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Choplifter Developer: Sega? Based on: Real-life military exploits! (As artfully interpreted on Apple ][.) |
After slagging Xenon 2 I promised I'd write about a game I didn't hate, and by crackie I'm going to live up to that. So I dug through my Mighty Retro Stack (TM) and found something nice and safe: Choplifter. Admittedly, I'd never actually played the Master System version of the game, and it's true that SMS shooter ports are rarely of the "Yow! Great!" variety and much more often fall into the "GAH! Meine eyes!" category. But this is Choplifter... and to put a point on it, a home port of the Sega-developed arcade version of the game. How could it possibly be bad?
Well, actually... my SMS experience to date has given me a vivid imagination, so I can think of countless ways a Master System port could be bad. Fortunately, Choplifter managed to avoid them. There's still that controller issue, i.e. the SMS controller sucks. But that's one of those things that hovers over every SMS title like the poisonous smog that suffocates every single person living in Los Angeles. Besides that, I quite enjoyed Choplifter, oddball issues aside. But that may have been a given -- I used to sneak out of my sixth grade class whenever possible so I could run down to the lab and play the Apple II version of the game.
For those unfamiliar with the game -- and you really shouldn't be, since there was a PS2 sequel called Crisis Shield released recently, but apparently no one bought it and you can't even find it on eBay, so I'll allow a bit of obliviousness to its existence. Uh, where was I? Right, Choplifter. It's a shooter with a difference, the difference being that in addition to blowing things up you also have to fly around and save lives. You, the pilot, operate from a landing pad which appears to have been built about fifty meters from the front lines of a terrible war where your pals have been captured. Luckily for the POWs, security is pretty lax and all you have to do is blow off the main doors of the prison complexes, which sets them to rushing out all at once. Then you land your chopper next to them -- but not on them, they squish easily -- let them board, and fly them to safety.
This being a video game, you come under heavy fire from surface-to-air emplacements, very badly flown airplanes sporting a distinctly Soviet look, and other assorted hazards. The goal is to get as many civilians to the safety of your landing pad -- relative safety, I would think, considering its proximity to the front lines -- and the game keeps tally of how many people have been rescued, how many are aboard the chopper and how many have made the journey to that great POW camp in the sky. It's really, really bad to let yourself be shot down with a chopper full of innocents, because they're all added to that unhappy "dead" tally and you feel rotten about it.
It's interesting to note that Choplifter de-emphasizes destruction -- sure, you can blow enemy emplacements sky-high for as long as you want, but you only earn points (and advance between stages) for successful rescues. Destruction is just the means to a positive end. Remember when games were like that? I know, it's weird to me, too.
The one odd playability quirk of Choplifter is the scrolling -- for some reason, unless you're cruising at top speed, the front edge of the screen drifts perilously close to the nose of your chopper and only gives you a decent visual clearance when you pick up speed. If you drift lazily forward, you'll never see where you're going and subsequently find yourself hammered by the bad guys. The only solution is to fly fast, in which case you'll have less time to react to enemy fire... and find yourself hammered by the bad guys. Frustrating? Why yes! But once you work up some decent speed and get the screen to advance as far ahead as it will go, you can tap the controller forward. This maintains a good visual range while still letting you move at a moderate speed. Think of it as the "tap X to run forever" cheat in GTA III, except that instead of getting money for wailing on random pedestrians you're saving their lives. See, doesn't that make you feel all warm inside?
I feel like I should be a lot better at this game -- my brother flies a search-and-rescue chopper for the Navy in real life, and my general badness at the video game version of his job would surely embarrass him to no end. No, actually he'd probably just make fun of me. But shame factors in there somewhere, so close enough.
ANYWAY. Here's a decent OpenGL Choplifter clone: it's free! Unfortunately, while most of the mechanics are in place there's no way to turn your chopper 90 degrees and face into the screen, one of the more interesting elements of the game. Oh, also it only runs on OS X.
Yeah, just think of me as the anti-Sharkey.
Score: I give it four downed MiGs out of five, and I intend to capture the pilots for use as political bargaining chips.