Title: Pilotwings
Release Date: December 21, 1990 (JP), August 23, 1991 (US)
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo
I love Pilotwings. It is another game I return to with some regularity. I love the music, the characters, and the gameplay. This is another one of my favorites from when I started this blog.
Background
One month after the launch of the Super Famicom and we have the third Nintendo developed game. When I first mentioned F-Zero and Super Mario World, I mentioned how there were three games in development by Nintendo EAD for the launch of the Super Famicom, and this is the third and final one.
This was another game developed by Nintendo EAD. While Shigeru Miyamoto oversaw development and produced the game, the director in this case was Tadashi Sugiyama. He is a veteran developer at Nintendo, but seems to often work on the projects that require a lot of technical innovation or radically new gameplay styles. For example, he works on games like Luigi's Mansion, directed the very first Super Mario Kart, directed Zelda II, and even the much maligned Star Fox Zero. In this case, Pilotwings was to be showcased as another tech demo for the Mode 7 features of the Super Famicom. Each of the "simulator" portions of the game shows of the faux-3D capabilities of Mode 7, and it effectively creates the illusion of depth of field, altitude, and flight over a surface (albeit a completely flat planar surface).
The game's first incarnation was as a tech demo known as Dragonfly which was shown at a trade show in 1988. This demo showed the capabilities of Mode 7 by having a dragonfly fly in a similar fashion to what would become the game-play of Pilotwings.
Gameplay
Pilotwings is a simplified flight simulator where the player attends a series of flight schools, known as "Flight Clubs" in the game, in order to reach higher levels of certification. At each school, there are four challenges to play through: a light plane challenge, a rocket pack challenge, a hang glider challenge, and a sky diving challenge.
At each flight school, you have to perform well enough on the challenges to earn enough points overall to earn your certification for that round. With each challenge, you get graded on criteria that determines your point total; for example on the Light Plane challenges, you get graded on the angle of your landing vs. the runway, the speed with which you complete the challenge, if you hit all the rings/targets you were supposed to, and the accuracy overall of your landing in the target zone.
Each school, as well, has a different coach or trainer. One thing I like is that each trainer has a nice bit of personality. Here is the first trainer, Tony...
Here is Tony mad...
Here is Tony elated...
Here is the next Trainer, Shirley...
Here is Shirley mad (not much difference here)...
Here is Shirley elated (she gets the anime eyes)...
Here is the third trainer, Lance (this guy is my favorite; he looks like he just hates his life)...
Here is Lance mad (he is kind of a sarcastic asshole, but then again, he does live on an island in the middle of the ocean)...
Here is Lance elated...
Finally here is the last trainer Big Al (I had high hopes for him but he is just matter of fact about everything).
He really has no difference between his normal and mad face, but his happy face is my favorite.
Those are man tears
It adds a nice bit of personality to a game which is pretty much just a series of mini-games.
After you pass each of the trainer's Flight Clubs, you get selected to participate in a "Secret Mission." Basically the EVIL Organization (that is the actual name, not me emphasizing the word) has kidnapped each of your trainers and are holding them on their secret island base. You have to fly a helicopter, destroy all the surrounding SAM sites with your rockets, land on the enemy base, and then return with your prisoners to the aircraft carrier you took off from. There are two of these missions in the game, and they are very hard to complete, as not only are the SAM site missiles hard to dodge (one hit and you are dead), but also later in the level the SAM sites are hidden in the forests as well. These missions are very challenging to say the least.
Each trainer will give you much tougher challenges, also with unique weather conditions: Tony now has snow on the ground which obscures your vision, Shirley's runways are now rain-slicked and slippery, Lance has strong winds which push your vehicles all over the place, and Big Al runs his lessons at night now, forcing the player to use their radar. The second half of the game is pretty tough.
There are also bonus stages available as well, which allow you to rack up extra points after lessons. You can reach these by landing on any of the moving "bonus" pads in your challenges. Granted most of the time if you try for these, you will just land in the water, so the risk really isn't worth failing the challenge. These bonus games are pretty fun, though, and include skydiving as a Penguin in to a pool, or getting to use a Birdman suit.
What about them tasty Super Famicom Licks?
The music in this game is really catchy. I find myself getting these songs stuck in my head. I also put them on all the time when I host Smash Bros. tourneys.
Ads, Commercials, and Art
I could find no ad for Pilotwings in print, but I did find this commercial which featured the game. This was the commercial for the SNES holiday launch season in 1991. Yes that is Paul Rudd.
Final Verdict
In the end, is it a game worth purchasing? I would say yes. It's a pretty fun game overall. The learning curve is a BIT tricky, as unless you read all the menus, you often won't know what exactly to do in each challenge. It is not a game to just play blind; you really should do your homework first and test out the controls. The end reward is very satisfying though, as the game is certainly challenging, but that feeling of completing the game all the way through and earning that Gold Certification is definitely reward enough.
The controls are pretty great for a 16 bit flight simulator, and you never feel as if failing a challenge is the fault of the game. Some mini-games are definitely more vexing than others, especially the Hang Gliding challenge, which has the toughest to learn controls out of any of the vehicles.
The sound work is very good as well, and it really helps pull you into the game. The sound of the wind rushing past you as you sky dive, the screech of the plane scraping against the ground if your plane lands incorrectly, the sound of a hang glider catching wind; all of these are really accurately captured and represented in a 16 bit game. Nintendo really did a great job with the immersion factor on this one.
The graphics, though, are one of the best features of this game. This game, in the end, is like F-Zero in that it is another game meant to show off the design capabilities of the Super Famicom/SNES and its Mode 7 development mode. This entire game, from the opening animation of the Pilotwings logo dashing towards the screen, to every flight game, is all made in Mode 7 (for those who haven't read the first post on F-Zero, Mode 7 is creating a sense of 3-D graphics by allowing the sprite to move independently from the background). At the time, the graphics in this game were revolutionary; I remember playing this game when I first got the Super Nintendo, and I can remember having played nothing like this before then. It captured a feeling of wonder and that feeling of needing to explore the game's world, and in such a modest game too. It is a beautiful game in motion, and it is just a joy to watch.
If nothing else, this is another very important game of much historic value for the SNES. Nintendo went on to remember this important title when it released the N64, as they released a sequel, Pilotwings 64, as a launch title for the system.
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