Kirby's Air Ride details
Soon to be followed by Kirby's Toenail Explosion
Nintendo has shed some light on Cube title Kirby's Air Ride in Famitsu, and it sounds quite good. Instead of a platformer, Air Ride will have players struggling to keep a handle on Kirby, whose warp star is seemingly out of control and speeding away on its own. The A button is used for braking, drifting and charging up power for some sort of headlong dash. You'll also be able to half-inch abilities from enemies (by swallowing them, we'd imagine), allowing Kirby to smack things around with a sword, to throw bombs, and to douse himself in flames. What's more, as the screenshots tottering around the net confirm, there will be a four-player split-screen mode to enjoy.
On the whole, we're quite enamoured with the idea. We've come across it before in various 2D games, but we can't think of a decent truly 3D outing that did this. Save perhaps sub-levels in games like Rayman 3, and the end credit game in Monkey Ball Junior… The game is 70 per cent complete, and with a release in Japan scheduled for the summer. As you might expect, there's no release date for Europe just yet.