Nintendo quickly pulls customized bikini-clad glider from “Kirby Air Riders”

Nintendo moved quickly this past week to scrub several eyebrow-raising custom vehicles from Kirby Air Riders.

Fans had shared designs that portrayed Chef Kawasaki in what some would describe as a micro bikini, and those creations spread fast across the game’s storefront of user-made content. Although many players treated the joke as harmless, Nintendo took a more cautious approach and removed the most downloaded versions from circulation.

The tools in Kirby Air Riders let players build rides from simple shapes and apply stickers in creative ways. Consequently, plenty of users experimented with character-based art, and Kawasaki’s long-running "naked under the apron" joke resurfaced almost immediately.

Fan discussions often suggested that he might be wearing nothing at all underneath his chef's apron. Nintendo, however, did not embrace the trend.

Nintendo pulled multiple Kawasaki bikini boards

Automaton reported that the company deleted two highly downloaded vehicles based on the meme. Moreover, a third design continued to climb the popularity charts. It featured a slightly bigger bikini and the bat wings and tail of a succubus. Fans wondered if it would survive Nintendo’s moderation sweep, and users rushed to grab it before it was banned.

One fan, @Sobatake397, tweeted (translated from Japanese), "The Chef Kawasaki micro bikini pattern on Air Rider's Ore Machine Market is so funny. The prices are rising so quickly because everyone thinks it will be taken down soon. It's expensive for the first morning." They shared a screenshot of the listing in the shop. It had risen in price from just over 3.3K to over 23.6K in in-game money on Nov 20.

Another Japanese fan shared an error message screen in the store, saying dramatically, "It was deleted. I can't forgive Nintendo." Other gamers suggested that the appropriate response to the crackdown was to boycott Nintendo entirely, though the likelihood of that happening is next to nonexistent.

This wasn’t Nintendo’s first Kawasaki crackdown

Japanese players voiced disappointment online after the first removals. They pointed out that the original micro bikini design had roots in the Japanese Kirby fandom, having stemmed from a 2022 fan-made card game called Chef Kawasaki’s Microbikini Karuta that was also banned.

Long-time Kirby fans online pointed out that Nintendo typically reacted fast when unofficial merchandise leaned into adult humor.

Kirby Air Riders launched exclusively on Switch 2 and served as a follow-up to 2003’s Kirby Air Ride. Players battle it out, racing around race tracks in this sequel game on customized glider boards.

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