Kirby Air Riders: How To Unlock Every Rider

As the name of the game implies, Kirby Air Riders lets you choose from various different Riders to race with in this installment of the series. Unlocking these Riders is a combination of playing in the right modes, the right racetrack, performing the right actions, and more. So to immediately get you out there with your favorite hamster Rick, here’s what you need to do to unlock every character in Kirby Air Riders.

Most riders can be unlocked by playing more than one game mode. Unlocking a character more than once will reward you with an alternate color or costume you can use when you play them. So if you want all the costumes or colors, you’ll need to “unlock” a character multiple times.

The unlock conditions for each character below will have the required game mode first, location second, then ruleset last if applicable. So make sure you have everything right when going for these challenges.

Kirby

• Air Ride: Laps – Finish without crashing into any walls.
• Top Ride: Flower – Win without getting any Copy Abilities in a single race.
• City Trial: Big Battle 2 – Defeat a rider while shrunken.

In order to unlock the Stadium’s Big Battle 2 contest, you have to beat five riders in a single match in Big Battle 1. I recommend using Kirby on a Battle Chariot for this, since his Special hits lots of targets easily and the Battle Chariot is a really tanky machine. After that, you’ll have to get lucky with finding the blue shrinking pills and defeating a weakened opponent in the Big Battle 2 contest.

Other than that, unlocking Kirby’s other colors shouldn’t be too much trouble. You can complete the Air Ride challenge easily if you play on a map without many sharp turns while using Wheelie Scooter. For Top Ride, you can just turn all the items off in the Rules and win a race afterwards.

King Dedede

• Air Ride – Win with course, rider, and machine selections set to random.
• City Trial: Gourmet Race – Get 80 points in a single match.
• Road Trip – Clear a Treasure Hunt Challenge.

Unlocking King Dedede in Air Ride and City Trial is also fairly easy. Just choose all random for Air Trial and win the race. As for City Trial’s Gourmet Race contest, make sure to use a rider and machine combination that can move fast and turn really well.

Road Trip is a bit of a different story. You’ll have to come across a Treasure Hunt Challenge while progressing through the stages. The challenges are fixed, so if you happen to know when you’ll encounter one, this will be easier. If you don’t, good luck finding them!

Meta Knight

• Air Ride: Nebula Belt (Laps) – Finish a lap without crashing into walls more than 2 times.
• Top Ride: Nova – Complete a lap without attacking another rider.

Meta Knight’s a bit of a trip to unlock. For Air Ride, you must first unlock the Galactic Nova course, which is done by winning 15 races. Then you’ll need to complete a lap on the course after defeating 5 enemies to unlock Nebula Belt. Once you can race on it, just finish a lap without hitting the walls too much – once again, Wheelie Scooter can help with this.

Unlocking Meta Knight by playing Top Ride is a similar deal. You have to win 15 races in the mode to unlock the Nova course first. But after that, all you have to do is complete a lap without attacking another rider. This can be made easier by changing the rules so that no items will appear.

Waddle Dee

• Road Trip: Skyah – Defeat 30 riders during City Trial challenges.

If you want to complete Waddle Dee’s Road Trip Challenge, you’ll have to find a City Trial challenge with other riders. Beyond that, you’ll need to play very aggressively during the Skyah challenges to beat the required number of opponents. You could farm the other riders once you get a Skyah challenge, so make sure you have enough Road Miles to reset if you plan on going that route.

Bandana Waddle Dee

• City Trial: Field – Destroy 2 boxes within 30 sec. of the start of the match.
• Road Trip: Top Ride – Clear Top Ride challenges a total of 3 times.

For City Trial, just look for the nearest boxes on the map and break them open however you can. As for Road Trip, you’ll need to look out for Top Ride challenges to complete, which are typically races or time trials. You’ll want something fast to be able to complete them.

Waddle Doo

• Air Ride: Floria Fields (Laps) – Finish without crashing into any enemies.
• Top Ride – Hit a rider with a Course Quaker.

For Waddle Doo’s Air Ride and Top Ride requirements, you can adjust the rules of the game to your advantage. Before you race in Floria Fields on Air Ride, you can make it so that some enemies (namely, enemies with Copy Abilities) won’t appear. For Top Ride, you should change the Items setting to Many and the Item Restrictions setting to Safety, to give the Course Quaker a higher chance of appearing.

Chef Kawasaki

• Air Ride: Mount Amberfalls – Eat the onigiri from the teahouse.
• Road Trip: Air Ride – Clear Air Ride challenges a total of 3 times.

