Kirby Aviation Rider lets King Deed, Meta Knight, Waddle Dee, others use copying for the first time

What do you know about Kirby? Well, he's very round, he's pink. And he can suck and eat almost anything and steal whatever power that thing has. These are the basic tenants of Kirby, and for more than 30 years, no one has tried to encroach on Kirby's turf. No one else in the Nintendo roster can do what Kirby does.

so far.

In Nintendo direct sales dedicated to Kirby Aviation riders today, Sakura Tour revealed that for the purpose of game balance, Each The Kirby Aviation Rider’s character will have the same dungeon ability as Kirby. As he explained:

“This game is in the Kirby series, which means Kirby can get different duplicate abilities from enemies. This skill is unique to him. However, this will create an advantage over other riders and create a big gap in the fun. So here we did so that other riders can use duplicate abilities as well!”

Although they don't eat enemies to gain power, they use a move called “Capture” that has unique animations for each character. For example, chef Kawasaki grabbed the enemy with a ladle and slimmed with his tongue. When something they want to copy is in front of them, any rider can use this feature by pressing the Boost Charging button or the B button. Like Kirby, once copied, they get a hat showing their power and their ability to use it. Power varies from breaking other riders' actions to speed boosts.

The following dungeon abilities have been confirmed by the game:

• fire
• sword
• bomb
• wheel
• microphone
• Tools
• injection
• Steel ball
• plasma

This is the first time that most of these characters have been able to use replication capabilities such as Kirby. One exception is Gooey, who was able to copy Kirby's Player 2 in Kirby's Dream Land 3. Kirby was able to copy in the original Kirby Air Ride, but he was also the only character to play at the time (for most of the games), so that's OK. Just because of the addition of all the other riders, the Kirby Brand Bible seems to have deviated from such a huge deviation. But I guess if anyone allows this, it's Sakuragi, the creator of Kirby.

You can catch up Everything announced directly by Kirby Aviation Knight Nintendo today is here.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior journalist at IGN. You can find her post on bluesky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Is there a story tip? Send it to [email protected].