Nintendo of America’s vice president of product and player experience Bill Trinen has shared his excitement for Kirby Air Riders,
The game is a successor to the GameCube classic racer Kirby Air Ride and came as a surprise reveal in last week’s Nintendo Direct: Nintendo Switch 2 presentation.
After the game’s announcement, Masahiro Sakurai shared that it is a team at Bandai Namco Studios who are “giving their all” to develop it, but that it will “take some time” before they are ready to share more.
When IGN asked whether there was any more that he could share about the game, Trinen responded: “Well, I believe Mr. Sakurai has said that there will not be any additional information on the game for quite a while. The team’s working very hard on it. But for me, this was probably one of the most exciting announcements for a couple of reasons.
“One, I’m always excited to see what Sakurai-san is working on. Two, he created the Kirby character and the Kirby franchise. And so it’s great to see him come back to lead and direct a Kirby game again for the first time in a couple of decades. But I think more importantly, I’ve always felt that Kirby Air Ride on GameCube was a game that was ahead of its time and maybe not fully understood at the time that it came out.
“And so I’m just really excited because there’s a core group of people that played that game on GameCube that love it to death. And number one, I’m just happy because for them, this is such a big announcement and it’s so good to see their excitement. But at the same time, I think that with where we are in the game industry today, I think we’ve got a real opportunity to introduce a much bigger audience to Kirby Air Riders. And I think people will finally really begin to appreciate just what I think is the genius of Masahiro Sakurai and what he created with that game.”
Kirby Air Riders will be released at retail and digitally on the Nintendo eShop for Nintendo Switch 2 worldwide in 2025.
Wait wait wait, why 2026? The Trailer said 2025. Did I miss something??
Typo on my part, thankfully! Thanks for letting us know – updated.