Kirby Air Riders Replaces Its Canceled Halloween Event, and the Ghost Hat Is Back

Nintendo has a second attempt at Halloween running in Kirby Air Riders. After canceling the "Trick or Treat!" event on October 30 because the game kept freezing mid-race, it pushed an update on November 4 and launched a replacement event that runs until November 9 at 7pm PT, per Nintendo Life. The Ghost headwear is back on the reward list.

The original event went live with an October 28 update and was scheduled to run through November 4. Within two days, players were posting clips of the screen locking up for seconds at a time. Nintendo pulled it, saying in a machine-translated post on its Japanese X account that "the screen may temporarily freeze during gameplay," per Kotaku.

The details

• Original event: "Trick or Treat!", October 28 to November 4; canceled October 30
• Fix: update released November 4
• Replacement event: November 4 at 7pm PT to November 9 at 7pm PT
• Ruleset: Shadow Star's Revenge, last seen in March 2026
• Ghost headwear: 1,100 points, with more points awarded per match

What changed in the replacement event?

The new event borrows the Shadow Star's Revenge rules instead of rerunning Trick or Treat as-is. Nintendo raised the points earned per match to make rewards easier to reach in the shorter window. Points already redeemed during Trick or Treat were reset to zero, so anyone who cashed in before the cancellation is starting over.

What went wrong with Trick or Treat?

The freezes hit during races, often in early matches, and turned high-speed runs into stop-motion. Rather than patch the event while it was live, Nintendo canceled it two days in, apologized, and said it planned to hold the event again so players could still earn the rewards. Getting a Ghost hat now takes three updates and two event banners, which is a lot of effort for one hat.

Why it matters

Kirby Air Riders, Masahiro Sakurai's Switch 2 follow-up to the 2003 GameCube original, lost most of its first Halloween event to a freezing bug. The replacement runs only five days and resets redeemed points, so players have until November 9 at 7pm PT to earn the Ghost headwear.