While racing on Mount Amberfalls, you’ll need to be on the lookout for some food to eat next to a teahouse to unlock Chef Kawasaki. After you go down the course’s waterfall, you’ll find the food on the right side of the road past the first turn. Mount Amberfalls is only one lap by default, so you could change the rules to make it more than one if you’re having trouble snagging the food.

To unlock Chef Kawasaki from Road Trip, you have to win three Air Ride challenges. These will be the red challenges. They can vary, requiring you to either defeat opponents, win a race, or be in first place when time’s up. Just make sure you have the appropriate machine for the task.

Knuckle Joe

• City Trial : Field – Steal a machine that another rider is actively riding.
• Road Trip – Power up all stats to 1 or higher.

Unlocking Knuckle Joe through City Trial may be difficult. You can steal a rider’s machine if it’s low on health and smoking. You’ll then have to get close and lock on to them by pressing the Y button. You’ll then zoom to them and knock them off their ride. It’s possible to miss though, so aim well!

As for unlocking Knuckle Joe from Road Trip, just pick up one of each of the nine different stat boosts. From challenges to rest areas to shops, there’s plenty of opportunities to complete this mission. You can always pause the game to check the power-ups you’ve accumulated of each stat.

Rick

• Top Ride: Mountain – Win with at least 5 sec. between you and 2nd place.
• Road Trip – Enter the shop 3 times.

You’ll need to be doing very well in Top Ride to unlock Rick in that mode. Lowering the CPU’s level can help make this easier, on top of having attack items on. Road Trip is much easier though: just find the shops and go into them. Shop stops are indicated by the shopping bag on the little road map in the bottom left of the screen.

Gooey

• Top Ride: Air – Win after getting swept up in the tornado 3 times.
• City Trial: Skydive 1 – Get 2,000 points in a single match.

Unlocking Gooey through Top Ride could be a bit difficult under the default settings. The tornado is only in one location on the map, so if you miss it twice in the four-lap setting, you’ll need to repeat the race. Other than that, you should be able to win even after hitting the tornado – it could even help!

If you want to unlock Gooey by playing the Skydive contest, you have to get 2,000 points. You’ll need a machine that can fly slowly so you can go through as many rings as possible. Try using the Paper Star for this one, and aim for those rings with the high points.

Cappy

• Top Ride: Flower – Complete a lap within 0:30.00 with Warp Star.
• City Trial: Field – Clear without getting any power-down items.

Flower’s laps are pretty short, so as long as you use the Warp Star, you should be able to unlock Cappy in Top Ride, regardless of the rider or CPU difficulty. City Trial’s a bit of a different story, as power-down items can be hard to avoid. Your best bet is setting a game to the lowest time possible and trying your best to steer clear of any black-and-white colored power-ups.

Rocky

• Top Ride – Use a total of 30 items.
• Road Trip – Open a treasure chest on the road.

Rocky’s Top Ride mission counts your item usage across all races, so you luckily don’t need to use that many at once. But setting the items to Many in the rules and running into as many items as you can will speed up the process quite a bit.

When it comes to unlocking Rocky in Road Trip, you will need to watch out for treasure chests. They will be indicated by a black and white box icon above them.

Scarfy

• Air Ride: Waveflow Waters – Defeat an enemy Scarfy without making it mad.
• City Trial: Field – Destroy a rider’s machine within the first 60 sec.

Enemy Scarfy can be found in a few spots on Waveflow Waters, primarily in the area after the rail section. In order to defeat it without angering it, you need to deal enough damage in one instance. This can be one by quick spinning, using a Copy Ability , or just running directly into it. Just dont try to inhale it.

Unlocking Scarfy through City Trial won’t be very easy. You’ll have to either hard-focus on attacking one opponent, or get lucky and find a weakened one before the 60 seconds are up. Whatever you do, make sure you switch off from the weakened Compact Star first – an attack-heavy machine would be great if you’re lucky enough to be close to one.

Starman

• Top Ride: Crystal – Complete 4 laps in the lead position
• City Trial: Field – Fall for 6 sec. after only Boosting once.

Much like Rick’s Top Ride unlock requirements, you’ll just have to be doing really well in the game mode to unlock Starman. It helps if you make the CPUs really weak. Make sure you have a really fast ride that you can maintain first place in, such as Wheelie Scooter.

Yes, the City Trial mission for Starman is poorly explained, on top of being rather difficult to do. Your best bet is to find a Wing Star or Paper Star machine and build up on glide power-ups. Once you feel like you got a good amount, make your way to the garden in the sky. From there, you’ll want to boost off the edge and tilt your left stick back to fly as high as you can before holding the boost button to fall down. Aiming offstage should give you some extra time to fall if you feel like you’ll need it.

