Find me a successor to Sky Odyssey?

May 8, 2010 4:52 PM

One of the favorite games of all time is Sky Odyssey, which was (if memory serves) a launch title for the Playstation 2. It was what could best be described as an "adventure flight simulator", in that the player piloted his aircraft (the default, and first in an eventual large roster of craft, was a bi-wing prop) through somewhat fantastic environments such as canyons and caves, and performed improbable tasks like refueling from a moving railroad, or piloting a plane with floats along an incredibly rapid, treacherous river. Can anybody suggest a flight sim (non-combat is preferred) for Windows PC with a similar focus as that?
posted by The Confessor to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (6 answers total)

It's very VERY old, but what you want is Stunt Island. You'll find it on the various abandonware sites, but you might have to jump through some hoops to get it running and you'll get it in all its 320x200 glory.

But the story part of the game has you landing on moving trains, parachuting into stadiums, pooping eggs on miscreants as a duck, doing various landings and whatnot.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:49 PM on May 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

You might also look for Crimson Skies on the PC.
posted by mattholomew at 7:50 PM on May 8, 2010

Stunt Island was friggin' awesome.

Also, I just bought a copy of X-Plane. While it's a totally bone standard flight simulator, with no real "goals" built in, it's also fantastically awesome. The physics are damn-near perfect. And it comes with a program to let you build your own airplanes. Mind you, the PlaneMaker software is quite complex, and it's as difficult to build a stable plane there as it is in real life. But, it's quite awesome.

Oh, and it has helicopters!
posted by Netzapper at 8:38 PM on May 8, 2010

Crimson Skies was the first thing that popped into mind when I read the question, too; it's got combat, but it also has a lot of fantastic environments and missions that focus on interaction with it. The combat is not nearly as hardcore as most flight simulators – it's supposed to be like playing a pulp aviation-adventure novel, with a pretty sizable focus on doing stunts.

Plus, autogyros!
posted by The Bridge on the River Kai Ryssdal at 10:59 PM on May 8, 2010

If you haven't already tried it, Google Earth has a flight sim mode, and it does support joysticks.
posted by AugieAugustus at 4:39 AM on May 9, 2010

PilotWings for the SNES is another in the genre. Available via the Wii virtual console store.

Played the heck out of that game back in the day. If you find what you're looking for, be sure to come back and share it with the rest of us!
posted by notyou at 8:22 AM on May 9, 2010