On this day 15 years ago, Kirby’s racing spinoff — now a cult classic among GameCube owners — hit store shelves in North America. Despite being based around familiar conventions, there hasn’t been anything quite like it since. Its controls are simplistic and it cleverly integrates Kirby’s iconic abilities into vehicular gameplay. I myself poured more hours into Kirby Air Ride than I can count. Indeed, some of my favorite gaming memories trace back to City Trial… oh, and the actual Air Ride mode too, I guess.
Not to knock that other mode, because I also raced hundreds of laps around each of Air Ride’s courses and also on Top Ride’s mini-courses. I look back at those tracks with the type of fondness you can only get from genuine nostalgia. Yet the vast majority of my memories around this game are rooted in City Trial, and most conversations about it end up focused around mode instead of the one Kirby Air Ride is actually named for.
It’s not a bad kind of ironic for a game to be more iconic thanks to its side mode than its main attraction, but it’s still a curiosity. City Trial is certainly memorable to me because I’ve never played any other vehicular game mode like it, but I also feel that it makes use of Kirby Air Ride’s core mechanics better than normal races do.
Source: Destructoid Why City Trial is the most memorable part of Kirby Air Ride