Kirby Air Riders' Road Trip mode is a great tour of the game's many, many, many modes

I have a great love for the Nintendo party games of my youth, especially Smash Bros. But the thing about Smash Bros., Mario Party (which I have always been and will always be an apologist for), and games like Kirby Air Riders is: you need friends to play them with. And while Nintendo’s extremely mild embrace of the internet has been great for this, these games don’t quite hit the same when you’re not on the couch screaming at people you know in-person rather than over a headset. 

As a true fan of the original, I should’ve been more excited about Kirby Air Riders. But as a 31 year old man with a family, the fond memories I have of long sessions flying through City Trial for hours in my room with a friend are, unfortunately, pretty hard to come by. Still, I hoped the sequel would be able to capture some of the original's charm and, somehow, weasel its way into my life. And in true Sakurai fashion, it did it in the strangest way possible.

Air Riders is as much of a reboot of the original Gamecube classic as it is a full-on sequel. The racing is still quite similar, all of the modes like Top Ride are back, and while the beloved City Trial has a new coat of paint, it’s still as fun to explore as it was back in 2003. But Air Riders has one new addition that really sold me – well, not current me, future me, when my kids are old enough to enjoy it too: Road Trip.

Road Trip is Air Riders’ single player mode, and it functions a little bit like the “story” of Smash Bros. No, not the Subspace Emissary in Brawl or that weird story mode in Ultimate, I mean the classic gauntlet that you could take each character through in Melee, with unique fights and mini-games spread throughout. 

In Road Trip, you drive along a single road which takes you through multiple biomes. And each stop along the way will award you with new machines to try out, new stats to improve Kirby’s performance regardless of the machine he’s using, and a unique challenge.