Nintendo recently hosted a special Direct with the focus all about Kirby Air Riders, the sequel game to the GameCube release Kirby Air Ride. The presentation, which is below, was hosted by Kirby creator and game director Masahiro Sakurai. The game itself will release on November 20, so let’s begin with all the details.

At the core of the game, Kirby Air Riders is a racing game, but unlike other racing games, you don’t accelerate, the game does that for you. In this game players will get to choose from a range of Air Rides, or machines, with each of them having their own pros and cons.

While the idea of the game is to race around tracks, things are different than a standard racing game. The biggest difference is how you boost, in most other racing games you just hit a button and off you go, not so here. In Kirby Air Riders, players will need to press and hold the B button, which lowers your Air Ride to the ground, this applies a brake to your machine, but also starts to charge a boost. Once you let go, you will boost dash, which is great on straights to gain ground, but if you use it with corners, you can drift around them. Don’t worry if this sounds complicated, the game will have a host of tutorials you can use to master the skills.

While choosing your Air Ride is important, choosing your character will be just as important in Kirby Air Riders. Each character has their pros and cons for going with them, such as how heavy they are. Each racer also has different specials, which can be activated once they have been charged and that might be enough to give you a gap to take first place.

It won’t just be using the skills as each character has a little Kirby in them, as they can all inhale the abilities of the other characters. That means while Kirby gets his normal skills set, now Meta Knight and other can do the same.

Speaking of, the are some familiar characters in the game, like Meta Knight, King Dedede, Bandana Waddle Dee, as well as enemies in the Kirby series like Cappy, Chef Kawasaki, Starman and more. Here are some of the characters for the game, including a few coloured variants of Kirby.

The details around the main modes location and more were detailed, as they have a lot of details about each, we have just provided the details from Nintendo below.

Skyah: City Trial is now located on a huge floating island called Skyah. Here, you’ll drive around freely collecting power-ups, attacking opponents to damage (and steal) their machines or cause them to drop power-ups you can then scoop up for yourself, all with the objective of upgrading your machine as much as possible. You start out with a small, weak machine, but through finding power-ups, attacking opponents and swapping to other machines, you can upgrade your ride. There are also random Field Events that occur throughout this phase. Some of these events pop up unexpectedly somewhere on the Skyah map, and you’ll need to hustle to that location to participate.
Events include challenges like Short Race, where you’ll race through a sectioned-off area of the map, with power-ups awarded based on how you finish. There is also Dustup Derby, where the goal is to battle your opponents to knock them out and earn more power-ups. Be warned, these events may also involve the appearance of familiar bosses from the world of Kirby, including Kracko and Dyna Blade. This is only the first phase of the City Trial experience, and you’ll have five minutes of intense vehicle action to secure your machine and as many power-ups as you can. After that, it’s on to phase two…
Stadiums: Take your powered-up machine to a Stadium and compete to be crowned the winner. Each Stadium includes a different challenge that players will strategically select based on the power-ups you or your opponents have gathered. Some Stadiums will even be recommended for you based on your machine’s stats, in case you have any trouble deciding which one to take on. In Kirby Air Riders, you can also battle friends via local wireless with up to eight players, or online with up to 16 players. Use GameChat to connect with your friends via video or voice chat to enhance the fun.

There is even more more to enjoy, like Air Ride mode, where six players will race against each other, but the catch, bashing into the other racers is how you build up speed, well more speed.