Pilotwings

"Hey, It's no Top Gun, but..."

Pilotwings is a surprisingly enjoyable first-gen Super Nintendo title. While other flying-related games focus on the aspect of blowing up as many things as you can, PW mainly focuses on accurately flying light planes, skydiving, hang gliding and using a fake little piece of hardware called the Rocketbelt. Usually, taking the destruction out of a flight game is for the worse. Remember Aerowings for Dreamcast? Well, one of the first instances of non-violent flight sims also happens to turn out pretty nice.

There are four instructors to learn from, and 4 activities to perform for points to get certified. As far as scoring points goes, I found the events to be completely unbalanced. Unless you've actually made the freaking game, there's absolutely no chance you'll get a perfect score in the later Light Plane levels. To do so you have to land perfectly straight in the exact center of the runway, and with relatively strong winds blowing you to the right there's pretty much no chance of making a perfect landing.

The two easy ones, the Rocketbelt and Skydiving are not only easy to receive perfect scores, but they also have a moving platform you can land on to go to a bonus level to get an absurdly high amount of bonus points. Still, despite the total lack of balanced points or continuity in difficulty, I found the light plane lessons to be very enjoyable, as the wind make things tough, but not teeth-gnashingly controller-breakingly tough. The Rocketbelt and Skydiving, while quite easy, are also pretty damn fun. The only one I didn't particularly care for is the hang gliding aspect, because the control just feels weird, and it's way to easy to misjudge your landing.

Graphics are expectedly first-generation, something I can't hold against the developers. While they blow away most anything found on the NES, the graphics don't hold up against later SNES titles. Your character looks good and has a couple in-game animations (he'll scratch his head if you stand still for a while), but the layout of the ground is just plain lazy. Much more detail could have gone into the sparse, barren airfields you land on. Mode 7 effects are used liberally, particularly in Skydiving. Despite the bland environments, the graphics are pretty inoffensive.

Sound is another inoffensive mixed bag. The music isn't made up of things I had stuck in my head for weeks, and the sound effects aren't exactly mind-blowing either. Still, we aren't looking at a particularly bad-sounding title, just not a particularly good-sounding one.

Replay value is where Pilotwings takes a nose dive. It's just too freakin' short! There are a total of 10 levels. Two for each instructor, and two instances in which you fly a helicopter to make an ever-so daring rescue. These helicopter sections are the only instance in which you get to blow things up. By pressing L and R you can drop one missile after another on enemy SAM sites. Then you land, some guy congratulates you and you win. It's worth it to play through the game again to try various things, such as skydiving from 3700 feet in the air and never opening your parachute, and having a contest with your friends to have the most spectacular Light Plane or Hang glider crash, but other than that there just isn't enough here. You'll find your way through the whole game in day 2, and will probably spend day 3 playing through again, and from there you pretty much have the game shelved, save for every once in a while when you dust it off for a quick round. (I know I'm guilty of overuse of the second person)

Pilotwings is a very enjoyable, although short-lived title. Being that it isn't exactly on the New Release shelf at Wal-Mart, and considering that it's unlikely that this game is selling for more than 5 bucks anywhere, there's no reason not to pick up on this one. If you see a copy lying around a garage sale, snatch it up and enjoy. Still, if you want superior Pilotwings action, quit playing your Dreamcast and dust off the 64 for PW64, another damn good game.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/23/01, Updated 09/23/01