Listen to the latest speech by Nintendo president Satoru Iwata and the company's philosophy seeps through: games don't need to be more complicated; game machines don't need to be more complicated. Instead, Nintendo seems to feel that making software simpler and more intuitive is a superior means of attracting players of all ages. Hey -- it worked for Tetris, didn't it?

It's likely that the HAL-developed Kirby Air Ride was born of this philosophy. After all, this is a racer that runs on a single button. But somewhere along the way the plan got jumbled up because Air Ride isn't an intuitive racer -- it's a perplexing one. And while mountains of hidden gameplay layers lurk just beyond the blocks in Tetris, the control scheme in Air Ride oppositely works to destroy any depth that might try to coexist with the simple mechanics.

The Facts



Race as Kirby through a wide variety of colorful environments

Simple one-button setup

Kirby can boost around corners and absorb the powers of enemies

Outrageous track design: loops, corkscrews, twists and turns, and more

Features three different game modes

Four-player split-screen support

Progressive scan support

Requires four memory blocks for saves

LAN-enabled

Gameplay

Nintendo has tinkered with a Kirby racer for a long time. Kirby Air Ride was, in fact, originally scheduled to release for N64 several years ago, but was ultimately scrapped. The GameCube version is vastly different from the 64-bit original, but the premise remains for the most part the same: you control the pink, gelatinous mascot as he pilots crazy crafts over unpredictable, colorful 3D courses. This is not an original idea by any stretch of the imagination, but there are some Kirby-styled touches that help separate it from competing software.

Air Ride smells of Super Smash Bros. Melee thanks to a sleek, well done interface that looks very reminiscent of the fighter. The GUI is complemented by a crisp, opening FMV with orchestrated music that shows off Kirby in all of his glory. Just as in SSBM, there are all sorts of records and checklists to be pointed to and calculated, all of them linked to accomplishing specific tasks within the game, and these will give some fanatics reason enough to keep playing.

Kirby is designed to be as simplistic as possible -- we think so that just about anybody can quickly pick up and play it. (This design choice backfires on more levels than it succeeds, in our opinion, but we'll get to that.) You control Kirby with the analog stick and the A button -- that's it. The stick steers the character left and right (he accelerates perpetually) and the A button when pressed slows him down and when released delivers a temporary speed boost. The idea is to hold the button down around corners, drift them, and then shoot out with a burst of speed. The appealing part about drifting in any racer is that you can round corners without losing speed, but this is disappointingly not the case in Air Ride: you slow down regardless. It's still somewhat satisfying, but not nearly as much as it might have been. Indeed, there are times when you'll want to forego drifting around a corner in order to save time, believe it or not -- a gameplay flaw, as far as we're concerned.

Depending on what craft Kirby is piloting (each has unique glide, speed and turn ability) control can feel either very tight or incredibly loose and unresponsive. Some craft, in fact, cannot turn at all unless they are at a dead stop. Try that one on for size. Others soar through the air but perform poorly on the ground. The selection is welcomed, but the system feels unbalanced because fast craft almost always win the races regardless of any lesser attributes they might have.

Track design is visually appealing. There are branching paths and multiple levels to explore. There are speed arrows that -- if timed correctly -- can jettison Kirby ahead of an opponent. There is some fun to be had here. But the gameplay choices come back to haunt Nintendo, too. Because Kirby is constantly in motion, you can actually set the controller down and the character will eventually finish the race. He might even place ahead of competitors. Often times, the game drives Kirby anyway: he glides on rails and will simply bounce off walls and continue forward. We understand that Nintendo wanted to keep it simple and that younger players will probably appreciate this, but anybody seeking any depth or real challenge out of Air Ride is in for a gargantuan disappointment.

Kirby can suck enemies into his mouth and temporarily absorb their powers as he speeds along the courses. This works in a similar fashion to power-ups in Mario Kart, but HAL's take is sloppier and far more limited. It's fun to gain new abilities as Kirby, but in an effort to keep with the overly simplified control setup full control and command of these powers is completely lost. When Kirby gains Link's sword, he can't fully wield it; he attacks enemies automatically as they near and because we only have one button at our disposal (and it's used for drifting/attacking) there's no way to, say, charge the weapon as Link might to inflict greater damage.

Meanwhile, every time you try to attack with the A button you also go into a mini-drift and if you hold it down, you both attack and drift at the same time. It's downright clumsy. Imagine if this same rule applied in Mario Kart -- that every time you tried to slide around a corner you would also use your character's weapon. There's no reason for it, either. There are plenty of other buttons on the GameCube controller that would have prevented this shortcoming, but the developer's mind seems to have been clouded with the idea that Air Ride should only make use of one button. So once more, any sense of depth -- any level of planning or satisfaction that might have gone into an attack -- is decreased significantly, a huge frustration.