Oops! I spent the time I should have been using to make a post for today playing the second Kirby Air Riders “Global Test Ride” free demo. This time though I played it in “Paddock” rooms created by the happy inhabitants of the Kirby Air Ride Online Discord, which despite being a competitive scene for KAR players, and if you watch their match videos you can find some remarkably cutthroat play, struck me as rather less vicious than playing against internet randos.
Here is a record of that play session, from early in the morning of 11/15/2025:
Yes, it seems that internet room creation is active during the demo period, and if you have a community of people (maybe, dare I say it, friends?) to play with you can set it up so you don’t see any interweb nobodies in your group. You can even set up a gaming room of your own, and play matches with 15 computer opponents, who at the unchangable default settings of the demo are even less likely to wreck your star/bike/wheeled vehicle.
There were some other changes noticed during the event. Maybe this is an indication that while the game is active, it’ll also have subtle rule changes over time? The menu screens spotted during Sakurai’s Direct broadcasts have an “Event” option in the corner, which may indicate this will be the case. Well, I noticed one difference in this version. The lineup of randomly-spawning vehicles is different. Jet Star has been nowhere to be seen; in its place though I’ve seen Slick Star, a low-friction ride that returns from the original KAR, and Vampire Star, a new kind of machine, that is like a more extreme version of griefer favorite Shadow Star, but without its fragility.
Another thing that doesn’t seem to have changed, but went unremarked upon before, is that City Trial in Kirby Air Riders has some subtle anti-frustration features. If your vehicle gets trashed and you’re stuck on foot for more than a little while, it’s not known for a random vehicle to actually seek you out and park near you, and the game will even give you a little flashing icon pointing to it. And if you’re having a bad game, I’ve seen it, more than once, outright drop an Invincibility Lollipop directly on you. These aren’t frequent occurrences, but they’ve happened often enough that I think they can’t be coincidences.
If you’re sick of me talking about the KAR games, please forgive me. I’m riding high on the hype, and you have to admit it’s definitely a unique kind of game. Just give it a week or two, and I’ll probably go back to posting about Rampart again, or something like that.
