Nintendo starts removing player-made ‘bikini chef’ Kirby Air Riders designs as they top the in-game marketplace

Nintendo has started removing player-made Kirby Air Riders machine designs from the game’s marketplace which depict one of its characters in a bikini.

The game’s Chef Kawasaki character was originally the subject of a meme in Japan which started in 2020 when a piece of fan art showing him in a small bikini started being shared online.

Now, as spotted by Automaton, players have started creating their own Bikini Chef Kawasaki designs in the My Machines mode in Kirby Air Riders.

My Machines mode lets players collect various stickers and other designs, then apply them to the game’s machines. The ability to scale, resize and rotate these assets means that with some ingenuity it’s possible to create a wider range of designs than the selection suggests.

Players can then upload their machine designs to the Machine Market, an online directory where other players can buy their designs using coins earned in races (there are no microtransactions in the game). Each time a design sells, its price goes up slightly, meaning the more popular designs become increasingly more expensive.

As soon as the game was released, one player uploaded a design which takes the game’s standard star-shaped Warp Star machine and turns it into Chef Kawasaki wearing a micro bikini.

Japanese X user Sobatake397 noted that the design’s price had started rising quickly, writing (via machine translation): “The micro bikini Kawasaki machine pattern in the Air Riders market – everyone thinks it’ll get pulled soon, so the price is climbing fast. Pretty funny. Pretty steep for the first morning, huh?”

Six hours later, the design had been removed, with X user mahuyu_xx writing: “Deleted. I’ll never forgive Nintendo.”

Given that the best way to make something popular is to attempt to remove it, another Bikini Chef Kawasaki design was subsequently uploaded to the Machine Market by a different player.

This new design – which had a slightly thicker bikini and also gave Kawasaki devil wings and a tail – quickly became the most expensive machine on the market, meaning it was being downloaded more than any other design.

Automaton’s article suggested that the increased price could be down to player fear that the design would be quickly removed, meaning everyone was rushing to buy it before Nintendo took action.

Sure enough, VGC can now confirm that this second design has also been deleted, though a third – featuring Kawasaki in a bikini while holding two cooking pots – is now making its way up the rankings.

VGC’s Kirby Air Riders review called it a “pleasant Switch 2 surprise”, and “a great little racing game with engaging modes”.

“Kirby Air Riders really didn’t need a combined 107 minutes of Nintendo Direct presentations to sell players on its merits, because it only takes a few races to see how fun it can be,” we wrote.

“Road Trip mode’s imbalanced win conditions will divide players, but the brilliantly diverse Road Trip (which is built with multiple playthroughs in mind) and the hefty 750-mission Checklist ensure solo players have plenty to do.”