Well-known Nintendo game developer Masahiro Sakurai has gone over several details about the design process and philosophy behind GameCube racing title Kirby Air Ride. Although many of the games that Sakurai continues to delve into on his YouTube channel are many years old, the Kirby Air Ride designer has revealed new insight about Nintendo classics through his retrospectives.
Masahiro Sakurai approached the design and philosophy of Kirby Air Ride with racing as opposed to the traditional Kirby formula to minimize development time according to the series creator. Kirby Air Ride on GameCube is a departure from other titles in the Kirby franchise, which are typically platformer games. Although Sakurai is acclaimed for his role with the Super Smash Bros. series, his work on games like Kid Icarus: Uprising, Meteos, and many Kirby titles has also been celebrated across four months of YouTube channel content.
According to Masahiro Sakurai, his work with Kirby Air Ride racing was very hands-on as he was directly involved with most aspects of the game like graphics, sound, feedback, and more. Sakurai emphasized the necessity for Kirby Air Ride to encapsulate the feeling of drifting around corners as the Kirby creator felt that it was the most appropriate aspect of racing for the game's essence. Sakurai also confirmed that there were several Kirby titles in development under his supervision during this cycle like Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land, Kirby and The Amazing Mirror, and a canceled Kirby game that he doesn't discuss much, making it a busy time for the IP.
Confirming that Kirby Air Ride shares few similarities with the canceled N64 Air Ride, Masahiro Sakurai stated that the earlier title was intended to be more like a snowboarding game rather than the drift-focused racing of the Kirby racer. Humbly expressing that Kirby Air Ride's checklist conceptually beat Xbox's achievements and PS3's trophies to the punch by a few years, Sakurai emphasized the need for bridging the gap between casual and hardcore players as the game also offered various play types. Some of these play types are carried over from an original version of Kirby Air Ride which had about a year of development time, while the version that got published took less than four months.
Because much of Masahiro Sakurai's Kirby Air Ride video focuses on the game essence that was retained from one version of the game before its release to the next, a lot of what was lost in the process remains unknown. The Kirby creator does take some time to highlight some vehicles that transitioned from the original client handling completely differently from others which may hint at what the racing title could've been without the change in direction.
Kirby Air Ride is available for the Nintendo GameCube.