A lot of people really want Nintendo to go back and work on older franchises like F-Zero, but I would really love to see a new Pilotwings game. Growing up, my Dad was an aerospace engineer for Northrop Grumman and worked on the F-14 Tomcat, EA6B Prowler and the B-2 Spirit. He specifically worked on the simulators for these and in our family, airplanes and fighter jets/bombers were kind of a thing growing up. We always had flight simulator games, like Microsoft's FS games, Janes Combat Sim games, as well as games like Top gun 1/2 and "Stealth" on NES. Anything to do with flying was big. I couldnt get enough and to this day, still love simulators and any other game that involves flying.
After we got an SNES, Pilotwings was one of the first games we got. We were all blown away at the game as it was so fun trying to nail a perfect run on all of the different flying challenges.
Then we eventually got to the helicopter mission and were blown away at how cool that was at the time(and challenging). One hit and you're dead.
Then we find out after this mission, there's a "hard mode" of the game after this is complete with night helicopter mission at the end(even more challenging, targets are smaller, shoot faster and more accurate, its night time, and of course, one hit and you're dead.)
Hell, even the 4th instructor, "Big Al" looks like my fucking Dad(my last name even starts with the letters AL). My dad also to this day still wears Ray Ban Aviator sunglasses(another Big Al staple feature).
At times we used to call my dad Big Al and he'd always laugh. I'd love to send you a comparison shot but I dont think my Dad would be too thrilled about having his photo here :P
The game also had an amazing soundtrack by Soyo Oka!
Anyway, that game really meant a lot to me as it had a real close connection with my entire family. I still play it today on my SNES classic.
Eventually, the N64 came out along with Pilotwings 64 which also blew us away. It was exactly what we expected in terms of advances and even threw in the Gyrocopter which was so much fun to fly. I did miss the biplane and parachute challenges though.
The game had all sorts of cool stuff like the Gyrocopter, jumble hopper(?), and a bird suit for flying around the area.
The soundtrack was done by Dan Hess which had a great combination of different musical styles. It was awesome as well.
After that it just kinda died. Never saw a sequel on 64, and never saw an update on Gamecube. I was hoping there would be Pilotwings GC along with WaveRace BS, but we only got the latter.
Now I know there is also a Pilotwings Resort, but I never played it so I cant comment on it unfortunately. Playing on handheld for more than 20min hurts my neck so I don't play 3DS or Switch in handheld mode often.
So yeah, sorry for the overly long story there, but I really wish Nintendo would revisit this franchise as there is so much that they could do with this style of game. Knowing what they can put out now on the Switch, I'd love to see a new game with lots of cool challenges and vehicles to pilot. It just pains me that these games aren't pursued anymore by Nintendo, as its such a fun and easy going game with a cool and interesting gameplay loop.
Please give us a new Pilotwings!
Also, thread cant be complete without the legendary RocketBelt track from the SNES version:
UPDATE, I played Pilotwings Resort thanks to this thread:
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