Hello to you who have stumbled upon one of the few resources online when it comes to competitive Kirby Air Ride. For those who don't know, I hold the current WR for the all tracks run which stands at 24:13 and will soon be broken by either myself or Pearstrike. I am making this post because I feel the need to lay down some groundwork for Air Ride and establish a few things.
For starters, you may look at my 24:13 and say "now hold up mate, StoneWaker holds the record at 19:11, you've still got 4 minutes to go!". After the game started getting some attention, we needed some clear cut rules. The Time Trials mode in Air Ride features 3 laps on each course as opposed to the default (which in most cases is 2), no CPU players and most importantly 100% consistent enemy spawns. It was never officially stated, mainly due to the small number of runners, but I would like to establish now that the official All Tracks run should be done using Time Trials. This eliminates an enormous amount of RNG relating to enemy spawns and CPU interaction which has large impacts on the run.
I speak of 'we' as the KAR community, but I don't know how many people that is nor how many people are aware of these discussions and changes. Here is the extent of my knowledge on the Air Ride All Tracks community history...
Around February this year is when I first discovered Russ4312's stream and record of 19:XX using the old ruleset. I had played a lot (I mean a lot) of Kirby Air Ride and enough to know that I could easily beat this record. After some quick research, Russ4312 was the only person I could find who ran the category - If I am not mistaken, he probably founded the run as the first single segment Air Ride run (City Trial 100 check boxes existed already as the only other KAR category). Because of it's single person management, the run was unpolished and narrow-scoped, much resembling a casual play through of the tracks one by one.
After practicing for a little while, it bugged me that CPU's had such a big impact on whether or not I had a good track time and that random enemy spawns would make or break the run when such a better option was available. It was to my delight that Russ4312 had decided to change the route to employ Time Trials mode. Whether or not somebody had told him this was a good idea I don't know, but it made me happy. Sadly, Russ changed his mind and as quickly as it came, he had reverted the category to the old route. This really irritated me because the only incentive he had to change back to the old way was because it was shorter. It seemed like he was making things up as he went, Time Trials is logically the best way to provide a consistent grounds for competitive Air Ride runs. Russ has now stopped speedrunning and if you do read this, sorry for the slight bitterness but the game needs a new guru.
In August, I was messaged by StoneWaker and we shared our PB's (without time trials), agreeing on the unpolished state of the category. Soon after he claimed the top spot, but I was determined to get Time Trials rolling as the official way to go.
1 month ago a lovely man going by the name of Pearstrike let me know that he was interested in running KAR. Shortly following was my introduction to PBearJ, another person interested in the game. I had been messaged by a couple others, but haven't heard word from them. Myself, Pearstrike and PBJ was enough to get the game off the ground. Running the game using Time Trials, records went back and forth between Pearstrike and PBJ until my 24:13 run.
As a single segment run, I have employed strategies from individual time trials run by a japanese community that call themselves 'speedrider'. Speedrider have collectively worked on this game since 2010 and are world class players. I wish to remain modest in my abilities with KAR. These players are on a completely new level and would destroy our records without even trying. Nevertheless, a longer single segment run has been demanded and from now on I would like to encourage anybody to ask me, Pearstrike or PBearJ any questions.
Thank you all for reading and I wish the best of luck to the future of this game on a competitive level.
TL;DR - All tracks should be run using time trials mode, japanese runners > all westerners who have ever played the game but we like single segment so glhf.
SPEEDRIDER LEADERBOARDS: http://speedrider.cho88.com/
HOLY TREASURE OF ALL THAT IS KIRBY AIR RIDE: http://airride.wiki.fc2.com/ (good luck it's japanese)
There's a trick on wheelie scooter that involves sliding along walls really fast. It's fast boost and acceleration also helps for tracks with jumps and ledges. I have an older but still decent tutorial for the technique here: and there's a video with controller cam here: but honestly the best way to see it is just watch the scooter runs on speedrider.
