By Lucas White

Copyright shacknews

Depending on how you count things, there are around 45 to 50-ish different Kirby games. When you think of Kirby, you probably think of the little pink, blobby guy as a hero of many platforming adventures. But the vast majority of Kirby’s games actually fall in the “spin-off” category. With his cute, squishy appearance and malleable powers, Nintendo often goes to Kirby as an easy lead role for its more experimental game ideas. You’ll see Mario headlining sports games or Donkey Kong… wallowing in obscurity (until recently of course), but Kirby is who steps up to the plate for weird things like multiplayer genre-benders, myriad puzzle games, hardware experiments, and more.

With Kirby Air Riders on the way as a marquee title for the Nintendo Switch 2, we’re seeing a doubling down on making Kirby the poster child for first party cult classic contenders. In a normal situation you’d think following up Mario Kart World with another racing game is a bad idea, but these games don’t occupy the same space. But as we wait for Air Riders’ emergence later in 2025, let’s look back on the kaleidoscope of antics everyone’s favorite pink puffball has got up to over the years.

Golf, Puyo, and an elusive Toy Box

While Kirby established himself with the Dream Land trilogy and hit an insane home run with the multigenre Super Star (which defies categorization, honestly), he also spent most of the 90s skipping around various hobbies on the Game Boy and Super Nintendo. Pinball Land (1993), Block Ball (1995), and Star Stacker (1997) brought different kinds of compact Kirby to the Game Boy, while Dream Course (1994), Avalanche (1995), and Star Stacker again (1998) gave us a bizarre golf-themed adventure and culturally-palatable Puyo for the Super Nintendo.

Kirby’s Toy Box (1996) deserves its own paragraph as a nightmare of game preservation, using Nintendo’s Satellaview platform to offer different kinds of minigames for a rewritable Super Famicom cartridge. Eight different minigames were available, but they were released over time and subject to overwriting and deletion. Aside from having access to the hardware itself, the full suite of games weren’t dumped and playable via emulation until 2020.

Tilting, sliding, and riding

In the 2000s, Kirby’s knack for experiments extended from software to hardware. Tilt ‘n’ Tumble (2000) had Game Boy Color players literally tilting their handheld to control the game. Air Ride (2003) was a racing game with unique mechanics and an elaborate battle mode that didn’t do so well, but achieved enough cult classic heat to lead to the reason this article exists! Slide (2003) was an e-reader title made to advertise the Kirby anime, and the card was released in magazines and toy stores! Canvas Curse (2005) was similar to traditional Kirby adventures, but was controlled by drawing rainbow lines to direct Kirby with the Nintendo DS’ touch screen.

Multiplayer madness

Things got really weird for Kirby across the 3DS and Switch. With the eShop and digital marketplaces in general taking off, Nintendo would use Kirby to tinker with smaller ideas, free-to-play formats, and more. 3DS eShop games Fighters Deluxe (2014), Dedede’s Drum Dash Deluxe (2014), and Blowout Blast (2017) were smaller experiments with making minigames standalone downloads, and Battle Royale (2017) was a full retail release that expanded on that kind of approach to the character. Team Kirby Clash Deluxe (2017) was “free-to-start,” seeing Nintendo dip its toe into freemium gaming on its own platforms. Canvas Curse saw a Wii U sequel in Rainbow Curse (2015), the only Kirby game for that whole platform!

With the eShop fully solidified as an attractive destination for games thanks to the Switch’s success, a second wave of Kirby games was released, starting with a pair of sequels to the previous eShop outings. Super Kirby Clash (2019) continues the free-to-start style, and Fighters 2 (2020) expanded on the first game but remained a single purchase. Then Nintendo saw Fall Guys hit the ground running, and tried something similar with Dream Buffet (2022).

Back in the driver’s seat

Kirby is already starting strong on the Nintendo Switch 2, with Forgotten Land being one of the first batch of Switch 1 games to get Switch 2 Editions with expanded content. But the first brand-new Kirby title is a spin-off and a sequel: Air RIders. Despite the first game being far from a blockbuster, Nintendo appears to be going all in with Air Riders, giving it marquee treatment and leveraging superstar director Masahiro Sakurai’s endearing presence with multiple Nintendo Direct presentations ahead of its November 2025 release. It’s a testament to how cult classics of the past have proven to be audience draws in the modern era, and how Kirby as a character is still able to fill these important niche spaces with games that don’t follow the usual conventions.

What could be next? It could be anything, but chances are high it’ll be something weird, multiplayer, and sold at a budget-friendly price. That’s the power and utility of a spin-off super star like Kirby.