Unseen64: The story of Pilotwings for GameCube

S

Shiggy

Member
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMB-4WjrZyo

- 2001: Nintendo and Factor 5 began talks about working on a Nintendo franchise
- was semi-announced by Iwata at E3 2003
- passion project for Julian Eggebrecht
- reboot for the franchise: set in first decade of Cold War
- LucasArts pushed Factor 5 to move towards non-Nintendo platforms as the GCN was failing
- Factor 5 tried to pitch the game under the "The Right Stuff" movie brand to other publishers but failed to generate interest
- The Rogue Squadron Trilogy for Xbox was also never released
 
Wouldn't really fit with the other Pilotwings games, but the concept sounds really damn cool. I would love to see a game like that come to fruition.
 
Haven't watched the video yet but man I miss Factor 5. Absolute waste that they went under! :(

Finished watching it, it doesn't really seem fit for the Pilotwings name but the rebranding of the project makes sense. I hope that someday the project might still get off of the ground actually. Factor 5 was amazing and if they could get the staff together I have little doubt in it.
 
Shiggy said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMB-4WjrZyo

- 2001: Nintendo and Factor 5 began talks about working on a Nintendo franchise
- was semi-announced by Iwata at E3 2003
- passion project for Julian Eggebrecht
- reboot for the franchise: set in first decade of Cold War
- LucasArts pushed Factor 5 to move towards non-Nintendo platforms as the GCN was failing
- Factor 5 tried to pitch the game under the "The Right Stuff" movie brand to other publishers but failed to generate interest
- The Rogue Squadron Trilogy for Xbox was also never released
Click to expand...

That worked out well in the long run......

Pilotwings set in the Cold War?

Seems like an odd fit, if anything that seems like something better suited to Ace Combat
 
The license would have been a waste of money. Nobody would have remembered it. Publishers were absolutely right to refuse it. Fascinating concept though. Still scratching my head at the Pilot wings link, perhaps it was just a way to sell an original idea to Nintendo. It seems like the tutorial was the biggest similarity.
 
Am I the only person who thinks their flight games--not just Lair but all the SW junk as well--handled terribly? They were pretty, sure, and they were perfectly adequate as flashy mindless blaster games but I'd never want or expect them to do a purely mechanical game like Pilotwings... then again, that's probably why they tried to change it to some cold war thing for no reason.
 
everyone should listen to the episode of "Nintendo voice chat" that Julian Eggebrecht was on. they talk a ton about factor 5s past, pilotwings and other planned games. with the amount of work the studio did for Nintendo on both hardware and software its weird they didnt become a first party.
 
I dont know if Pilot Wings IP would of been enough for it to break even honestly, the Sky Crawlers bombed hard and it was a quality game from Ace Combat team on the wii.
 
big_z said:
everyone should listen to the episode of "Nintendo voice chat" that Julian Eggebrecht was on. they talk a ton about factor 5s past, pilotwings and other planned games. with the amount of work the studio did for Nintendo on both hardware and software its weird they didnt become a first party.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the pointer, that was really interesting (and sad).



nephilimdj, "would have".
 
whipihguh said:
Wouldn't really fit with the other Pilotwings games, but the concept sounds really damn cool. I would love to see a game like that come to fruition.
Click to expand...
ugoo18 said:
Pilotwings set in the Cold War?

Seems like an odd fit, if anything that seems like something better suited to Ace Combat
Click to expand...

Visualante2 said:
The license would have been a waste of money. Nobody would have remembered it. Publishers were absolutely right to refuse it. Fascinating concept though. Still scratching my head at the Pilot wings link, perhaps it was just a way to sell an original idea to Nintendo. It seems like the tutorial was the biggest similarity.
Click to expand...

Wouldnt fit Pilotwings 64, but it goes pretty nicely with Pilotwings with the super nes.
And becuase at that time, there were only 2 pilotwings released it could have gone one way or the other.

In the super nes pilotwings you go through flight school, and then you have a final mission in a jungle at war rescuing yout teachers. I think Eggebrecht's idea would have workef amazingly well with the original Pilotwings vision.
Not many people have played the original it seem.

Its really a pitty that his passion project could never see the light of day.
An I would have gladly changed that for the 3ds version, as much as I liked it.
 
Thanks for sharing my video. It was sad putting this one together. Everyone I spoke to about it seemed pretty passionate about the ideas behind it.
 
Nintendo wanted to work with Factor 5, but none of the prototypes they developed were any good. Kid Icarus prototype and Pilotwings prototype displayed very little potential. Take Two felt the same way when Factor 5 tried to rework the prototypes for them.

Factor 5 should have stuck to ports. They would probably still be around today.
 
Shikamaru Ninja said:
Nintendo wanted to work with Factor 5, but none of the prototypes they developed were any good. Kid Icarus prototype and Pilotwings prototype displayed very little potential. Take Two felt the same way when Factor 5 tried to rework the prototypes for them.

Factor 5 should have stuck to ports. They would probably still be around today.
Click to expand...

Not the first time I've heard Take Two had some kind of involvement in the later pitches. Interesting to hear. Thanks!
 
big_z said:
everyone should listen to the episode of "Nintendo voice chat" that Julian Eggebrecht was on. they talk a ton about factor 5s past, pilotwings and other planned games. with the amount of work the studio did for Nintendo on both hardware and software its weird they didnt become a first party.
Click to expand...

Hard to buy them out when they were owned (or had close affiliations, someone correct me if wrong) by Lucas Arts and that was a death grip that took down the whole company, basically, in the end.

Not really sure why they would have, either, since they were more tech wizards than excellent game developers for original projects.
 
Shiggy said:
- The Rogue Squadron Trilogy for Xbox was also never released
Click to expand...
This is so so sad. I would love so much an HD port of them right bow among some other star wars games for somekind of ,LucasArts replay.
I'm near to buy a classic Wii just for these games.
 
Vena said:
Hard to buy them out when they were owned (or had close affiliations, someone correct me if wrong) by Lucas Arts and that was a death grip that took down the whole company, basically, in the end.

Not really sure why they would have, either, since they were more tech wizards than excellent game developers for original projects.
Click to expand...

They weren't owned by LucasArts, but they were indebted to them something to the tune of $4.1m approx. when the company closed, which the management simply didn't have. A full buy out would have been pretty darn costly and that's why it wasn't able to happen. The economic climate back when it happened was so toxic, too.
 
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