A single deleted user-made machine triggers a wave of bikini-themed Chef Kawasaki creations across the Kirby Air Riders community.
It was a surprise when Nintendo found itself in a big problem: a very famous user-generated design for Kirby Air Riders disappeared from the game’s online Machine Market. Due to its rising in-game worth, the custom creation—a Warpstar shaped like Chef Kawasaki in a micro bikini—had become one of the most sought-after and expensive items in the game.
Players thought that the price going through the roof meant one thing: everyone was buying it because it was so funny. In Kirby Air Riders, players can use decals to make their machines look different and then share them online so other players can buy them with in-game cash. There are no microtransactions in real life, but the prices of products rise as demand increases. And, of course, the Chef Kawasaki design that became a joke went straight to the top of the charts.
A report said that the best-selling micro-bikini Kawasaki machine had been taken down without anyone noticing. Players noticed right away on X and other social networks that screenshots were already circulating. As the internet often does, it responded in a way that Nintendo probably didn’t expect.
It became more popular after it was taken down.
As word spread that the account had been shut down, players started posting many more bikini drawings. Because Nintendo accidentally set off the Streisand effect, what might have started as a single funny one-off quickly turned into dozens of new versions. The company didn’t try to hide the joke; instead, they made it bigger.
Even stranger, some new types can still be bought in the Machine Market without any problems. Fans say that Nintendo doesn’t seem to mind if the bikini sticker is big enough. People have made the funny guess that somewhere in Nintendo’s Kyoto offices, someone is looking over each custom machine and deciding, pixel by pixel, how “micro” is too micro.
Nintendo has had a hard time managing user-generated material for a long time. Some examples from the past include the crazy custom stages in Super Smash Bros. or the rough pictures that sometimes appeared in Splatoon’s Miiverse-like posts. The company even shut down Swapnote years ago after inappropriate material started circulating.
That’s why the urge to moderate makes sense. But this time, users say it was more harmless fun than terrible behavior—just an internet joke taken to its logical conclusion.
A boundary test that Nintendo didn’t see coming.
Players who want to understand how Nintendo moderates have compared designs that were removed to those that are still there. The general opinion is that Nintendo is most interested in designs with very few decals. That line, no matter how thin, is now part of the community joke.
This has also brought up old arguments about whether Nintendo can really find a good balance between creative freedom and family-friendly norms. On the one hand, tools that can be changed promote creativity and community voice. On the other hand, Nintendo has to stick to strict content rules because of its brand image, even when the humor seems harmless.
Even worse, the attempt to remove it seems to have failed. Instead of shutting down the meme, it led to a flood of new bikini-Kawasaki images in the game.
There are now a lot of different kinds of bikinis on the Machine Market, from bigger ones to funny ones to parody ones and everything in between. What started as a single viral video is now a full-on trend, and fans are loving how Nintendo is kind of encouraging it.
In the end, Nintendo’s attempt to quietly get rid of one design that made people look twice only showed how random user-generated content can be. The community didn’t see the loss as a limit; instead, they saw it as a challenge. As a result, there are now more bikini-themed Chef Kawasakis in Kirby Air Riders than ever before.
