Kirby Air Riders almost brought back the old City Trial map, Sakurai explains why it didn't happen

Director Masahiro Sakurai revealed that the City Trial map was originally intended for Kirby Air Riders and discusses why it didn't work out.

Kirby Air Riders almost brought back the old City Trial map, Sakurai explains why it didn't happen

According to director Masahiro Sakurai Ja, the Kirby Air Riders team considered bringing back the original City Trial map from the GameCube title.

That much information was revealed in a new development post today.In it, Sakurai explained that despite this consideration, "the company couldn't pull it off," and restoring the map would require "a lot of cost and effort."

Sakurai wrote in the post:

“So during the planning design phase of the Urban Experiment, we considered bringing back the old map as one of our options.

But we couldn't... Things don't work the way they used to.It requires enormous cost and effort.

Everything we could spend was building the Skyah base, and it wasn't as easy as moving it.

Unlike before the game, this time we can have up to 16 players, and the ratio of both machine power ups and acquisition frequency is different from back then.We had to figure it all out when we were creating the machines: how big the playing field would be, how often the attack would hit the ground for a balance between attack and defense, the ratio between the surface field, the underground and the construction area, and how to high jump.Before, I was the only one who set the parameters of the machine, so that everything I had to do was satisfactory to me.But at this time many are deeply involved in maintaining the balance.

For example, if the average speed of the car increases slightly, the corresponding width and height for the field will change.

The composition is very sensitive and even small changes can change the balance and feel significantly.It is very challenging to create a coherent design and layout of a playground with such limitations.

Moreover, it was impossible to have different cultures.

We had to integrate the different elements of Skyah into one scene, which makes it a fun map to play even when changing battle strategies.

Sakurai also recently revealed that he wrote the lyrics for Kirby Air Riders.And in other news, the game got a new update this week - read the patch notes here.