- Angst? What Angst?: Despite being taken hostage by terrorists, Tony, Shirley and Lance seem none the worse for wear when you rescue them in the original game, and seem physically and mentally fine when you meet them again in Expert mode.
- Awesome Music: "Birdman
", the music for the Free Flight mode in 64, is perhaps the most well-known song in all three Pilotwings installments. Even original composer Dan Hess is very fond of it, especially because it got to be one of the longest tracks in the game. - Best Level Ever:
- Little States in 64. It is, as the title indicates, a miniature version of the lower 48 U.S. states, and is the biggest map in the entire game. It's easy enough to just ignore your objective and go explore for a while. Considering the system the game is on, being able to cram together such a map without resorting to mid-level loading zones is pretty damn impressive.
- Birdman in 64. Not only is it a reward for getting gold medals, but it's a calm, relaxing flight through a level, with calm, beautiful music and picture taking.
- In 64, the "Dark Cavern" mission for the Rocket Belt on Crescent Island. The objective is to fly through a cave to reach the goal on the other side. A very difficult mission that tests your dexterity and nerves with the Rocket Belt, but when you pull it off, especially the perfect score of 100, you'll certainly feel like a master of the Rocket Belt.
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
- The original game's Expert difficulty is a strange case of the game's climax being one of these: namely, your prior instructors are taken hostage by terrorists in a war-torn jungle, and you're sent out in a helicopter to save them (with it being heavily implied that getting a Game Over in this part of the game actually kills your character). None of this is ever hinted at beforehand, and neither 64 nor Resort have any missions that are nearly this high-stakes.
- The Bonus Chance minigames count too. A penguin diving into a pool? A man in a bird wing costume leaping out over the sea? It's especially jarring if you need the minigame's bonus points to skim by on a course thanks to doing too poorly, meaning these BLAM moments in an otherwise down-to-earth title are essential to progression.
- Crosses the Line Twice:
- Crashing, particularly in 64 where your pilots have cartoonishly hilarious screams. Some players have even stated they've deliberately crashed just to hear said screams in tandem with the pilots spinning out of control.
- If you fail a Skydiving mission with Big Al as your instructor in the original game, he'll shout "SPLAT!" on the results screen.
- Narm: One of Lance's failure quotes has him telling you to "land on the land", and while both uses of the word "land" have a different meaning, the poor wording makes it hard to take him seriously.
- Nightmare Fuel:
- Some of the instructor's surprised facial expressions when you get a perfect score in the SNES original — especially Shirley, who gets bizarre vertical line-shaped eyes that just don't look right on an otherwise relatively realistic-looking human.
- The helicopter missions in the SNES version. You suddenly go from lighthearted pilot training to crossing a combat zone in order to rescue your instructors or Big Al's brother. If you get hit, you're treated to the helpless sequence of your chopper spiraling downward before crashing into the ground, and instead of the usual post-failure banter from your instructor with the opportunity to try again, you just go straight to the game over screen. Combined with your crash being in enemy territory, and Big Al stressing that you're the most qualified pilot for the job and therefore can't have any other pilots support you on your mission, the implication is that you didn't just fail at your objective, you died.
- Similarly, Meca Hawk's appearance in 64, in a game that's otherwise free of any hostile entities. After going through dozen rings, blowing up stationary targets, taking pictures, and landing on floating pads, you now have to enter combat against a giant humanoid who throws rocks at you, and yes, being hit can potentially end the mission as your Gyrocopter goes spiraling down into a crash.
- Also from 64, there's the Holiday Island nighttime Easter Egg. If you fly into the sewer tunnel, you hear a very eerie droning noise and it suddenly turns nighttime outside. To make matters worse, the game pauses for a second when this happens, so you'll likely lose control and either crash into the water or the walls (and then into the water)... and that's with the Rocket Belt, because you are not getting out of the sewer tunnel alive in a Hang Glider or Gyrocopter.
- Playing as Kiwi or Robin in 64 and crashing with either the Hang Glider or Gyrocopter will treat you to very unsettling facial expressions from the lady in question in addition to the usual screams. They will also scream like hell when flying through flames (such as the Ever-Frost Island smokestack or the Statue of Liberty torch on Little States), although they don't take any actual damage.
- Crashing while playing as Birdman in 64 will net you a piercing scream and eerie music. Worse yet, since there are no objectives when flying as Birdman, crashing is the only way to save any photos you took, since quitting from the pause menu discards any photos you took. There's no score tally either; you simply get a haunting message telling you that "Oh no! You crashed!"
- Nintendo Hard: The original game in particular is very realistic for its time, making the simple act of going through rings or even just landing correctly rather difficult.
- Polished Port: The original version of 64, being limited by its hardware, ran at 30 FPS during gameplay, but the Nintendo Switch Online port runs at a much better-looking 60 FPS. Unfortunately, this had the side-effect of messing up the timing for the Birdman missions, meaning you have to flap much, much faster in the NSO port than in the original release
- Spiritual Successor: Pilotwings Resort seems to be one for Wii Sports Resort, oddly enough: It's basically the "Island Flyover" mode expanded into a full game, complete with the same map, with the Free Flight mode in particular being almost identical bar the new music and vehicles.
- That One Level:
- The SNES version has the helicopter levels, which act as the finale for both the game's first act and the game as a whole. Not only is it an Unexpected Gameplay Change since you've never controlled the helicopter before, but it's the only kind of level where you have to shoot at anything using the helicopter's gun. And you're a One-Hit-Point Wonder on top of that; thanks to the Darker and Edgier nature of the levels, it's implied that crashing actually kills you as opposed to being Amusing Injuries. Because of the sheer number of things on the ground that can shoot at you, including hidden bases that are camouflaged by the trees, the only way to play is by going to your objective very slowly, being extremely careful to pick off the targets one-by-one before landing to complete the mission. Even if you know what you're doing, these levels are going to take a while, simply because there's no way to play other than carefully that has any hope of clearing these stages.
- In 64, Class A for the Hang Glider has the "Chicken Dive" mission. You start by jumping off the summit of one of the Ever-Frost Island mountains and follow a waterfall down to try to fly through as many rings as you can. Because diving causes you to pick up speed, it becomes easy to lose control of your Hang Glider. But the last few rings are right in front of a wall and you need to quickly pitch up and turn right to avoid a crash. Ignoring these "daredevil" rings is not optional if you want the perfect score.
- Another perilous mission in 64 can be found in the Pilot Class in Rocket Belt, known as "Dark Cavern". You have to fly through a cavernous passage to the goal. There's a stream running throughout the cave, always putting you at risk of instant failure, and bumping into walls takes away points. And you need to get through this cave without any collision-induced penalties in under two minutes for a perfect score. At least there's no landing component in this mission; when you reach the end, you just need to fly through the goal ring to finish. Also worth noting that when Nintendo Power was hosting content for this mission in the late 90s, recording your time was difficult due to the fact that you have about three seconds to photograph your time at the end before it disappears off the screen; at the time, non-Polaroid cameras did not show you the output of your shots and you had to take your film to a store later to get the photos processed. note
- That One Rule: Skydiving in the original SNES game. The way to maneuver is not readily apparent, and you only get one chance per run to land successfully, i.e. unlike with the other vehicles, if conditions suddenly go south you can't just go around for another shot.
- Ugly Cute: Missi the Monster in 64. She's a bright red, cartoonish river monster who emerges from the Little States's Mississippi River with the most obviously fake monster roar.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/Pilotwings
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