PAX Aus 2025: Kirby Air Riders hands-on impressions

Kirby Air Riders was a surprise announcement from Nintendo when it came during the April Nintendo Direct. It serves as the sequel to the 2003 GameCube title from director Masahiro Sakurai, the name behind the acclaimed Smash Bros. series. When Sakurai is involved, people sit up and pay attention. So when we had the chance to try the game ahead of its November release at this weekend’s PAX Aus 2025 celebrations, we jumped at the chance.

Apparently so did everyone else. The line to play Kirby Air Riders was consistently long all weekend, often closed off to allow the queue to move a little before reopening. This clever practice means participants never had to wait more than the maximum time of about an hour. 

Thankfully, 10 giant screens were set up ready to take players into Kirby’s frantic race/battle world. This meant 10 people playing at a time, and it gave us plenty to spectate while we waited.

In one of those good-news, bad-news scenarios, the Kirby Air Riders demo was much longer than any other at PAX Aus. The bad news? It adds to the waiting. The good news? Once you’re done with that queue, you get to spend a decent amount of time with Kirby’s fast and furious outing.

And let me tell you, Kirby Air Riders is fast and furious. The demo begins by taking you through a handful of tutorials, which – for this player at least – were sorely needed. This ain’t Mario Kart, folks. Kirby’s outing requires no buttons to move; he just propels forward nonchalantly on his little cruiser. Yeah OK, Kirby, now we know why you were never invited to participate in Mario’s racing adventures.

Only it’s not that simple. Pressing the B button slows you down, slowly. You’ll eventually stop, but it’s not a braking system; it’s actually the opposite. While your speed decreases, a meter in the bottom-right corner increases. Once full, let go of the button to release a speed boost. Slow down to speed up? Yep, it’s just like Lightning McQueen turning right to go left. It makes sense in practice, I promise!

This mystical B button is also used to powerslide around corners. I’m a veteran Mario Kart player, so this one took a little getting used to. In Kirby’s version of racing, you press the B button as you begin to turn, releasing it as you come out of the turn. But don’t waggle the joystick like you would with Mario; that doesn’t work here, as I soon learned.

Once you get the hang of things, it’s time to move on to some actual races. The generous demo lets you choose two out of three; I chose the water and rock-based levels. They’re all about 2 minutes long, though the water one is a touch longer.

These races are crazy. They’re also beautiful. I chose the water race because I distinctly remember seeing the layers of water surrounding drivers during one of the trailers. It looked terrific in the trailer, and the demo didn’t disappoint; it verges on breathtaking. As quickly as the scenery and other riders move around you, things don’t look blurry. And by the second race, I was feeling much more confident; I won that round quite easily. Practice makes perfect, I guess.

After two races, the demo treated us to another part of the game called City Trials. This five-minute session lets you dash around a cityscape to collect as many powerups as possible. I can’t even begin to describe the chaos of this mode. Players collide, attack, and change vehicles, all while speeding around a vast area on a collectathon. The point? The more you collect, the more buffs you’ll have in the round that follows. Yes, there’s even more to this demo!

The final part of the game on display involves local multiplayer. Players vote on one of four minigames, with the game suggesting the most appropriate for you depending on the powerups you’ve collected. We entered into a melee fray, which seemed a fitting end to Sakurai’s action-based racer. In this minigame (I call it that because it lasts a mere 30 seconds), players ram into each other in a small arena, gathering points for each hit. The highest points wins! If everything leading to this point was frenetic, this was the culmination of our collective experience; crazy, fast-paced, and fun. It’s 100% like Smash Bros. on vehicles.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Kirby Air Riders. It might rank the lowest on my must-play list for the rest of the year (only because we have such healthy competition with Metroid Prime 4, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, and Pokémon Legends Z-A), but color me impressed. Regardless of where it sits on my list, it’s a game I want to play. And, thankfully, we only have to wait a little over a month until it’s released on November 20.