"Kirby Air Ride" (known as Kirby Bowl 64 or Kirby Ball 64 at the time; "Kirby Bowl" is the Japanese name for "Kirby's Dream Course") was began development during the early days of the Nintendo 64 video game console. Much of the development was spearheaded by Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of Kirby. It was one of only two playable demos shown at the Nintendo 64's unveiling at the 1995 Shoshinkai show (the other being "Super Mario 64"). At this point the game consisted of two sub-games. One was somewhat similar to "Marble Madness", as players would control a ball-shaped Kirby to either race across an obstacle course (in single player) or knock competing players off the playing field (in multiplayer). The prototype received a mixed reception due to slow speeds and poor graphics. The other more closely resembled the final game: a snowboarding race in which Kirby collects stars for points. It went through many changes during its elongated development period (the version shown at the 1996 E3 resembled a skateboarding sim) before eventually being canceled. It then 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 "Kirby Bowl 64" prototype had also been criticized for.