Wings

About Wings

Wings (1990) is Cinemaware's First World War flying game, following a Royal Flying Corps pilot from 1916 to the Armistice through dogfights, bombing runs and a wartime diary.

Wings in Depth

The player is a rookie pilot who joins the Royal Flying Corps in 1916 and serves, later in the Royal Air Force, until the end of the war in 1918. Each mission is recorded in a daily diary, and objectives are tied to historical events, such as shooting down famous aces including Manfred von Richthofen. Inspired by the 1927 silent film Wings, the action is varied: dogfights with enemy planes, escorting bombers and bombing runs, flying the plane, firing its machine gun and dropping bombs.

Dogfights are flown from a first-person cockpit view showing instruments and landscape, and a range of aircraft can be chosen, some faster but more lightly armoured, others slower but tougher. Computer Gaming World called it "a whopping good arcade experience ... exciting, novel, and addicting" and the best choice for action gamers among World War I flight games. Retro Gamer later said that "the 3D sections looked absolutely incredible and far in advance of anything that had appeared on consoles, PC or even the arcades at the time", and that its story of a pilot's "eerily realistic wartime experiences" provoked a rare emotional response.

Making Wings

Cinemaware developed and published it for the Amiga in 1990, and it was well received across the press. Computer Gaming World praised its "masterful combination of arcade action, flight simulation, and cinematic story", and GamesMaster ranked it 68th in its Top 100 Games of All Time in 1996. Raylight Games made Wings Advance in 2002, which averaged 80 on Metacritic. A 2012 Kickstarter for an HD remake raised only $51,740 of its $350,000 goal, but a second campaign in 2013 succeeded, and Kalypso Media released Wings! Remastered for Windows and macOS in October 2014.