Kirby Air Ride / YMMV

Awesome Music: Not surprisingly, this game offers an impressive arrangement of tracks. Notable entries include Checker Knights, the Dyna Blade theme, Machine Passage, Celestial Valley, and Frozen Hillside. Even better? Many of those tracks would be borrowed from the Japanese version of Kirby: Right Back at Ya! such as Dyna Blade, Station Fire, Item Bounce and Dense Fog Today.
Best Level Ever: Out of the three core modes the game has to offer, City Trial is remembered most fondly for allowing players to freely roam a wide 3D space and for its unique competitive mechanic where you compete against each other to create a potent vehicle before taking it into a competition. Many find the experience to be quite distinct from what's offered by other racing franchises.
Cult Classic: While the game did well enough commercially, it didn't excitedly light up the gaming world when it hit. But over time it's amassed a huge dedicated following, specifically because of City Trial and the game's simplistic control scheme. The game was even referred to as such in Kirby's Dream Collection.
Critical Dissonance: Critics weren't impressed with the game, with many calling it too easy and simple and claiming that it didn't stand up very well with Nintendo's other racing series like Mario Kart and F-Zero; it ended up a MetaCritic score of 61. Players and fans, on the other hand, consider it one of the GameCube's best games and feel that the seemingly simple control system can lead to pretty in-depth gameplay, especially in the City Trial mode.
Fan Nickname: The Wagon Star is often called the Chinese Take-Out Box, fitting to its design.
Game-Breaker:
- THE DRAGOON. The ride can be assembled in City Trial by finding its three pieces inside boxes scattered across the map, and once it's assembled, it proves to be an utterly broken Master of All. It has the best gliding ability of an Air Ride machine, which makes navigating the map a cinch and allows to easily dominate the High Jump and Air Glider events. Its offense and defense, while not as high as Hydra's, is still very beastly and surpasses almost every other Air Ride Machine available, which makes it a monster in Destruction Derbies and Kirby Melees. Powered up correctly, it can even match King Dedede. And unlike Rides like the Wing and Jet Star, its ground speed isn't sacrificed for its air speed (it's not much slower on the ground than the Formula Star), so it can do well in standard races and drag races too. And unlike its fellow God Ride, Hydra, it doesn't need to be fully charged to get going. Dragoon is so overpowered that many players who play City Trial with friends often make an agreement to not go for the pieces during a game.
- To a considerably lesser extent (but more readily available), the Swerve Star. Its gimmick is having no turning ability whatsoever while in motion on the ground, coming to a dead stop while the A button is held, having the ability to quickly pivot while stopped, and instantly accelerating to top speed when the A button is released. While it's unable to utilize boost panels and it has mediocre durability and gliding ability, its acceleration is utterly unrivaled, its fast-or-stopped nature makes it incredibly precise, and its top speed is among the highest in the game, beaten only by even more gimmicky or specialized (to the point of Awesome, but Impractical) vehicles like the Formula Star, Turbo Star, Bulk Star, and Hydra (and the Dragoon, but that's a flat-out Game-Breaker). Once one gets used to how the Swerve Star handles, it becomes a very strong contender for the most reliable (and controllable) machine in the game.
- As far as the Copy Abilities go, the Sword Ability is hands down the best one to use in this game. It has a three-hit combo that has pretty good range and can absolutely murder opponents. However, its game-breaking use is really shown in Kirby Melee 1 and vs. King Dedede modes. Just grabbing the Sword in Kirby Melee 1 can easily get you close to 100 kills and by getting up real close to King Dedede with it is enough to get upwards to a 18-hit combo before the ability wears off. This is especially useful when you have enough offense patches.
Good Bad Bugs: If you jump off a high enough platform and mash the A button while riding the Bulk Star, it'll gain altitude for as long as you keep mashing. This allows it to press itself against the skybox border without falling back down, something not even the Purposely Overpowered Dragoon can do. This, of course, can be used to cheese the Air Glider mini-game^note as well as get an amusing reaction out of your friends.
Just Here for Godzilla: The game is most fondly remembered for its City Trial mode, in which the player boosts up their stats through items and events and can potentially assemble the Dragoon or Hydra. The other two modes, Air Ride and Top Ride, are where the game draws much of its flak, due to their relatively simple playstyles. You also might end up playing them anyway after City Trial, with a much better chance at winning depending on your customization.
Low-Tier Letdown: Of all the Air Ride Machines, the Bulk Star is easily despised the most — with the main reason being its charging mechanic. Unlike most other Rides, which can charge up to get a boost, Bulk Star uses Charge as fuel — as in, it can't move until it's charged. This forces the player to stay still (or very slowly scoot forward) for a while until it's fully charged, which leaves them vulnerable to attack. And even when charged, its performance is hardly enough to make up for the relatively short time you can move. Unless one seriously maxes it out with power-ups, using the Bulk Star is almost a guaranteed trip to defeat.
Older Than They Think: While there are plenty of tracks original to the game, many of the orchestrated pieces often assumed to be original to the game (such as Checker Knights, Item Bounce, Magma Flows) are actually reused tracks that originated from the Japanese version of Kirby: Right Back at Ya! a couple of years earlier. The reason for why they're often seen as original tracks is partly due to 4Kids Entertainment replacing the original Japanese soundtrack with their own soundtrack when they did the English dub, leading to the tracks becoming more associated with Air Ride than with the anime amongst Western fans.
Scrappy Mechanic: The game's simplistic control scheme has the consequence of tying charge and inhale/attack to the same action, which means that any time you hold down charge to make a sharp turn, you risk inhaling a Sleep ability or a Scarfy. It also makes Plasma and Bomb harder to use efficiently, as they require not pressing A until the opportune moment to not be wasted.
So Okay, It's Average: Aside from the City Trial mode, the racing mechanics reach this status, barely. The controls aren't all that precise, the movements are floaty, most racers act similar in mechanics, many of the items and power-ups are really garbage, the graphics aren't much to write home about, and more than a few players wrote off the game before they could give the aforementioned Trial a fair chance.
Tainted by the Preview: Footage of the game from March 2003 wasn't very impressive if this is anything to go by.
That One Achievement: The achievement which unlocks Brown Kirby for use in Air Ride is to get a lap time of one minute and five seconds on Sky Sands. Sounds doable, right? Well, the vehicle you're required to use is the Bulk Star, which is sluggish and has to be charged to drive.
Vindicated by History: Kirby Air Ride didn't have the best reception when it first came out, with many writing it off as a poor man's Mario Kart or F-Zero. Nowadays, it's one of the most beloved Kirby and Nintendo GameCube games, ultimately going on to achieve the Player's Choice distinction with many hoping for a sequel to be made.

YMMV / Kirby Air Ride

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