Pilotwings is a Super Nintendo classic, but I never heard of it back when I was a kid. The first game I actually knew existed in the series was the 3DS game, which is the latest entry in the franchise. I was going through old Super Nintendo games in Nintendo Switch Online’s catalog that I’d never played before and decided to give this one a try. I’ve already tried Pilotwings 64, which had promise but just didn’t click for me, and the original has about the same problems.
Obviously, Pilotwings on the Super Nintendo is far less graphically powerful than its Nintendo 64 follow-up. I think it does a slightly better job of establishing that you’re in a flight school with instructors and everything, though. Little did I know until recently that flight school is extremely expensive if you want to become a licensed pilot, which is why so many pilots end up being ex-military. Uncle Sam can teach them for free.
I did like the plane missions in this game. Even with the Super Nintendo’s 16-bit graphics, they look and feel pretty impressive for the system, especially considering this was a launch title. Flying a plane through the sky is remarkably impressive for such a primitive console.
The jetpack controls vary wildly and aren’t much fun, in my opinion, which was a problem I had with the Nintendo 64 game as well. Skydiving was even worse because, while I was able to complete the missions and land safely with my parachute, I couldn’t earn all the points since I couldn’t move very well in the air before the parachute deployed.
After about 30 minutes, I decided to stop wasting my time with Pilotwings. I do appreciate aircraft more than I have in recent years. The only real positive about Pilotwings is that it was impressive for its time, but it’s definitely not mind-blowing today. That may be why we haven’t seen another Pilotwings game since the 3DS. My son was actually interested in watching and playing with me, and we had some decent laughs, especially considering how bad he was. Despite that fun, this is definitely one of my least favorite Super Nintendo games. I wouldn’t call it complete garbage, though.