Other than the use of the Control Stick to steer, the A button performs all the other actions in the game, including braking, charging up for a boost, sucking in nearby enemies and thereafter using the powers absorbed from them.

Kirby is the only playable character available from the start of the game, and the only one who can ride different machines and suck up enemies to copy their abilities.

There are two ways to play a typical Air Ride race: In both modes, the Kirbys may swallow and acquire the abilities of enemies strewn along the track and use those powers against their rivals.

Top Ride has only two vehicles to choose from; the red Free Star moves in the direction the Control Stick is tilted, while the blue Steer Star rotates clockwise or counterclockwise based on tilting the Control Stick right or left.

There are seven courses total, based on seven different themes: Grass, Sand, Sky, Fire, Light, Water, and Metal.

When time expires, players face off in a small competition that tests how well your machine ended up, which can vary between a drag race, a brawl, a contest to destroy the most enemies, a gliding game, and even a lap on one of the Air Ride courses.

[11] The other more closely resembled the final game: a snowboarding race in which Kirby collects stars for points.

[10] It went through many changes during its elongated development period (the version shown at the 1996 E3 resembled a skateboarding sim[12]) before eventually being canceled.

Producer Shigeru Miyamoto said in an early 1998 interview that the project had been temporarily halted so that Nintendo could focus efforts on finishing 1080° Snowboarding and rework the Kirby's Air Ride concept.

[13] The game resurfaced on the GameCube in the form of a short video preview in March 2003 at the annual DICE summit in Las Vegas, at which point it received its final title.

This preview received a mainly negative reception due to slow speeds and poor graphics, factors which the Nintendo 64 prototype had also been criticized for.

[15][16] The soundtrack was composed by Jun Ishikawa, Shogo Sakai, Hirokazu Ando, and Tadashi Ikegami.

[17] Most websites and magazines praised its clean presentation, music, and the originality of the City Trial mode while criticizing its gameplay as being overly simple.