After everyone assumed that Kirby Air Riders was a full-blown passion project from Masahiro Sakurai, the director has revealed that Nintendo and HAL Laboratory actually asked him to make the game.
The original Kirby Air Ride is a pretty beloved cult-classic from the GameCube era, directed by Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai. While those who played it adore it, the GameCube wasn’t quite as successful as other Nintendo consoles. So it was somewhat of a surprise to see one of the first games Nintendo announced for the Switch 2 be a sequel to a 20-year old racing game releasing not long after Mario Kart World.
Most – including Nintendo’s former marketing managers – assumed that Kirby Air Riders is a passion project from Sakurai as a "one for me" before making a new Smash Bros. game. However Sakurai revealed during the Kirby Air Riders Nintendo Direct that this actually wasn’t the case.
"You might be wondering why I ended up creating a new Kirby Air Ride game." Sakurai said, adding, "There was a strong request from Mr. [Shinya] Takahashi, head of software development at Nintendo and Mr. Mitsuhara, the president of HAL Laboratory, Inc." He even asked if they were sure due to the other racing games on Switch 2, but once he got the go ahead he was in.
This happened as Sakurai was working on the DLC for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. He previously talked about a secret project he was working on during the final episode of his YouTube show where he goes into detail about writing the proposal. But it's interesting that Nintendo itself wanted a sequel to a 20-year old GameCube title from the creator of Super Smash Bros.
