Speaker 1: Going back to the days of 8 and 16-bit consoles, flight simulation games were difficult to adapt to the hardware, mainly due to hardware constraints of the graphics, but also due to input limitations. Most game consoles at the time had only a few buttons and directional input. Storage limits were also a factor, and flight simulators rely on large areas of terrain with 3D models to provide that sense of immersion being in the air, and due to the 2D nature of game consoles at the time, that didn't translate over very well. The genre mostly belonged on home computers like the PC and Amiga at the time, which had higher resolutions, more colors, and of course a keyboard to handle any controls that a serious flight simulation experience needs. But that wouldn't stop Nintendo from attempting their own flight simulator games. 1990's Pilotwings would be a launch title for the Super NES in North America. It captured the immersion of a computer flight simulator by taking advantage of the hardware's Mode 7 capability to effectively replicate 3D graphics, and offered a technically impressive feeling of flight. But it was all condensed down to a fairly small play area, and this of course was due to the limits of the cartridge format, and more importantly, what Mode 7 could do on hardware. This was Nintendo's first but important step into making a technical simulation that not only felt immersive, but required precision to master the gameplay, and of course, it was fun. Pilotwings offered increasingly challenged bite-sized missions for you, the player, to accomplish. The game was a success on the Super NES, and Nintendo would turn to the franchise once again with the sequel Pilotwings 64 in 1996, developed in partnership with Paradigm Simulation. Just like Mario 64, Pilotwings 64 is a true generational leap over the original SNES game, featuring fully 3D environments. Often disregarded and overlooked, Pilotwings is a technical showcase of what the Nintendo 64 was capable of. And this is no simple tech demo as many like to downplay the game as. In fact, Pilotwings 64 was a game Nintendo had planned for years, well and truly before the launch of the hardware. Ever wanted to de-Google your life and have better control over the constant threat of email hacks, phishing, and scams that are going around? In today's cyber security landscape, the best defense is your privacy and your security, and that's where Proton comes in. They offer a suite of encrypted services that will help you work towards a better internet. Starting out with ProtonMail, it provides an easy-to-use experience that's end-to-end encrypted with zero access. This means that your messages and attachments can only be seen and decrypted by you or the person that you choose to share your data with. Not even Proton themselves can see it. 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So why not check it out for yourself? Use ProtonMail to de-Google your life by clicking on the link in the description or pinned comment below and take control of your privacy. And big thanks to Proton for sponsoring today's episode. Leading up to the launch of the Nintendo 64, the hardware had suffered a few setbacks and delays. With the announcement that Nintendo would be partnering with Silicon Graphics to bring its advanced 3D capabilities to their new hardware, hype levels were high. But development of the hardware was long and arduous. And to keep its players excited, Nintendo would make an announcement in the April 1995 issue of Nintendo Power that boasted the announcement of the Ultra 64 Dream Team, declaring it an exclusive club of development partners of which the first games to be released for the Nintendo Ultra 64 will appear only on that platform, with no watered-down versions appearing on any other platform. Nintendo of America has been busy creating exclusive relationships with top publishers and developers so that the Nintendo Ultra 64 buyers will have the best library of games possible. These partners have received early development help from Nintendo and SGI so they could begin work on their games immediately. One company on that list was Paradigm Simulation. In video games, they were not a household name, certainly as compared to the likes of Rare, Sierra Online, Acclaim and DMA Design. Paradigm didn't have a lengthy resume of video games that they had developed either. So who exactly was Paradigm and how did Nintendo end up partnering with them? Paradigm Simulation was formed in 1990 and were technology specialists in 3D with a focus on the development of realistic military flight simulation. Their client list was very impressive, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, NASA and even the United States Department of Defense. They were experts in the field of 3D and would often demonstrate their technology at various trade shows including SIGGRAPH, CES and E3. And they would work exclusively with Silicon Graphics workstations. In 1994, they would develop a realistic full-size flight simulator called Hornet in partnership with entertainment company Magic Edge. According to the press release, Paradigm Simulation Inc., a leading developer of real-time tools and gaming software, developed the game for Magic Edge. The game is based on Paradigm's Vega product and is a major breakthrough in network gaming, guaranteed to challenge the most discriminating video addicts. These landmark technologies, the immersive full-motion flight simulation together with the detailed theming and special effects of the environment, promised to set the standard for out-of-the-home entertainment in the Bay Area and beyond. Paradigm's partnership with Magic Edge and their expertise with Silicon Graphics technology is what ultimately led Nintendo contacting them to work on the Nintendo 64 and become one of the Dream Team. Long known as the leader in realistic flight simulations, Paradigm enters the mass market working on a project with Nintendo's most famous game designer, Jigero Miyamoto, the maker of Mario and Zelda. The company also helped Nintendo prepare tech demos and technology at the 1995 E3 Expo before ultimately developing their flight simulator technology in the form of Pilotwings 64 to Nintendo's new console. Pilotwings 64 has you taking the skies with either a hang glider, gyrocopter