Good Game Get! Face Pilot
I miss Pilotwings.
I haven’t played a new Pilotwings since a day before my birthday in 1996 on September 26th.
Fourteen years have passed and I’m pretty sure that HAL Laboratory of Kirby and Super Smash Bros. fame should handle all development of a new title if one were to exist.
Supposedly Factor 5 was working on a GameCube sequel but Nintendo wasn’t comfortable with it so they didn’t release it,
Next Level Games has also shown interest in making a new Pilotwings after their Punch-Out reboot, but again, nothing really has come of it.
Why should HAL Laboratory make it?
Face Pilot rules, and it feels like a hang glider section of a brand new Pilotwings game, which is such a good thing. It has a ton of stuff to do, including various locales to fly in, lots of different hang gliders, and of course many things to collect and unlock.
The game utilizes the player facing DSi camera to snap a photo of you to map to your character, and to track your face which turns your DSi into a fancy camera powered accelerometer controller. You tilt the DSi to fly your hang glider throughout a stage to fly through star rings, collect balloons, find hidden medals, etc. The result is surprisingly good and awesomely accurate.
Face Pilot actually has two play styles though - the one I described above, and a different one in which you set the DSi on a table and try to play while moving your head around. While I’ve read other accounts of this working really well, it didn’t work well for me. With two options though, I can’t imagine that someone couldn’t get either one to work for them so I think it’s a safe bet to not let camera/face-tracking issue fears sway you from the rad five dollar price tag.
Face Pilot gets me stoked to play motion oriented 3DS games once the system drops, and while I feel it can sometimes be a gimmick, nothing beats a flying game and moving an object with both hands instead of twiddling a thumb stick.
Nintendo you should get HAL Laboratory working on Pilotwings 3DS immediately.
- Kyle