Regardless of your feelings about the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct, you have to admit that there were at least a few surprises that fans didn’t see coming. A certain Koei Tecmo collaboration, for example, or perhaps a certain exclusive game by FromSoftware was more your thing. However, one thing that left us, and likely many others, wide-eyed was the reveal of Kirby Air Riders! Not only is it a sequel to the Nintendo GameCube classic title, but it’s being headed up by Kirby’s creator…Masahiro Sakurai! That alone means that the game will be quality and that we should be excited that Sakurai really is working on games again.
Now, for those of you who didn’t play the original GameCube version, this is basically the Kirby version of Mario Kart. The title will feature Kirby and others racing around incredible tracks at incredible speeds to see who can come out on top! While we only got a teaser trailer for Kirby Air Riders, it’s fair to say that it’ll look good on the Nintendo Switch 2 and that Sakurai will have far more at his disposal processing power-wise to ensure that the levels/courses are as vast and fun as they can possibly be.
Plus, since it’s been a few generations since the first game, you can bet that Sakurai will have some new ideas on how to make the game fresh and fun and stand out from Mario’s racing game that’ll also be released in 2025. It is Sakurai, after all. Check out the teaser trailer below:
Now, focusing on the Sakurai element of things for a bit, you have to understand why this is so important to gamers. For the last couple of years, Sakurai had been releasing special YouTube videos on his “Creating Games” channel, and that channel was one of the coolest things around. It was his way of breaking down his thoughts on gaming, game development, what it meant to be a game producer/director, and so on. Yet, throughout it all, we wondered if Sakurai would return to making games.
In the final video, he revealed that he did the videos in a very short period of time and that he had been working on a new video game for a while. This apparently is that video game, and we should all be grateful that he’s back.
Now, we also have questions about whether he might return to a certain fighting game franchise…but for now…we’ll be happy with Kirby getting this desired return.