 When I first set out to do these video reviews of Super Nintendo games, one goal I had in mind was to eliminate the at-the-time aspect. Yes, context is important, but I only cared about how games held up over time, and whether or not they are worth playing today, not how they were received 20 years ago. However, there are two games in particular where you simply can't ignore the at-the-time aspect. Pilotwings and SimCity for the Super Nintendo. I'll start with Pilotwings, it's designed to be a flight simulator predicated on the most realistic physics any console game could produce at the time. Uh-oh, there's the phrase at the time. So of course, the natural conclusion then is that this game has been rendered obsolete and is a waste of time now since there are other flight sims that run circles around this game, right? In this game, I don't think so. Pilotwings has held up well over the years because of its overall presentation and straightforward approach. No frills, not a lot of bells and whistles, just straightforward, here's what you need to do, here's how you do it, now go do it. There's a biplane, a hang glider, a jetpack, as well as skydiving. It's a pretty simple game overall. You just fly through the rings and land safely, easy enough, right? Uh, actually, no. That's the other appeal of this game, the difficulty. This is right up there with Hagane and Super Ghouls and Ghosts, one of the hardest games on the Super Nintendo. That might turn people away, but I think the challenge is ultimately pretty rewarding. It's not like the game is unfair, the controls are responsive, and passing each test is always a matter of practice, although many tastes take a lot more practice than others. So yeah, in the case of Pilotwings, it's a sim game that holds up well, even though there's stuff like the N64 and 3DS versions, the SNES version is still worth playing. Onto SimCity, a game in which the title pretty much says it all, you build and simulate a city. As a PC ported game, this was as good as you could hope for at the time. There isn't a lot of slowdown when you're working in real time, unless you're on that map selection screen, Jesus. Everything looks and sounds great, especially the music. You can either build your own city from scratch or play out a scenario where you solve a problem involving a disaster of some kind, including a metropolis under attack by Bowser. Man, I love this game as a kid. However, I'm afraid in this day and age, the original SimCity just doesn't have a whole lot to offer anymore. It's always so difficult for a game this ambitious to age gracefully on its own. The idea of the game, however, lives on in much more detailed incarnations like SimCity 4. I will say this though, if you're really jones in for a SimCity game on the Super Nintendo, you're better off with the original over SimCity 2000, which of course is a failed PC port. That game is just way too slow to be worth playing at all nowadays. Just moving your mouse cursor across the screen takes forever. Thankfully, that's not the case with the original, which moves pretty quickly. Much like Pilotwings, however, SimCity is very challenging, and that always has its own appeal. Building a city on your own without the money code is really, really hard. It's so easy to just blow all your money right away, and then it's just like, well, now what do I do? I just sit there and stare at your city and hope the tax money piles up. At least with the money code, you can build shit until you run out of room. But even then, it's like, well, not much else I can do here except blow it up. So yeah, Pilotwings, I say give it a go. It's held up pretty well, but SimCity, eh, there's not much point because you can find the same idea executed much better in later games.