I'm probably like a lot of people who see Nintendo's virtual console offerings as a buffet of neat snacks to nibble on, but never put any actual hours into them. Once you put nostalgia aside, a lot of games from the 80's and 90's just haven't aged super well.
But since Pilotwings 64 was put on the Nintendo 64 Online service on the Switch a couple weeks ago, I've been spending actual lengths of time playing it. It's a casual, relaxing flight sim that gets you flying around quickly with next to no instruction doing short challenge missions, so onboarding is immediate. It gets you enjoying the cool parts of flying around in different types of craft without having to worry about instrumentation, regulated communication, or realistic flight dynamics. And all the areas you can fly around are like little theme parks of fun landmarks to discover. There's surprisingly nothing like this experience around right now that I can think of. And the soundtrack rules!
And it's cool to unlock the later parts of the game where it opens you up to using the aircraft to simply explore their 4 islands unrestrained, the best of which is Little States, an ultra-compact Lower 48 with a bunch of major landmarks to fly past. It's great!
One of the few nostalgic games I've played where it still feels fresh!
