Original Release: Nintendo, 1990, SNES
Other Releases: Wii (2007)
A unique “stunt flying” game that focuses on short bursts of flight in extreme circumstances.
Pilotwings (SNES, Nintendo, 1990)
Where to Buy: Amazon
How to Emulate: SNES Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
Pilotwings was one of the first games released for the SNES, and was really more of a tech demo to show off the system’s Mode 7 scaling capabilities than a game proper.
It’s a series of various flying games, at which you have to score a certain amount of points (and not kill yourself) to move on. As the game begins you have only the Light Plane and Skydiving modes available, and you have to survive the initial challenges in these to move on to later levels where you unlock the Rocketbelt and Hangliding modes.
In Light Plane mode, you guide a small biplane in it’s gradual descent towards a runway, adjusting speed and altitude and landing properly. Skydiving takes you up about a thousand feet and drops you over an airfield where you have to land as close to the middle of a target as you can. Rocketbelt lets you play Rocketeer as you fly through various rings and then land on a target, and in hangliding you have to hit thermal updrafts and swoop to a high altitude before landing on a target.
These modes increase slightly in complexity as you go on, adding rings for you to maneuver through on the way to the targets and such, but essentially it’s the exact same game every time. The controls are pretty finicky, the game basically just requires you to do the same thing over and over and over again until you figure out how to get it exactly right. I never got past the third level in this one, I guess I just don’t have the requisite level of OCD to fully enjoy this one.
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