Soar into the wild blue yonder with this stunning flight sim/action game from Nintendo! Choose one of six aviators and tackle increasingly difficult assignments to win your wings: Beginner's Class, Class A, Class B and, finally, Pilot Class. Winning your Pilot Class wings will require you to successfully navigate 24 tests.

To begin with, vehicles include the Hang Glider, Rocket Belt and Gyrocopter. Score well on your way to a license and you can open up four bonus games. Parachute in Sky Diving, sprout wings and fly like a bird in Birdman, and bounce high in Jumble Hopper. You can even try to hit a distant bull's eye as a human Cannonball! To earn your wings, you'll have to master takeoffs, landings and staying aloft. While in the air, keep close track of your fuel and altitude as well as wind conditions.

For advanced licenses, you'll have to follow tricky routes and bring home photographic proof. For example, the Pilot Class license for the Rocket Belt requires you to fly through a twisting cavern and guide a bouncing Rocket Ball down a steep mountainside. On the way to winning your wings, you'll have to battle updrafts, clouds and blizzards. Action fans can squeeze off a few rounds off rockets against Mecha Hawk, a robot rampaging through Little States Island. The action ranges from torrid jungles of Crescent Island to the ice floes bobbing off Everfrost Island. Little States Island is packed with famous U.S. landmarks, including Mount Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty and the Grand Canyon.

The N64's processors fill the lush backgrounds with plenty of moving objects, including hot-air balloons, spouting whales, smoke rising from an oil refinery and a soaring space shuttle - and excellent transparency effects make you feel that you're flying right through clouds.

Original N64europe Review:

Pilotwings 64 is a flightsimulator which was the second game to appear right with the launch of the N64. And it's not just a flightsimulator, it's a damn good one, better then any other of the existing flight sims. You're able to choose from six players, namely Lark and Kiwi, the small and light ones, Goose and Ibis, the medium ones, and Hawk and Robin, the fat ones. You can also choose from three standard flying "vehicles", a Gyrocopter, a Hang Glider or a Rocket Belt. After earning some gold medals, you can play some bonus levels, where you'll be launched by a Canon, where you can fly with Birdwings, where you'll be dropped from a plain with a Parachute or where you can jump with 7-mile Boots.

There are four different Islands which can be chosen, Holiday Island: a small easy island, which is perfect to practice. Crescent Island: in comparagement with Holiday Island a very big island, with some mountains and wood. Little States: the biggest island of them all, a small version of the real USA. Ever-Frost Island: the toughest one, it's very cold and very windy.

Pilotwings 64 looks very, very good, you really feel like as if you're flying high in the sky. The levels, characters and vehicles are all beautiful designed, and the relaxing sound is also very good. The gameplay is great, like I said, the look-and-feel of this game is very high. This all makes that you'll be playing this game after months, since you keep seeing new things.

If you own a N64 and you don't like all the action games, you should really buy this game, and if you do like action games, you should buy this game too.

 - by Gerben Stavast