Despite renting a bunch of N64 games during my childhood, Pilotwings 64 is one I never played and was never interested in playing, especially after growing up. Something about its visuals always put me off, mainly the characters, they look so ugly lmao, but I knew the soundtrack was a banger because of the Birdman track I’d listen to every now and then, some sweet sweet jazz.

But with it being available on NSO, I decided to give it a shot and I enjoyed it a fair amount! I’ve always heard people saying how it’s a soothing and relaxing game, and while that’s certainly true about the first few missions, this game gets TOUGH halfway through with its missions, relaxed is the last thing you’ll feel while trying to complete them, especially if you’re going for silver and gold medals, which I didn’t even bother trying to go for because I was getting frustrated with them (so I didn’t unlock yet the extra games that you do so by getting silver medals in every mission). But it’s the good kind of frustrating! It’s those challenges that are tough to complete but really satisfying when you’re finally able to do so, and then later you decide “maybe I should try going for that medal”. I miss this type of shorter games centered around score-based missions, they’re always extremely addictive and replayable, so I’ll definitely come back to this game in the near future to try and get those medals to unlock the extra games.