Classic Moments: Pilotwings

From tranquil drifting to tricky aerial manoeuvres, Nick Thorpe pilots you through all the best bits

W» Platform: SNES » Developer: Nintendo EAD » released: 1990 e all know that the most important part of a game is how you interact with it. But let’s be honest, if that was all we got excited about, Rise Of The Robots wouldn’t have got nearly as much coverage as it did. And that’s okay – sometimes it’s fine to be excited about graphics. It’d be disrespectful to the artists involved if we didn’t, wouldn’t it?

In the early Nineties, no graphical technology was more exciting than Mode 7. The islands in Pilotwings could be seen from any perspective – up close when you landed, or in a worryingly vertical fashion when you were descending too quickly in the plane. But nothing ever beat starting off a hang-glider stage, when you could see a whole island in the distance with the knowledge that it wasn’t just some background scenery. There had been many stunning views in gaming before and many have come since, but this one showed off the potential of a new technology in an absolutely breathtaking fashion.