The hell of Tiger Heli

Heli-No.
(image from Moby Games)

Okay, so I started a Toaplan retrospective and have yet to finish it. But I just had to share this phenomenally pissy review of Tiger Heli early, because it's reminding me of my wild days as the editor of The Gameroom Blitz. Also, Tiger Heli just plan sucks. What the hell, Toaplan? If you were going to make games like this, you might as well just go back to Orca and make Springer 2: Spring... Into Crap! 

Toaplan quickly course corrected, making some of the best shooters in the latter half of the 1980s, but good lord, what an inauspicious start to their career.

Yeah, Springer is awful too. It's like Donkey Kong, if Shigeru Miyamoto suffered a head injury while he made it. I mean, continually. 

TIGER HELI

Played: In a tiny hometown arcade, and also the NES

I’ll just put it on the table right now… this game sucks. It was the absolute last resort for bored gamers in my town’s short-lived arcade. When the line for the Choplifter machine went out the door (fair play, it was pretty awesome!) and the pinball machines weren’t doing it for you, your only option was… Tiger Heli. Miserable, life-draining Tiger Heli. The Bremmelo of the ball, the chain-smoking, three hundred pound date that you had to take to the prom, because you just weren’t getting anybody else. (Don’t ask where that metaphor came from.)

You don’t play Tiger Heli. You try to play Tiger Heli, and it actively fights you at every step. The enemies’ shots are much too fast to realistically avoid, hidden bonuses require a million shots to reveal, and the wimpy machine gun you’re given by default jams if you dare to use turbo fire. I’m sorry, I was attempting to save my fingers some grief and find some enjoyment in the game, but I forgot that enjoying yourself is literally punishable by death in Tiger Heli. Did I actually run out of bullets? You do know that this is a video game and I can have as many as I want, right? There’s not a shortage of pixel clusters that look like bullets.

There are power-ups in Tiger Heli. This is a 1985 game, so don’t expect to be blown away by them. In fact, don’t expect to blow anything up with the Mini Helis, revealed by collecting red and white crosses on the playfield. (Red Cross? I have a medical emergency… I have a severe fun deficiency in my blood. I blame Tiger Heli.) You’ll get them, they’ll stick around for a minute shooting tiny bullets either forward or sideways, they’ll get nicked by an oncoming bullet, they blow up, and you’re right back to your original weaksauce shot. Yaaaay.

The power-up mechanics feel a lot like Irem’s Image Fight or Jordan’s Thundercade, and neither game is one I’d regard as a high point in the genre. (No matter what the Japanese think. Sorry not sorry, but Image Fight blows!) This makes Tiger Heli the lead vampire in a family of shooters that suck. Not blood, the other thing. You get the idea.

Tiger Heli isn’t all bad. Mostly, but not entirely. The graphics have a palatable geometric look… they’re simple by Toaplan standards, but effective, particularly the diamonds that peek out of the ground and those vast expanses of ocean with the swirling white peaks. Also, when the Micronics port for the NES came out, nobody could honestly say that it sucked any more than the arcade game. They both suck; the NES port just sucks in an NES kind of way.