Kirby Air Ride: Shooting To The Stars

Kirby Air Ride: Shooting To The Stars
Kirby Air Ride: Shooting to the Stars, known in Japan as Kirby's Air ride: Flying to the Stars (カービィのエアライド: 星への飛行), is a 2023 racing video game developed by HAL Laboratory and Published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. Kirby Air Ride has the players and computer-controlled racers ride on Air Ride Machines. The game supports up to four players locally, and can support up to 11 or 10 more players if you play online.

Gameplay
Kirby Air Ride is played primarily through use of a vehicle, many of which are taken from the previous Kirby games, such as the Warpstar. Players take control of Kirby or any of his multi-colored counterparts to compete in races or other minigames.

The simple controls are a defining feature of Kirby Air Ride. Unlike most racers, no input is necessary for the craft to move forward. Other than the use of the Control Stick to steer, the A button performs all the other actions in the game, including braking, charging up for a boost, sucking in nearby enemies and thereafter using the powers absorbed from them. Gliding is also a definitive feature of the game, as the player can control the crafts' altitude when they go airborne.

Each of the three modes of the game has a "checklist" associated with it. These are 12x10 grids which contain 120 squares, all of which are initially blank. Each square has a hidden goal contained inside it, and certain goals also have unlockable content attached to them, such as alternate machines, new items and courses, new characters, and music tracks for the sound test. When a goal is completed, the squares fill to reveal completed goals. In practice, this system of discovering unknown goals is balanced out by several goals which are relatively easy to obtain, such as "finish a race three times" or "race on every course," and various other goals which only require the accrual of play time; these, in turn, make it easier to find out what other, more specific goals are, since each goal unlocked will open up the objective of the goals touching the goal completed.

Kirby, King DeeDeeDee, Meta Knight and Waddle Dee, are the only four player characters available from the start of the game, and the only one who can ride different machines and suck up enemies to copy their abilities. Multiple players are represented by different colors of Kirby.

Air Rade
Air Ride is a basic, back-view racing mode. The player chooses a racing machine and races against up to three other human or computer players via split-screen or LAN to get to the finish before anyone else. There are two ways to play a typical Air Ride race:

Grand Prix
Grand Prix is the main game mode. In it, players compete in each cup in 50cc, 100cc, 150cc, and Mirror 150cc Hovercraft Engine classes, with ascending speed and difficulty.

Time Trials
Time Trial is a single player-exclusive mode. In it, the player's character races to complete a course in the fastest time. The item rating of a kart determines how many Boost Patches the racer can have once they start the race; vehicles with low item rate can only use one Mushroom; the ones with average item rate use two and the ones with high item rate use three. Players can choose to race against their best time as a Ghost the Staff Ghost (raced by a Japanese Nintendo staff player with a * game ranking), or no Ghost. The game can download records from other players, allowing the player's character to race their Ghosts.

Top Ride
Top Ride is a racing mode on smaller, simpler tracks, and is viewed from above the track. Due to the decreased track size, the default number of laps is increased per track. Top Ride has only two vehicles to choose from; the red Free Star moves in the direction the Control Stick is tilted, while the blue Steer Star rotates clockwise or counterclockwise based on tilting the Control Stick right or left. Like Air Ride, Top Ride also has Time Attack and Free Run modes. There are seven courses total, based on seven different themes: Grass, Sand, Sky, Fire, Light, Water, Metal, lightning and poison.

Battle Ride
There are three different Battle Mode types:


 * Balloon Battle: The classic mode where players use items to pop opponents' balloons or steal them in order to score points. This mode uses the point-based set-up.
 * Renegade Round Up: A mode in the vein of "cops and Robbers", with the racers being divided into two teams. One team, known as "The Saviours", has to use Whispy Woods  in order to capture players from the other team, known as "The Renegades". Captured Renegades are placed into one of several jail cells floating above various points on the stage. Remaining Renegades can free their teammates by driving over a key switch placed below the jail cells. The Renegades win if at least one member is still running free when time runs out, and the Authorities win if all of the Renegades get captured. All Authority team members also temporarily lose their ability to capture after being hit by an item and Renegades receive a speed boost and temporary immunity when they are freed from the cells.
 * Bomber Blast: Characters use Bombs to hit their opponents and score stars to win. The bombs can be obtained by running over an Item Box, which only contains Bob-ombs. Every character can hold up to five of these explosives, and can throw them forwards or drop them backwards. Any kart that makes contact with an opponent's bomb or gets blown up by the explosion will lose stars. For two players, competitors need three stars to win the battle, while for three or four players, they need five.

Shooting To The Stars
Wing, leader of the thieving Cosmo Destroyers, observes the Key To The End Of The World,, an artifact and family heirloom said to unlock the secrets of their Destroyer Ancestors. Void Termina arrives becomes the emperor of the Cosmo Destroyers, and helps them get to the Key to the End of The World. The next day, Kirby, King DeeDeeDee, Waddle Dee and Meta Knight see Void Termina on a digital billboard advertising a hoverboard race tournament known as the Solar System Grand Prix, with the Key to the End of the World as the grand prize. When they realize that the Cosmo Destroyers are participating, Kirby and his enter as well but Kirby senses something suspicious about the tournament.