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ItWasMeantToBe19 · Sep 23, 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFVM5NVqQpM&list=PLE51D8DC24EBCBFA5&index=1

-Factor 5 pitched a Pilotwings Wii game to Nintendo. Nintendo was interested but eventually passed on it because they wanted to do Pilotwings in Wii Sports Resort. Nintendo still encouraged Factor 5 to make the game, however.

-Factor 5 goes to this weird, tiny publisher "Green Screen Interactive" who agrees to publish the game and they start to make the Pilotwings game under the name "WeFly."

-Factor 5 built an open world Pilotwings game where you could go all around a condensed version of Earth in real time. You could visit the Big Ben and the Golden Gate Bridge. If it was raining in New York while you were in New York in the game, it would be raining in the game (via syncing up with the Wii Weather Channel)

-Nintendo was building a head tracking peripheral for Factor 5 that would have been released alongside the game.

-Green Screen Interactive went bankrupt after the 2008 recession and this caused Pilotwings to get cancelled.

The video has a fuckton of footage of the game so please watch.

LuigiBlood · Sep 23, 2017

Since I've gotten more interested on Pilotwings lately, I quite want to play this.

That footage looks like a quite impressive game for the Wii.
Though I don't really get Factor 5's tendency for making Nintendo games more mature and darker with the first pitch for Pilotwings on GameCube and Kid Icarus...

At least with WeFly it was on the right track to me.

Nanashrew · Sep 23, 2017

Fly around an entire planet without load times, accurate weather taken from the Wii Weather channel and accurate day and night cycles. Maaaaaan. They were really pushing the hardware and the footage shown looked incredible.

Garraboa · Sep 23, 2017

There's no justice in the world where the Wii wa deprived of promising stuff like this instead of the umpteenth Imagine Babiez Tigerz that it got flooded with.

tauroxd · Sep 23, 2017

Nanashrew said:
Fly around an entire planet without load times, accurate weather taken from the Wii Weather channel and accurate day and night cycles. Maaaaaan. They were really pushing the hardware and the footage shown looked incredible.

Nintendo should have funded the game

Ridley327 · Sep 23, 2017

This seemed really, really, really ambitious for a game targeting a more casual crowd. A shame that Factor 5's bad luck happened all at once.

OmegaFax · Sep 23, 2017

It'd be neat to see it revived as a VR or Switch title since it isn't really tied to a licensed property like the Rogue Squadron Wii port they were working on.

120v · Sep 23, 2017

i never knew this was a thing. looks more like a direct sequel to pilotwings 64 which i didn't care much for, but interesting either way

hopefully whenever nintendo gets around to VR they'll do pilotwings proper

bomblord1 · Sep 23, 2017

So this many years later we finally get real footage of the revised Lair engine that they were getting more out of on the Wii than the PS3.

Jeez Factor 5 is just insane it still tears me up they went under. Only tech wizard studio we have left is Shinen.

FelipeMGM · Sep 23, 2017

bomblord1 said:
So this many years later we finally get real footage of the revised Lair engine that they were getting more out of on the Wii than the PS3.

Jeez Factor 5 is just insane it still tears me up they went under. Only tech wizard studio we have left is Shinen.

they are back tho!!

Lets hope they can work closely with Nintendo again

disappeared · Sep 23, 2017

Oh wow that game looked so good.

Dragoon En Regalia · Sep 23, 2017

Not sure I'd take flying around a condensed-scale Earth, doing missions here and there, over well-designed islands (and something like Little State from Pilotwings 64) with missions and easter eggs.

What I want is not another Pilotwings stuck on Wuhu or with just a few islands. Nintendo and Monster Games did a great job designing Resort and its missions and vehicles, but it was always a low-end, low budget game used to show the 3DS off at launch. I want a larger, more ambitious Pilotwings game at some point which signals the end of a console cycle instead.

Alfredo · Sep 23, 2017

As a big fan of Pilotwings 64, this game sounds and looks awesome. Sad it never saw the light of day.

