Kaze no Notam

released on Sep 11, 1997

Kaze no NOTAM - NOTAM of Wind is a hot air balloon simulator in a fantasy setting. As a hot air balloon operator you'll be left mostly to the mercy of the winds having no control over your balloons movements on the X or Y axis. Only the Z is open to you by letting off your burner and ascending or releasing hot air and lowering yourself to earth. The wind changes at different altitudes, you'll be aware of the way it's blowing at every height thanks to a wind compass on the right side of the screen, so you'll have to make shrewd use of it to get where you're going.


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tfw fell for the kaze no notam meme

Incredible vibe game, and one that manages to create this feeling through the bits of imprecision and loss of control, rather than being a seamless, effortless experience to get anything done. You'll frequently find yourself drifting off course regardless of how well you do, with progress often backsliding thanks to the ever changing winds, but this works in the game's favour once you allow yourself to just, abandon the concept of actually trying to win in favour of taking in the atmosphere. Kaze no Notam makes slight setbacks inevitable, and it gives a sense of your movements being dictated by the whims of nature, which rapidly dissolves from a point of irritation into reinforcing the that you need to just accept where the game takes you and take in your surroundings instead, you can't do anything to fix the situation currently, so you might as well make the best of it. The objectives the game gives you just exist to facilitate some very loose sense of direction, but aren't really something that feel like anything more than a secondary element to go alongside the main appeal of getting players to chill out in a balloon, peacefully being separated from the world below. Utterly gorgeous game that encapsulates my favourite elements of the PSX aesthetic better than almost anything else.

the cities are pretty, the gameplay stresses me out. the music is too paced and of-a-time for this to be as free as you and i would like it. it goal-orients my brain; i NEED to saunter along to the circle on this lovely peaceful evening with slight rain. silence would actually make this free and peaceful but. instead uve got manufactured chillout music behind manufactured chillout missions neither of which actually allow you to chill out unless you are respectively very vaporwave-poisoned and logistics-hearted. like im talking sitting around in your air-conditioned home and thinking that all of human history was oriented towards the contemporary zenith of comfort we can get in exchange for maintaining some inane set of molecular trivia composing the organs and body of this so-called life. go drive out for as long as it takes to leave light pollution n when the earth is totally enshrouded get out lie down look up and ask god if here in this life of a million little breaths under a billion little dots there is anything to manage or not to manage. once ur done we shld hit up a waffle house, put the backseats down and sleep

Backloggd mfs will really hype you up to play a blimp simulator

I want everyone to actually sit down and find it in themselves to meet this game on its own terms, which should be pretty easy to do with its stellar soundtrack holding you aloft better than any balloon or weed gummy ever could (the latter might help tho)

Kaze no Notam is beautiful, even if the "game" part of it is nonsensical; in a way I'm glad it gives zero heed to the players needs or wants at any moment. More and more I find games having complete indifference towards the player to be more and more attractive, and I don't just mean that they're brutally unfair execution tests but rather that they just continue to operate. I think Rain World embodies this the best, but this is way up there too in that field alone. I feel that my rating is a bit high but I don't really care, most I may do retroactively is make it an 8/10.

It's with this game that I must finally admit, the og PlayStation was absolutely the star of the 5th gen consoles. I don't know how I can argue otherwise anymore even with the handful of party games the Nintendo 64 had under its belt. Where Nintendo raised an Ocarina of Time to combat the Final Fantasy, they bring nothing when the likes of Kaze no Notam and Moon show up.

Shoutouts to Detchibe for bringing up this game thrice in the Backloggd Discord's Game Of The Week events to finally get it in the spotlight.

In a word: Luxuriate.

     'There was an old Man of the Hague, whose ideas were excessively vague; he built a balloon, to examine the moon, that deluded Old Man of the Hague.'
     – Edward Lear, A Book of Nonsense, 1846.

Played during the Backloggd’s Game of the Week (22nd Aug. – 28th Aug., 2023).

