Kirby Air Ride

Kirby Air Ride is a mascot racer along the lines of Super Mario Kart, except featuring Kirby and friends. It has several distinct modes of play, such as standard racing, a top-down mode reminiscent of RC Pro Am or Super Off-Road, and an odd "adventure mode" called City Trial, where you spend time gathering powerups then compete in a battle with other players. It... works better than it sounds.

Drop Notice
There's a curious alert that triggers if Kirby falls near a death plane. This can happen in cases where you can use a glitch to get beneath the game world, but the easiest way to see it is to have your machine destroyed over one of the holes in Destruction Derby 1 and have Kirby fall into the hole (if he is killed on his vehicle, he will respawn before the notice appears). While it activates near death planes, the cutscene showing Kirby falling and respawning usually plays before this alert has time to trigger. It blinks faster the closer Kirby is to the actual death plane.

The icon is accompanied by the following sound:

Unused Levels
There are five unused level maps, all of which are accessible through the Debug Menu.

DUMMY
An empty void. Strangely, Kirby drives on the ceiling in this map, possibly due to an unconfigured camera. There appears to be a large region for driving on, which does have edges and Kirby will continuously fall into a pit that has no bottom.

TEST
This ice-themed race track features a short lap, some star-shaped marks on the ground that don't seem to function, and a small tunnel before the finish line.

Note that the game will crash when trying to load this track unless the ENEMY REQ setting is switched to OFF, suggesting that the map tries to load an enemy type that is no longer present in the game.

TEST6
Appears to be a driving test environment, laid out in the manner of the Drag Race levels. To the left is a large square area containing Japanese characters that represent different types of terrain, like grass, water, etc. It can only be accessed by turning around at the start and driving across a piece of invisible ground.

Kirby can drive off the terrain test as the entire map has collision. He can go back to the Drag Race area at any point, but cannot go back out of it as a one-way wall of sorts is in place around the Drag Race. Driving off the map will eventually result in Kirby falling; after some time, the drop notice shows up for a split second and Kirby dies.

There is a finish line on the north end of the track and a peg at the beginning, but it is otherwise a feature-less plank.

TEST7
Similar to TEST6, this level is laid out like a Drag Race. However, there are five steps where the level drops down with increasing grade. The first two drops aren't steep enough to cause Warpstar to fly, but the latter three are. By the time you get to the bottom of the fifth step, the drop notice activates.

Strangely, the notice also activates if Kirby turns around and goes behind the start, showing that the notice is not triggered by a set height.

There is a finish line at the end of the track, a checkered wall to the left, and a simple mountainous skybox not used elsewhere in the game. The track itself is snowy.



SIMPLE2
This comprehensive test environment contains every course feature in the game, marked with convenient labels should you happen to know how to read Japanese. Various terrain types, obstacles, moving surfaces, grind rails, and destructible objects can all be tested here.

This map is a big square world and has no finish line.

Crash Debugger
A crash debugger can be seen upon a game crash while using the debug mode. It does not always happen, but it could have been used to fix anything involved with bugs, crashes (see video).

Boot-Up Message Log
This game sends a few debug logs to GameCube hardware during the startup process, but this is never seen from the player when using a retail GameCube. GameCube/Wii emulator Dolphin can receive and display these logs by enabling the logging feature (View->Show Log). Super Smash Bros. Melee, another game developed by HAL, has similar debug logs.

Note that "DbLevel" is reported as 3 if the debug mode code is used.
 * 1)    Kirby's Airride
 * 2) DATE Aug 18 2003  TIME 16:53:51
 * 3) ROM 0308181653 Dist us DbLevel 0
 * 4) Language us
 * 5) DbHideForceTurnOn 0
 * 6) Arena Size 18 MB
 * 7) ARAM Free Size 3 MB(3848960)
 * 1) Arena Size 18 MB
 * 2) ARAM Free Size 3 MB(3848960)

Regional Differences
The Nintendo logo is white in the Japanese version, but red in the US one.

"PRESS START" is changed to the more accurate "PRESS START/PAUSE".

The default option of Records screen is switched. "Best Records" is the default in Japanese version, but "Checklist" is the default in the US one.

The US version added the number of completed challenges and total challenges to the Checklist screen.