PS1 - Aironauts - Intro and Training
1After a long hiatus, I'm back continuing my marathon on obscure PAL-Only PS1 games, and this game is next: Aironauts.
Aironauts was published by Red Storm Entertainment of Rainbow Six fame, distributed by Red Storm's then European-distributor Take 2 Interactive before their acquisition by UbiSoft, developed by Glasgow-based Red Lemon Studios, and released only in PAL on August 27th, 1999, which is really odd, considering that Red Storm Entertainment was a US-based publisher that yes, even had a european office that existed around 1999. And by being that, it should have also been released in the US aswell like with most other releases. But this game wasn't, and there were not even plans or hints for a US release as far as I'm concerned, and certainly, there was no entry on it's ESRB rating database whatsoever. I wonder why they decided to only release this in PAL, as this was their very first PS1 release before Rainbow Six.
Surely, this was a game that was supposed to be something very new, because the back of the box says that this game was (supposed to be) "The REVOLUTIONARY action packed flying game which (supposedly) re-defines the flying genre forever!", and for the fact that the Aironauts name is a registered trademark, hinting that the game would become a major success, and would spawn numerous sequels, spin-offs, TV-Shows, merchandise and alike, but that was certainly NOT the case here, because in the same vein as some of the other PAL-Only PS1 games that tried to spawn franchises because of their original and unheard of names and blurbs, such as Retro Force, Pax Corpus etc., it failed and flopped miserably because of the relatively poor reviews it was given upon release and it's rather poor sales (No surprise). It received a 4 out of 10 from the Official UK PlayStation Magazine, while the Official German PlayStation Magazine gave it a 5 out of 10. And with that being said, the game instantly descended into obscurity after this game's release, and it was never remembered or heard of again, thus destroying any chance for any game developer and publisher, and even indie developers of today, to make something original, new and creative bearing the original, new, creative and unheard of Aironauts name. Shame.
Most people usually only remember this game from the demo that was included on the various demo discs, and I was one of those people. I remember seeing it for the first time, when I had the Euro Demo 08/99, that had the demo of this game included, and while I played it for the first time, I was almost completely suckered in, in nearly the same vein as Retro Force, that I did play the demo of a couple months prior. And that was, like with the time I spent with Retro Force, only because of one of the 8 characters, which only four of them, you were able to play as in the demo, and that is the woman that I'm playing as. And when I looked at her, I nearly fell in love with her, as this had been almost the next Retro Force, but yet, despite her looks (which I do know is not only how people judge characters by), I was never in love with her (thank goodness). I even remember the music that played in the level, which reminded me alot about Retro Force. But of course, unlike Retro Force, I completely forgot about the game and the character that whould have been the only thing I loved about, many many years later, until I played the demo again in about 2009. I was never pledged to play the full game until just now, when I was at the recent Retro Convention in Oberhausen last Saturday, and I bought this game for less than €5, and it was a game that I've been wanting to do videos of a long long time, since nobody but me knows this game, and there were barely any videos of it, from what I've seen.
Yet it was a major struggle to get it though: First, I saw a copy of it at Andrä, but one of the spines was damaged, so I skipped it. Later, I saw two copies of it at a flea market, yet both of them have their spines sunfaded, and finally there was this, that I picked up from said convention, and it was mint, so I took it and was finally able to do videos of it at last.
The Training missions that you see here, are the things that would make up of what you'll be doing through the 2 hours and 30 minutes that will take you to beat the game: Destroy mines, destroy drones, destroy domes, fly through rings (Superman style!), race against the level guardian and finish 1st before he/she does. They'll be a few events, in where you have to protect 20 statues from being stolen by red thief drones, and after the four main events, you have to fight against the guardian him-/herself while trying to maintain the Angels you've earned in the level, that will be used to level up your stats and earn additional extra lives at the end of each level. Ironically, the only thing that you will need is to level up your stats first before you can gain extra lives afterwards.
And all of these events have to be done in a Time Limit!
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