or jetpack to complete a series of increasingly difficult challenges. There are four classes in the game where each vehicle will be tested. You unlock the next class by achieving at least a bronze medal with the selected vehicle. Each test can award you up to 100 points depending on your performance and these tests range from flying through rings, popping balloons, taking photos and even shooting down a giant mechahawk with the missiles on your gyrocopter. Once you've finished a particular test, you'll be scored based on individual categories of that test including the amount of time taken, accuracy of your landing, landing impact and other factors. Badges are awarded if you score enough points on a particular test and some tests have smaller subtests where you need to make a combination of points on all the tests to achieve a badge. Getting a silver badge or higher also unlocks extra minigames. Cannonball puts you inside a cannon and the goal is to hit the bullseye of the target. Skydiving has you match formation with the other divers before you reach cloud cover and jumble hopper's objective is to hop your way to the goal as fast as you can. There's also six pilots that you can choose from each with their own skill and weaknesses and four separate islands including Holiday Island, Everfrost Island, Crescent Island and Little States which is a miniature version of the US. The game features all the Nintendo charm and polish that you would expect with small bite-sized challenges to keep you playing as you progress through them. But if you look beyond all that what Pilotwings offers is some of the most immersive flight simulation 3D technology that you could get in 1996. If you put it up against any serious flight simulator at the time, its 3D graphics and frame rate ran as good as you'd get on a PC with much more power. During the mid-90s flight simulators usually featured flat ground textures with a small scattering of 3D polygons to represent things like buildings and this was before 3D accelerated graphics hardware had become standard. On the other hand Pilotwings 64 has 3D geometry for mountains, valleys, cities, lakes, waterfalls, canyons, beaches and many other landmarks scattered throughout the game. It's undeniably 3D with no tricks. Little States is filled with so much detail that you can spend hours just exploring it and unlocking the Birdman stages lets you do exactly this and with its excellent soundtrack just propels the game further into the masterpiece category. And that's what made Pilotwings so unique. It's a dead serious flight simulator technology from a company who worked on defense military contracts wrapped up in a cartoony lovable Nintendo video game. Its scope is far larger than the original game on the SNES and it's both more realistic but also requires precision to perfect the game and thanks to the wonderful N64 analog stick you'll always feel like you're complete control of your vehicle. The frame rate in the game is good and it takes advantage of the N64's hardware features including Z-buffering and mipmapping. There's also a level of detail implementation to bring in more complex geometry as you approach buildings and cities. The game overall sold quite well considering it was a launch game next to Mario 64 selling over 1 million copies. In 1997 Paradigm announced that they were working on the sequel with Nintendo Pilotwings 2 but it was cancelled due to rumors that Nintendo didn't have the necessary resources available at the time. Paradigm Simulations would rebrand as Paradigm Entertainment and continue to develop high quality simulation games on the Nintendo 64 including F1 Grand Prix, Indy Racing 2000 and Aero Fighters Assault. In 2011 Nintendo would release the sequel Pilotwings Resort on the Nintendo 3DS. The game was a nice update to the original N64 version taking advantage of the 3DS hardware but it's fair to say that technically while it was impressive maybe wasn't as quite impressive as the N64 version. Still it's worth a look if you're a fan of the series there is a lot of fun to be had here. Nintendo would also release Pilotwings 64 on their Nintendo Switch Online service in 2022 and this was a big treat for the fans especially those who own a Nintendo Switch but have never played the game before. Unfortunately however the game suffers from some emulation issues. The game runs at a higher frame rate than the original and this was being reported on from some outlets as some type of quality of life enhancement. Unfortunately that's not really the case at all. The higher frame rate appears to be a byproduct of emulation inaccuracy and there's what I would consider game breaking issues on the Birdman levels making it much harder to flap your wings at the highest speed. This is a problem because it makes the Birdman levels which is considered some of the best parts of Pilotwings 64 almost unplayable and this really is a shame. There's also other issues where the replays in the game are much shorter than they normally would be and while the game runs faster and it looks cleaner than it ever has before unfortunately I can't really recommend this version of Pilotwings to anyone. The best option is to use an emulator that has some really good accuracy such as Parallel N64 or just do what I do and stick to the original hardware. It's the best way to experience the game. Pilotwings 64 should never have worked but it does. The mix of state-of-the-art technology with serious flight simulation and realistic movements fused with Nintendo's classic video game design elements make the game so unique and so fun. It's an astounding achievement for its time and really showed other developers what the N64 was capable of in terms of its 3D. And one game that I continue to have a ton of love and nostalgia for is the N64. The N64 is a game where you have to all those years later. But we're going to leave it here for today's episode guys. Let me know your thoughts and experiences with playing Pilotwings 64 back in the day or if you're someone that's only picked up the game recently and are enjoying it. I definitely want to hear your thoughts in the comments below. But we're going to leave it here. If you liked this episode please don't forget to leave me a thumbs up and I'll catch you guys in the next one. Bye for now.