After his cycles of paintings on family and parties, dedicated to the study of interpersonal relationships, Michael Andrew spent several years developing a very refined meditation on the theme of air. He called this series 'Lights', which consists of a series of landscapes over which a hot air balloon flies. It hovers over the English countryside, over a river, through a city lit by the glow of the night, and so many other places before finally arriving at the sea. Lights VII: A Shadow (1974) is an ecstatic, dizzying work. The composition is divided between the sand, the sea and the sky, while the green shadow of the balloon stretches across the lower part of the canvas. Andrew's use of acrylics renders this landscape seemingly abstract, making it look sunburnt, like an old photograph.

For Andrew, the balloon represents the ego, and each painting is a way of pursuing inner meditation through exposure to the sensory world: 'the balloon was a metaphor for the self as it dispenses with the ego, gradually attaining spiritual enlightenment in the process. The balloon is thus present in the first three paintings in the cycle but absent from the next three. In the seventh and last painting only its shadow is represented' [1]. Andrew's contemplation is rooted in his singular relationship with the world, steeped in Zen philosophy and fascinated by the scientific advances of the twentieth century. To some extent, his 'Lights' series retains some of the realist features of his formative years.

Detchibe has explored the ways in which Hiroshi Nagai's work shapes a situated perception of the 1980s: it is necessary to correlate these ideas with the declinist discourse that haunted the Lost Decades following the collapse of the Japanese economic bubble at the end of the 1980s. Gradually, the positive valence attached to companies and work was eroded by at least three factors perceived by Japanese society and highlighted by the media: a relaxation of labour laws that allowed companies to employ part-time workers, leading to a sense of 'unemployment within the company' (shanai shitsugyo); critical difficulties for young people to enter the labour market; and the collapse of the myth of social equality with the disappearance of the middle class of office workers [2]. This frustration was clearly expressed by Artdink with the release of Aquanaut no Kyūjitsu (1995), which follows a burnt-out oceanographer who tries to reconnect with the environment by exploring the sea with a deliberately meditative approach.

Kaze no NOTAM also suggests a return to a certain serenity, but with a focus on contemplation rather than exploration. The player is invited to fly over different environments at different times of day, accompanied by a soundtrack that echoes the city-pop aesthetic that was in decline at the time. Kaze no NOTAM recontextualises inactivity, turning it into an opportunity for introspection, as the balloon is subject to the uncertainties of air currents, without the possibility of changing its course in detail. For workers, the unemployed or young people at a loss for meaning, the title suggests taking the time to question the reasons for existence and the value of time, conjuring up an optimistic view of a golden age recently lost: the only thing that counts is the present. Among the most striking moments in Kaze no NOTAM are some breathtaking vistas. Flying over a canopy bathed in the rays of the sinking sun has a special magic, as does seeing the northern lights overhanging the long skyscrapers in the glittering city heavens.

Like Andrew's 'Lights' series, the game offers semi-abstract scenes thanks to the sharp PS1 edges of the topography: the title leaves it to the player's imagination to fill in the picture. The variety of environments also allows for a real progression in the meditation exercise. It is surprising, however, that Kaze no NOTAM places such a strong emphasis on objectives; while Aquanaut no Kyūjitsu involved building a coral reef, finding artefacts was an underlying product of the organic exploration of the seabed. In Kaze no NOTAM, the mere selection of an objective in the main menu distorts the idea of an unfettered meditation, especially when certain modes impose a time limit. The player can, of course, ignore these targets – after all, the point is simply to fly. As Andrew, eternal dreamer of another world, noted when he borrowed a Rosalie Sorrels song for a tentative title of his paintings, Up Is A Nice Place To Be (1967), 'the best' even [3].

__________
[1] Richard Calvocoressi, 'Michael Andrews: Air', in Gagosian Quaterly, Spring 2017.
[2] Andrew Gordon, 'Making sense of the lost decades: Workplaces and schools, men and women, young and old, rich and poor', in Yoichi Funabashi, Barak Kushner (ed.), Examining Japan's Lost Decades, Routledge, London, 2015, pp. 77-100.
[3] Richard Calvocoressi, op. cit.