Rock And Roll · Sep 23, 2017

This looked fantastic, what a shame we never got it.

efyu_lemonardo · Sep 23, 2017

Damn that looked fantastic.
Even sadder than not getting the game, complete with head tracking, is that a tremendously talented developer with strong ties to Nintendo was lost...

MrTroubleMaker · Sep 23, 2017

Neat, thanks!

eso76 · Sep 23, 2017

Shame about this. Shame about the cancellation of Xbox port of the star wars games and utter shame about that kind of head tracking never happening.
Better than 3d and not as hard to implement as VR.
Could have been a good half step while waiting for VR maturity.

btrboyev · Sep 23, 2017

Nintendo should have bought them up when they went under.

MisterHero · Sep 23, 2017

WeFly sounded wonderful, my favorite stage in Pilotwings 64 was Little States.

Spyder_Monkey · Sep 23, 2017

tauroxd said:
Nintendo should have funded the game

I think that development on Resort started around the same time and was meant to be the hardware showcase for the 3DS hindered that. Otherwise they probably would.

conpfreak · Sep 23, 2017

That head tracking tech looked seriously impressive and cheap to produce. Had they developed a few Nintendo properties with that or if Nintendo implemented that into the Wii U instead of the tablet, things could have been different for the end of the Wii's lifespan and Wii U.

It's really unfortunate that Factor 5 as we knew it is no more, as there was surely some outstanding talent there.

Afrikan · Sep 23, 2017

OMG I have neen asking for a PilotWings clone for my PlayStation for a while now, since Nintendo didn't release a new one back then... if F5 did use their Lair engine to create this, man there could've been a small chance at a PlayStation port

That being said, I would've bought a Wii for this just one game.

I love PilotWings SNES,N64... I still listen to the music. I want a next gen version dammit. :/

jett · Sep 23, 2017

People here like their Star Wars games, but personally I've always thought Factor 5's flight controls are absolutely awful, feels like you're flying a weightless paper airplane. Better that they didn't end up making a Pilotwings game as far as I'm concerned.

talkingood · Sep 23, 2017

Very cool! One has to wonder if Pilotwings Resort would have ever come to be on 3DS if this had been released, given how similar they are in many ways.

bomblord1 · Sep 23, 2017

FelipeMGM said:
they are back tho!!

Lets hope they can work closely with Nintendo again

I completely forgot about that haha I think I even posted in that thread can't wait to see what they come up with.

MarkusRJR · Sep 23, 2017

Wow that looks so good for a Wii game. I wish Nintendo backed this back during the Wii days, especially considering the insane game droughts they had then. Shame to see it just disappear.

Makes me so sad to see interesting games get cancelled.

Rayis · Sep 23, 2017

Please get together and make this game again for the Switch complete with the head tracking technology!

jdstorm · Sep 23, 2017

Nintendo is like the Anti EA.

They just let great studios die by refusing to buy them vs buying great studios and then killing them.

-shadow- · Sep 23, 2017

Looks pretty good actually, why the hell wasn't this officially picked up?

ItWasMeantToBe19 · Sep 23, 2017

-shadow- said:
Looks pretty good actually, why the hell wasn't this officially picked up?

Picking up the Lair developer in the middle of a terrible recession was probably not a well liked idea from most game publishers.

jackal27 · Sep 23, 2017

Such a sad video... the games looks excellent the added hardware they discuss sounds amazing. The Wii had so many useless peripherals. This actually sounds like one that would have added a lot to the console.

Factor 5 was such a class act that left a huge hole in the industry. I miss them a lot...

rjc571 · Sep 23, 2017

That looked fantastic. Third party publishers who passed on it can go eat shit.

Shikamaru Ninja · Sep 23, 2017

A lot of the OP info isn't accurate. F5 and Nintendo were prototyping the Pilotwings concept on the GameCube. Supposedly the game didn't shape up fast enough to Nintendo's liking and they bailed. Factor 5 kept working on the game and retooled it several times under a new IP for potential publishers.

