was a mode from the first game that had you racing from a top-down perspective with fixed camera that saw the whole track. That's not the case in Kirby Air Riders because each player can now have their own screen. If you really wanted the screen to follow your rider in this mode, then justice has been served. That said, if you still wish to play with the zoomed out fixed camera from the first game, you can still do that.
Unlike the first game, the game is still mechanically Air Ride mode underneath the top-down perspective, meaning that you can choose any machine to drive with as opposed to the two that were in the first game's Top Ride Mode.
New Game Mode - Road Trip Mode
Road Trip mode is a gauntlet in which you will go through a series of challenges across all of the game modes with the ability to buy powerups from shops along the way. If you've ever wanted to play a Kirby Air Rider roguelike, here it is.
Online Mode
Online mode is exactly what it sounds like. It's Kirby Air Riders but online!
Join a paddock, interact with the set dressing, and then finally get to some racing. You have a license that you can customize with patterns and stickers, which will also track your class and your "Global Win Power", displaying where you are ranked with your total number of wins. Not losses though. Only your number of wins influence the ranking. Your rank is also measured by the colors of the rainbow.
Elsewhere, you can also compete in City Trials and Team Battles with up to 16 players (in two teams of 8). Any Legendary machine parts you pick up are shared with your teammates, and whoever picks up the final part is the one who rides it.
Courses From the First Game are Back!
If you're still yearning for the days of the GameCube though, then you have nothing to miss in Kirby Air Riders. All of the tracks from the original game are back in Kirby Air Riders, and that includes both the driving tracks and the music tracks. Add that with the nine new tracks in this game for a total of eighteen tracks in this new game!
Checklist
Returning from the first game is the Checklist feature. It works pretty much exactly like it did in the first game, but now there's five tabs of 150 boxes (750 total) as opposed to the first game's three tabs of 120 boxes (360 total). The five tabs correspond to Air Ride, Top Ride, City Trial, Road Trip, and Online mode. You use these to unlock riders and machines just like the first game, but there's nothing like that in the Online tab, so for those of us who prefer to play strictly on the couch, you can take comfort in knowing that you aren't missing anything essential by skipping the Online mode.
You may also pick an unlocked box you haven't completed yet to set up a game session to start on your road to unlocking it. You can unlock riders multiple times to unlock alternate color palettes for them, and you can also unlock machines multiple times to... do what exactly?
Machine and Rider Customization
To do this! My Machine mode gives you a livery editor in Kirby Air Riders.
Unlock new aesthetics to put on any machine in the game, and now you can customize it to your heart's content with all sorts of patterns, decals, and other accessories. If you'd rather not try to go through the trouble of designing your own livery, you can also buy someone else's livery on the Machine Market. The more a design sells, the more expensive it becomes, so make your decisions quickly. You can of course, also contribute to the market and put your own designs up for sale. You also have your own garage, and you can invite people from online paddocks to visit your garage.
If that wasn't enough for you, you can also customize the riders too with choices of headwear. If you pick up a copy ability, your copy ability hat will temporarily replace your headwear, but you will get it back once the ability expires.
Miles and Gummies
Miles are the currency system in this game. As you play the game, you earn more Miles. Those Miles can then be used to buy machines, machine decorations, license decorations, headwear, in-game music and a lot more.
Another item you can acquire are "Gummies" which are gummy versions of the machines in the game. Each time you beat a rider online, you will earn a gummy of the machine they were using, and in solo mode, you can earn Gummies slowly over time. What do Gummies do? To my knowledge, absolutely nothing! But if you want to hoard a bunch of Gummies, you know exactly where to get them.
amiibo
At the moment, there are five known amiibo for Kirby Air Riders:
- Kirby and Warp Star
- Bandana Waddle Dee and Winged Star
- Meta Knight and Shadow Star
- King Dedede and Tank Star
- Chef Kawasaki and Hop Star
You can even take the riders off of the machines to mix and match them, and then scan them into the game to play as that rider with that machine. You could play Kirby and Warp Star, but you could also play Kirby and Shadow Star, or Meta Knight and Hop Star if you wanted to. You can even take off the treads of the Tank Star and put them back on horizontally and that too will have an impact on the way it gets scanned into the game.
What do you think about the Kirby Air Riders second Direct, and how hyped are you for the game? Let us know in the comments below.
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