Oooh, they don't like it up 'em!
The release of Medal of Honor in 2000 was the first trickle in what was to become a deluge of WWII-themed franchises, which to some extent still have a hold on the gaming market nearly a decade on. But a decade earlier, in the summer of 1990, the gaming world was focused firmly on WWI, particularly those magnificent men in their flying machines. While Microprose and Sierra offered polished simulations in the form of Knights of the Sky and Red Baron respectively, Cinemaware went a slightly different route. While Wings! may have been technically inferior to its WWI contemporaries, it was chock full of character and atmosphere.
Wings! sees you start out in 1916 as a wet-behind-the-ears rookie, freshly enlisted in the RAF. A couple of training exercises under your belt and it’s time to stick it to the hun! But there are no super heroes here – when it comes down to it, your aim is simply to survive the Great War (i.e., through to 1918, for those of you who bunked off history lessons to nip down the local arcades). This entails some 200-odd dogfights, patrols, bombing- and strafing- missions. In what was a novel approach for the time, failing missions does not signal the end of the game. This is war, after all – some battles you win, some you lose. Thus you’re left with a surprising amount of freedom in how you tackle each sortie: Will you stick to your orders and focus on the primary objective, or do you break formation, chasing personal glory in a few extra kills, but potentially leaving your fellow pilots at the mercy of the boche? Sometimes you’ll simply need to accept that the odds are stacked too far sausage-side, and your best bet is to bail to safety at the earliest opportunity, accepting a failed mission against your name and a harsh reprimand from your CO, but living to fight another day.
Waldo P. Barstormer realises that dodging machine gun fire at 300 ft, with only canvas and balsa wood for protection isn't the worst way to spend the war.
The true heart of Wings!, however, lies in the post-mission diaries. These small snippets of text, delivered in the form of silent-movie intertitles, tell of life on the base and the squadron’s cast of colourful characters, each attempting to confront the harsh brutality of war with a stiff upper lip and a gay scarf. There’s a genuine Saturday-matinee feel here, with drama, comedy and sadness in roughly equal measure. Rarely has a company so lived up to its name as Cinemaware.