Wii Sports Resort was waaaay after. Nintendo actually developed their own Wii airplane prototype on the Wii that they never fully used.

jackal27 · Sep 23, 2017

rjc571 said:
That looked fantastic. Third party publishers who passed on it can go eat shit.

To be fair, after the mess that was Lair, I can't really blame publishers for being wary of working with Factor 5, no matter how great their projects looked. That game was a huge embarrassment for Sony and basically became a meme for a season back in the day. I think that was the result of a lot of outside factors, but their name was still front and center on the project.

ItWasMeantToBe19 · Sep 23, 2017

Shikamaru Ninja said:
A lot of the OP info isn't accurate. F5 and Nintendo were prototyping the Pilotwings concept on the GameCube. Supposedly the game didn't shape up fast enough to Nintendo's liking and they bailed. Factor 5 kept working on the game and retooled it several times under a new IP for potential publishers.

Wii Sports Resort was waaaay after. Nintendo actually developed their own Wii airplane prototype on the Wii that they never fully used.

Uhh, no, the info in the OP is correct.

This Pilotwings game from Factor 5 has no connection with the Pilotwings game that Factor 5 tried to make on GameCube. The Wii game was a casual open world game. The GameCube game was a dark, edgy reboot set during the Cold War.

Factor 5 started making this Pilotwings Wii game back in like 2007-2008, long after they had cancelled the GameCube Pilotwings but around the same time Nintendo started making WiiSportsResort.

gingerbeardman · Sep 23, 2017

Afrikan said:
I love PilotWings SNES,N64... I still listen to the music. I want a next gen version dammit. :/

3DS version is great

Rayis said:
Please get together and make this game again for the Switch complete with the head tracking technology!

Not sure how that would work.

Gaogaogao · Sep 23, 2017

well thats sad
these always make me sad

RoboPlato · Sep 23, 2017

Nanashrew said:
Fly around an entire planet without load times, accurate weather taken from the Wii Weather channel and accurate day and night cycles. Maaaaaan. They were really pushing the hardware and the footage shown looked incredible.

Factor 5 had one of the most impressive tech teams in the industry. I miss them

The Hermit · Sep 23, 2017

The head tracking thing was being developed?!

Oh man, this is so sad

DLaicH · Sep 23, 2017

It's great to finally see footage of this game. I remember reading articles back then about how Factor 5 was about to push the Wii's hardware to its limits, and I was really eager to see what they were working on. At the time, the Wii was the only current gen console I owned, so I was hungry for games that could really push the technical envelope and overcome the Wii's limitations. When Factor 5 went under, I thought I would never get to see or hear anything more about it, so even though it's sad that this never came out, I feel a sense of closure after watching this video.

Glowsquid · Sep 23, 2017

The idea for the GameCube game sounded pretty cool to me. There's no good Cold War-era arcade flight game.

plank · Sep 24, 2017

never played pilot wings before but, is that pilot wing music playing in the back ground?

tauroxd · Sep 24, 2017

Spyder_Monkey said:
I think that development on Resort started around the same time and was meant to be the hardware showcase for the 3DS hindered that. Otherwise they probably would.

Yeah, it makes sense

Yukinari · Sep 24, 2017

The loss of Factor 5 is really sad cause we're never gonna get their games ported to HD.

XandBosch · Sep 24, 2017

Man, they were an insanely talented development studio and Nintendo should regret every day that they didn't acquire them as a first party developer.

Nessus · Sep 24, 2017

Really wish Nintendo would have bought them. Could have picked them up for real cheap.

bomma_man · Sep 24, 2017

F5 seem like the kinda developer that needed strict guidelines set for them (ie Star Wars) because their own art design was... not great.

Geno Breaker · Sep 24, 2017

The people at Factor 5 were legends. Totally gonna watch this video. I hope the Rogue Squadron Trilogy on Wii gets leaked one day.

Peltz · Sep 24, 2017

Head tracking?! Wow. Can't wait to watch.

Kevtones · Sep 24, 2017

Really like the ideas in this game. Should've been a Nintendo 2nd party studio

Lunar landers on the moon?!
You can find Santa!?
Magic carpets!?

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