Factor 5’s Cancelled Wii Pilotwings Game Surfaces, Leaves Us Wondering What If

Factor 5 was a company whose time came way too quickly. It was a team that was devoted to 3D flying/action games, stuff like Rogue Squadron on the Nintendo 64, as well as Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II, which is considered one of the best games in the GameCube era.

The company was scuttled following its work on Lair for the PlayStation 3, but video has recently surfaced of a project that the team was working on before said scuttling, one that could've brought back one of Nintendo's most innovative franchises for the Nintendo Wii – well, spiritually, anyway.

A YouTube user by the name of Liam Robertson (aka the Game History Guy) has posted an extensive video of WeFly, a game that utilized Wii controls to handle a number of vehicles within an open world, across a number of cities, including London, Paris, Madrid, New York City, San Francisco and more.

As you can see from the video, like previous PilotWings games, WeFly utilized a number of vehicles, including a rocket jet, a biplane, a dude wearing a jetpack, a magic carpet (yep, you'd go full-on Aladdin in this game), a hangglider, a parachute and others.

The objectives for the game, based on the brief gameplay video, looked to be the same as PilotWings, including flying through rings, making your way to crucial landing pads to activate them, and more.

This video has never made its way into public view until now, and it leaves us wondering – what would've happened if Factor 5 took over the PilotWings franchise? Not only would it have been rejuvenated, but it would've given the development team the turnaround it needed in the face of Lair's failure.

Alas, we'll never really know why Nintendo turned it down – the game looks to be a ton of fun in concept, especially when you got on the moon and got to control a space crawler. And it also looked like WeFly utilized a photo mode – years before any of the PlayStation 4 games did.

Fortunately, it does look like Factor 5 is engineering some sort of comeback, so you never know – Nintendo could easily bring these guys back to produce a PilotWings game for Nintendo Switch. We certainly hope so – talent like this definitely belongs in the air.