I got the amazing chance to be one of the first to play Kirby Air Riders at this year’s PAX West. As a lifelong Kirby fan, I’ve made sure to play every game in the series and the original Kirby Air Ride was actually a personal favorite of mine back in the day.

When I learned that HAL Laboratory was making a new Kirby game, let alone a follow-up to that excellent GameCube racing game from my past, I was stoked. The original game was fast, chaotic, and fun, while its successor is multiple times that, and then some.

For those who haven’t played the original game, Kirby Air Riders has you racing and battling on machines, each with their own attributes. The game also has no input to go, you just steer and use the A button to do all other actions like braking, charging for a boost, and sucking in enemies to absorb their powers.

Gliding is a big focus in Kirby Air Riders because obviously Kirby has always glided on his warp star since the very first game. Air Riders continues the free gliding from the first game and has you soaring in racing and in battle.

While gliding you can also hit the B button and have your machine hit the ground, setting you up for a boost charge. Once you release the button, you get a Boost Dash and can go fast but also drift through sharp corners.

Kirby Air Riders is doing something controversial by challenging decades of Kirby lore – now everyone can use copy abilities, not just Kirby. The copy abilities give you new ways to attack or even increase your speed. Each rider has their own unique traits too, impacting their machine’s performance, specials, and more.

You can unleash a Special attack once you fill up your Special Gauge, after attacking enemy riders. While the other riders have one unique special, Kirby has four different specials that vary based on what color Kirby you play as.

Our hands-on preview started with a bunch of training modes to get us reacquainted with how movement and abilities work in Kirby Air Riders. Once we were ready to take the training wheels off, it was time to rock and we graduated to the main event: City Trial.

While racing is the main focus in Kirby Air Riders, City Trial is like a big open world battle royale mode. Kirby and his friends duke it out, get power ups, and try to survive. Zipping around in the chaos of City Trial is the best part of the game, giving you pure unadulterated mayhem and fun.

We also tried out the Gourmet Race mode in the game’s Stadium, which has players zooming around and gobbling up as much food as possible. It was an absolute blast and really feels so very Kirby.

There were three other modes including Target Flight (fly into panels to get points), Drag Race (ride straight as fast as you can), and Dustup Derby (defeat as many rivals as you can), though we ran out of time in our preview session and couldn’t get to them.

The sense of speed in Kirby Air Riders is absolutely insane, so much so I had to take my contacts out and put my glasses on because I stopped blinking. It’s hard to convey just how fast, insane, and fun the game is until you see it in motion.

This sense of breakneck speed is felt all throughout the game. While we didn’t get to play the proper Air Ride racing mode, you can still go absurdly fast in the other modes too. I lost count how many times myself and the others playing were yelling at how crazy and fast things got. Everyone was having a blast.

The original Kirby Air Ride was one of my favorite games of all time and unfortunately became somewhat of a hidden gem. This new entry with Kirby Air Riders brings all of that fun to a modern audience, and with snazzier, full HD graphics. The game is not only fast but absolutely brilliant visually.

I was totally blown away by how fresh and plain fun Kirby Air Riders felt. I can’t wait to see what 16 player multiplayer will be like when Kirby Air Riders launches this fall. The absolute chaos and fun we saw with only four people playing in multiplayer was overwhelming.

Kirby Air Riders is set to launch on November 20th for Nintendo Switch 2.