Lololo & Lalala

• Air Ride: Crystalline Fissure (Laps) – Finish within 3:30.00
• Road Trip – Defeat 10 riders that are riding on star-type machines.

Crystalline Fissure is a two-lap track by default, so it shouldn’t take too long under normal circumstances to finish within the required time. But if you want to make it easier, make sure to use a machine with high top speed. A solid turn stat will help too, since the course has lots of turns.

To unlock Lololo & Lalala from Road Trip, you have to beat riders that are on star-type machines. This means that, rather than the actual challenges, you’ll need to look out for the type of machine your lineup of opponents are riding. Basically, any machine with a name ending in “star” is fair game – there are many of them, so the odds are in your favor.

Marx

• Air Ride: Free Run – Complete an entire lap without dropping below 19 mph.
• Road Trip – Spend 300,000 Road Miles

You have to play the Free Run mode in Air Ride to unlock Marx. You don’t have to worry about dealing with other riders here, so just make sure you don’t slow down too much when finishing a lap. Once again, Wheelie Scooter is great for this since it can maintain decent speed while turning around curves really easily. But any high-speed ride will do.

Unlocking Marx from Road Trip requires a lot of Road Miles and shop visits. Chances are you won’t be able to complete this in one Road Trip playthrough. Just keep buying things from shops and the total amount spent will pile up over time.

Daroach

• Air Ride – Find and defeat the special enemy, Gemaine
• Top Ride – Win after lapping 1 other rider.

Funny enough, the two missions to unlock Daroach are complete opposites. You see, Gemaine is an enemy that gives you full Special power when inhaled – he’s a comeback mechanic. So you have to fall behind very badly in a race in order to get him to spawn. This is best done by holding the boost button and tilting the left stick back for a few seconds, letting the other racers get a major head start.

Now, to unlock Daroach in Top Ride, you need to be performing so well that you pass another rider twice before winning a race. You can set CPU racers to the lowest level to make this easier to accomplish. If you have another controller, you can even create a local multiplayer race and set it up so that the second “player” doesn’t move.

Magolor

• Top Ride – Send the same rider flying 2 times with Drill Driver.
• City Trial: Field – Enter all secret rooms.

To unlock Magolor in Top Ride, you’ll need to hit the same rider with the Drill Driver item twice. You can change the item settings in the rules to have attack items only to make it easier for the item to appear. You’ll have to be falling behind to hit anybody with it though, so be mindful of that.

You can also unlock Magolor by entering every secret room in City Trial. There are six different secret rooms, all in fixed locations around the map. These areas will only open up when the secret room event is occurring, so make sure you go to the nearest one immediately.

Taranza

• Air Ride: Beanstalk Park (Time) – Ride for a total of 5,469 yd.
• City Trial: Field – Win a Short Race.

To unlock Taranza from Air Ride, you must first unlock the Beanstalk Park course. This is done by staying in the lead for a full minute on Mount Amberfalls. After you unlock Beanstalk Park, change the rules from laps to time and just drive on the course. It helps if you use a fast machine and increase the time limit.

As for unlocking Taranza in City Trial, you have to wait for a short race event. You should strengthen your machine with top speed, boost, turn, and other power-ups in the meantime, because you’ll have to win the race once it pops up.

Susie

• Air Ride – Perform a perfect landing 5 times in a single race.
• Road Trip – Hit 3 enemies with a single attack.

To unlock Susie in Air Ride, you’ll need to perfect land five times in one race. The best course for this is Airtopia Ruins, since there’s plenty of ramps and edges to jump off. The machine typically will align itself, so try not to press anything as you’re landing.

In Road Trip, you just need to hit three enemies at one time to unlock Susie. This can be done in any challenge, so long as there are multiple enemies to hit. The best ones are Kirby Melee challenges since there are so many enemies in one small place.

Noir Dedede

• Road Trip – Defeat the true boss in Road Trip and watch the ending.

Noir Dedede is the name of the mysterious character you will frequently encounter in the Road Trip campaign. You have to beat the mode’s true boss in order to unlock him as a playable rider. Without spoiling too much, you get this by reaching the end of the final stage with all machines collected.

This is only possible with New Game+, which you unlock by completing Road Trip for the first time. After that, you can start from the beginning of the Road Trip with all your machines and Road Miles from a completed file carried over. You’ll have to play through the mode at least two more times to get every machine.