Game:

Pilotwings (1990)

Duration: 20:09

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10

Well, I wasn't just saying things to justify my choice when I said that it was good timing for a little side trip to hone our flying skills...or at least go see some (debatably) interesting stuff before now. Before things get all serious!

This is an aspect that's completely missing from future Pilotwings games, because...well, here we have an extreme case of genre shift. Gone now are the carefree days of flying on the winds without a care in the world besides getting some arbitrary certifications. Now things are serious, and we've got some trouble afoot!

No sooner than when we finish our training with Big Al, disaster strikes! You can tell we're being serious, because Al's aviator shades come off and we learn the terrible news. Tony, Lance, and Shirley (why does Shirley get last billing here?) have been kidnapped by a shady evil organization...called the EVIL Syndicate no less!

Well, Lance wasn't my favorite teacher, that's for sure...but Shirley only had nice things to say, even when you wreck a bunch of planes in crazy schemes that ignore all the objectives and runways, she just comments on how difficult it seemed to be. Tony...well, we had some good fun together, and he only got mad when I started playing fast and loose with his parachutes. So, I guess two out of three dictates that I should do the right thing.

Oh, and for the curious, you can't actually back out of this, even with an apparent choice...Al will just browbeat you into doing the obvious thing. Not even a nonstandard game over screen for those who fail to heed the call to action. I may have reason to demonstrate this as part of an eventual bloopers reel that I'm building after all my wacky failures, but it really isn't quite as interesting as one might have hoped.

Oh, and will you take a look at the running time? This mission is LONG, and you can easily spend a whole half an hour and up trying to make it out of this one in one piece...

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Secret Command

A secret mission against evil forces who...actually, why would these terrorists want to kidnap flight instructors? What were they even doing traveling to some island with no real stated significance? Who the heck names their group something like "EVIL Syndicate"?! I actually don't see why with a name like that any government in the world would be blamed for taking overt action against them...

Anyway, the controls and objective are fairly simple...you go forth and shoot your missiles at hostile targets, making your way to the helipad in the center of the enemy territory.

However, "simple" does not automatically imply "easy"...and the fact is that you'll find yourself faced with a rather sizable amount of incoming fire from heavy gun emplacements on the ground.

Your real enemy here is the very limited peripheral vision and the absolutely trigger happy targets with aim that varies from "can't hit the broad side of a barn" to "knows where you'll be flying before you even get there"...so it's of the utmost importance that you keep yourself moving, but don't always make that constant movement in the same direction. The fact is, particularly with the top of the screen, your enemies can actually sneak in some shots from just outside your field of vision, which you'll see at least a couple of times during this little outing.

The only way to make a successful landing at the enemy base is to take out all the pesky guns that will try to stop you from doing so. The landing itself isn't too hard, kinda like a slipperier version of the rocketbelt's landings with a much finickier means of altitude control. The only way to lose altitude is to slow down the rotors, obviously...just make sure you don't just go cutting them and bringing yourself crashing down to the ground instead.

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Does this remind anyone of the old Namco arcade game Xevious? In that one, it was basically a top-down scrolling shooter where you had the extra ability to drop bombs on ground targets, making for a rather more complex than usual affair for the genre and time period.

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