Pilotwings

Had a bash on this last night. I'd not forgotten how tough it is to ace those skydiving levels, but when all the planets align and you get the thumbs-up from Eric* from The Little Mermaid, there are fewer satisfying things in a videogame.

*


Any Pilotwings aces here? I'm dreading the glider levels.

'Ace' is not the word I would use for my Pilotwings skill level, but I played it both at the time and more recently, when it came out on the Wii VC. For something that's notionally supposed to be relaxing, it isn't half tense sometimes! My main memories of it are based around cursing wildly at the helicopter levels: such a big change in gameplay, and possibly the game's biggest misstep.

The glider was not as frustrating to me as the rocket belt. Ruddy rocket belt.

Finally, it's a shame Nintendo didn't make more out of the Pilotwings franchise. Such potential...

The jetpack missions seem second nature to me, somehow. Managed a perfect score on more than one occasion on those. Never made it as far as the helicopter missions, but I intend to this time around. Am I right in reading somewhere that there's a bonus mission where you skydive as a penguin or something?

How do you tackle skydiving and hangglider missions, Zero? I bank round the landing site/island until I've lost enough altitude, but I'm sure there must be an easier way...

The rocket belt's momentum is off the chart; I find myself overshooting and then being totally unable to compensate. It winds me up, so it does. #RocketBantz

I skydive exactly as you described, by slowly turning onto the landing site. The hang glider is a slightly different kettle of poissons: as it's more manoeuvrable than a falling human, I usually keep myself afloat by catching thermals until I can get a good approach. This usually means crashing inches outside the target zone.

The weird thing about the jetpack, to me, is that it seems to list to the right when you're not accelerating, so I often find myself approaching my target on a diagonal.

The annoying thing about the first hangglider mission, is you hit your first thermal and come out of it in a really inconvenient place, then if you don't time your run-up to the landing site perfectly, you're screwed. The glider and the parachute seem to drop out of the air if you're not careful. Not a problem in the plane, seeing as you can set its speed at any time.

I'd always had it in my head that the rocket belt was very affected by the wind - a swallow farting would blow that hunk of junk off course. Maybe it just listed to one side to up the frustration.

There must be some good tricks out there for Pilotwings. In the meantime, the best advice is to keep practising, sadly!

Man, those landing site four challenges are just that! Challenging. Only a sadist would make you fly through the same ring twice before going in for a landing with the hangglider. Or make you bank such a sharp turn in the light plane.

It got to the stage where I was landing on bonus platforms with craft I could control to offset bad performances with ones I could not.

Have you gone back to it, Stu? Is it still a buttpain?

It's been a few weeks because I keep getting distracted. Last time I tried, though, I was sucking at the plane mission that required you to fly through a ground-based arch before landing your craft.

I have the PAL Pilotwings and no access to a PAL SNES. Neither convertor I have likes the game, there's glitches and stuff everywhere.

Bugger.

Can tell you as a young 'un (holy hell, this "being 36" lark isn't fun ) I played it to death, and loved it to bits.

Can only agree with mandle ('cept I'm 34): found this much more fun as a youth.

Heading-towards-crusty 32 here.

Did you ever get good at it, Mandle? I should imagine that you probably did. I've got the urge to return to this some time soon, alongside Axelay.

Stu_the_great wrote:

Heading-towards-crusty 32 here.

Did you ever get good at it, Mandle? I should imagine that you probably did. I've got the urge to return to this some time soon, alongside Axelay.

I remember getting up to the helicopter night missions. Does that mean I'm good? I might see if Genki has a Jap copy and rekindle my love for it.

Do you know what would be useful in this game? A minimap/radar to accompany your compass.