Sakurai explains why Kirby Air Riders’ roster has many enemy characters

Kirby Air Riders has a decently-sized roster, but many of the characters are enemies. In a new post today, director Masahiro Sakurai explained why that is.

What it comes down to is that it was “easier to create Riders out of enemy characters.” With the different skills in play, they “can be understood by looking at each enemy character’s design.” This is true even from a distance.

Sakurai’s full words:

While it would be reasonable to limit the number of playable characters who can use Copy Abilities to just Kirby, it would feel like a bit of a letdown for nothing to have changed in the over 20 years since the original game. I think it’s important to have distinct racing and aiming styles, so allowing players to choose their own Riders was always going to be a necessary change.

It may feel like there are comparatively more enemy characters to choose from, but that’s because, in the Kirby universe, it’s easier to create Riders out of enemy characters.

Because of the Copy Ability mechanics, Kirby’s enemies all have their own special skills. Some are super heavy, and others can fly in the sky, or fire lasers. Waddle Dee’s lack of abilities is actually part of his charm.

And those skills can be understood by looking at each enemy character’s design. You can easily tell at a glance, even from a distance, what that character’s skill is and what effect it might have.

So that’s why there are a lot of playable enemy characters. That said, it’s not enough to only have enemy characters as many people want to see major characters, so we added a few of those in as well.

I also decided it would be best not to go overboard with adding in too many original characters. For the Riders, there’s only really Noir Dedede.

Sakurai has been sharing a lot of insight into Kirby Air Riders as of late. A few days ago, he touched on why the old City Trial map wasn’t brought back. Sakurai also revealed that he wrote the main theme song lyrics and explained why he previously kept that information under wraps.