Had this up earlier this morning but quickly re-upped it due to the intro corrupting. Pilotwings is follows a rather unique concept for a videogame and whilst it's fun to play, obtaining gold medals on every stage is rather frustrating but it's what I set out to do for this video. The Rocket Belt missions are perhaps my favourite.
Love this game. A buddy and I made up a game in this. Using the game shark to give infinite fuel, we would go to the states using the gyrocopter. Then we would make up flight courses that would involve getting as close to objects at full speed without hitting it. Basically going under bridges, between buildings (ect) using the hight meter and trying to achieve 1 meter over an object. All while maintaining absolute full speed. It was something we did for years on and off. It was actually pretty fun and exciting when you could get the meter to flash 0m and not crash. Good times!
I 1000% know what you mean. There's so much more variety in my N64 and SNES collection than there is in my Steam and Switch collection. Everything now is just a copy of a copy of a copy.
I still have this game. It’s a gem. Fun fact: one of the developers wanted to call Robin “Hooter” and based her off of a Hooters waitress. One of the female CEOs didn’t like it so they had to give her a different name.
Nintendo seems to only release Pilotwings games at the launch of their consoles, to showcase their graphical capabilities. Who wants Nintendo to put out a new Pilotwings game for their next system? I certainly do.
They should. They can have reimagined courses from the SNES, N64, and 3DS and add new ones and bring back Tony, Shirley, Lance, Big Al, and the playable characters from the N64 version and bring back the ending where the player walks down and gets his rewards and salutes to his instructors. And also bring back classic songs from each game.
The opening of the dive into the island is a clever callback to the iconic skydiving stages of the original Pilotwings. In that game all you see is the Mode 7 rotation and scaling of a flat plane as it rushes towrds you, slowly at first, then faster as you get close. Mode 7's great drawback was that you had only one plane that could be scaled and rotated, and that plane could not be anything other than absolutely flat. Pilotwings 64's opening sequence dives toward the island in the same way, it resembles the skydive of the SNES game perfectly, right down to the roughness of the sea texture. Initially you see no changes in the surface elevation. It looks like a flat plane. But right at the last, just as the melody kicks in, the island's various undulations become apparent, and then you get the full glory as the viewing angle changes to reveal hills, mountains, buildings and then the best bit, the volocopters rushing towards the screen. I think it was intentionally done this way, to show in a quick sequence how far Pilotwings has come since just 5 or 6 years short years earlier. I certainly picked up on it, and I think many Pilotwings fans will have done likewise. Nowadays the sequence is just whatever. But back then than opening 5 seconds was a big bucket of cold water to the face: "This ain't the Super Nintendo anymore. Welcome to the future"
Remember playing this as a kid. Probably the first game that ever made me feel a sense of freedom with all the flight. At times, I didnt even try the objectives. Just used to fly around and enjoy the music and scenery. At 12 years old, you just KNEW that the technology for graphics wasn't ever going to get better than this 😂😂 Life really is too cruel to be worth living, because in the end, all we really end with is loss and sadness.
This game was tons of fun to play as a kid in the 90's. Exploring a mini version of America to the coolest music was amazing. Me and a friend also used to fight over the controller when flying the gyro trying to get eachother to crash.
It's one of my favorite games ever. I made a "perfect" save (100 points in every mission) from scratch a couple of times, I just love it. Even with those ancient 3D graphics, soaring with the hang glider gives me a sense of freedom that no other game does.
Pretty nice beautiful n64 game here as I last time played it on my cousin's N64 In 1999! This and Mario 64 was the first two launch games of the N64! I still think the N64 is a very good system along with many others with my sister's and mines SNES model 2!
Pilotwings 64's framerate is uncapped, meaning if there's very few objects and terrain on screen then the game can manage 60 FPS I've noticed it with a real N64 and real cartridge, the easiest way is to adjust the camera so that all you can see is the sky
