(read directly on the blog here: https://cerberus.bearblog.dev/games-kirby-air-riders-and-sakurai/)

hi all, ama su k'ooł (happy new year) - a very late first 2026 post. i’ve been bummed out by struggling with chronic illness and other personal things enough to not really think of doing much else other than the most essential obligations for sustaining life, eating and rolling around in the grass. but: i’ve also been playing a lot of kirby air riders. so much so that i got to rainbow rank in city trial early last month :)

this game has been a fucking delight. i was obsessed with the original, kirby air ride when i was little - got at least a couple thousand hours in that game - so seeing the directs for this remake and then getting my paws on it to see just how much love and consideration sakurai's studio put into it has made me feel like video games are finally Back, folks (they’ve been Gone since, uhh [throws a dart at a board] concord1 and only i can say when they’re truly back). it's struck me how sakurai just... so clearly loves video games. it’s really refreshing to see that energy pour out of the game towards you as a player, rather than having to constantly extend grace in spite of clashing with cynical design decisions in the rest of the AAA industry that maximize profit, butcher a fad, or pad out playtime. there’s so much extra whimsical bullshit in air riders that’s just here because, i don’t know, why the fuck not? and i’m eating up every bite of it. after all, why shouldn’t i be able to collect gummies of every machine i beat and then be able to hit them all with a big sword later for literally no benefit? it’s my treat.

one of the really enchanting things is how apparent it is that sakurai loves to play dolls. there's unlockable video content in air riders that are literally just compilations of the characters being put in Scenarios within the bounds of the game - characters riding through a door that then closes, causing a trailing kirby to squish into it; a bunch of machines blitzing past a kirby, turning him gray and leaving him dazed on the ground after the exhaust clears; recreating the zelda 1 concept art/the opening of breath of the wild with kirby in the green sword ability hat, standing on a cliff and looking over the horizon. it's completely unnecessary and extremely wonderful.

come to think of it, this whimsy also drips through every aspect of sakurai's other signature: the DLC fighter announcement trailers for smash bros are packed full of these compilations, incorporating references and funny jokes through the gameplay itself. in sora's reveal, he fights sephiroth in a brief scene; another skit seems to dubiously confirm a canon pokemon team for him, showing him off in his blue wisdom form surrounded by water-types. ssbu's classic mode also involves unique scenarios in each gauntlet tailored for the chosen character's original game, sometimes involving completely unique bosses such as dracula from castlevania - like, at its core, smash bros is a party fighter. it would've been perfectly passable to just have a very simple singleplayer campaign or training mode, it wouldn't have affected the meat of the game whatsoever to not have the classic mode. instead, the developers modeled, rigged, and animated a whole different character basically just for these two gauntlets, to make the feeling of playing through the castlevania "story" in the smash bros context actually believeable. there is just no reason to do any of this other than for literally love of the game, love of video games, to show everyone all the thoughtful attention paid to the source material so that the character isn't just In The Game, but is embodied and elevated. and that's not even getting into the world of light campaign, where the opening cutscene made me laugh out loud as it shows everyone being de-atomized by galeem, only to eventually show a single familiar cardboard box meeting the same fate. don't even get me started on subspace emissary from brawl.

it is so apparent from every conceivable angle that smash bros is more than just a slop multiverse crossover, and kirby air riders is more than a dialed-in remake. compare this level of detail and love to the likes of, like, i don't know, super monkey ball banana mania - which was solidly Fine but unpolished in a way that made me feel a bit cynical, as a consumer. and then buried underground, there's pokemon BDSP.

just like sakurai loves playing with dolls, so starts the very first smash bros for the n64, where the characters are shown to be statuettes that the "master hand", presumably a child, orchestrates fights between by themself. if every person responsible for a game studio or project were willing to love the medium in this way, well, not a lot might be different but i would feel better about this goofy medium that has defined so much of my life. kirby air riders was incredibly, my 2025 goty.

(thanks for reading! consider upvoting/leaving a comment on the original post if you like. i will catch up with my backlog of art blog posts i have to make soon! nt’oyaxsism (thank you all) 🧡)