Sky Themed Levels/Games

[Moonface]

Since today is the release of Tears of the Kingdom and that games marketing has had a big focus around sky islands, I thought it'd be neat to discuss other games or levels that use the sky as a setting to some degree. So what are some of your favorites you'd like to share?

Tip Top Gun - Ape Escape 3
I think this is the only sky-themed level in the Ape Escape series, but what makes it memorable for me is that Ape Escape 3's levels are all based on popular shows and movies, and as the name shows this level is meant to be a parody of Top Gun. It also has a banging soundtrack too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqysD2cUk1g

Dreamweavers Homeworld + Levels - Spyro The Dragon
I adore everything about the Dreamweavers section of the first Spyro The Dragon game. The homeworld is awesome, and so are all of its levels of which all are themed as floating high in the sky above the rest of the Dragon Realms. The best of the bunch though is hands down Dark Passage for me, both for its visuals and it has one of the best songs in all of Spyro:

[ShiraNoMai]

I think my first foray with a sky level would be World 5 in Yoshi's Island. The goonies made platforming quite difficult (their hitboxes can be quite finicky to deal with cuz they're small moving targets) which on top of the moving platforms made that the general theme of the world. It starts off with a cold/snowy aesthetic but it moves into the sky stuff quickly, almost like you're going through atmospheres to reach the sky.

Skyward Sword has like, such a (ironically) surface level skyworld. Just feels like it's there for aesthetic purposes rather than putting any thought into how they could be thematically used to design game elements around, ya know?

Tears of the Kingdom seems to have a better grasp on that. I feel like the devs thought a revisit to that idea was worth it for the sequel to Breath of the Wild.

[Moonface]

Skyward Sword has like, such a (ironically) surface level skyworld. Just feels like it's there for aesthetic purposes rather than putting any thought into how they could be thematically used to design game elements around, ya know?

Yeah, I dunno much about the game besides whatever footage I've seen on a stream but any time I've looked at gameplay that takes place on terrafirma I can never really tell whether Link is on an area in the sky or somewhere on the surface. I know there's flight sections but even those look like they could just happen over a regular world rather than anything that is taking place high in the sky.