Chopper X

Credits

Developed by Paradox | Published by Mastertronic | Programming, game design, music, sound effects: Janko Mršic-Flögel | Graphics: Mungo Amyatt-Leir. The game was apparently released first on the ST before being ported to the Amiga and PC.

Just taking my helicopter for a peaceful spin on a lovely sunny afternoon.

I have to admit Chopper X wasn't a game I spent a lot of time playing, but looking back at it now, despite enduring a few crashes (which may be down to the emulator rather than the game, I have no particular memories of it crashing on the real hardware), it isn't without some merits. The fact that Janko Mršic-Flögel did everything apart from the graphics makes it a pretty impressive achievement on his part.

Taking in the sights... perfectly kept hedge rows... all good here...

As a top-down shooter, it's a bit of an oddity in that the sprites are quite large, making the range of movement feel quite limited. The collision detection is also very unforgiving, which combined with the large sprites means it is a pretty tough game - perhaps fans of the genre who are much better at playing this sort of game will disagree with me, but that's how I see it. Like all games of this genre, much relies on you memorising the attack patterns so you can position your craft (in this case, unsurprisingly, it's a helicopter) in the best way to receive each phase - sadly my brain, while good at certain things, has never been much good at this sort of memorisation. 

None can withstand my might vertical equals sign! Er I mean bullets.

Graphically the look was a bit on the basic side, even for the time, but it's generally clear what you're looking at and I wouldn't say it especially detracts from the game, just makes it look a bit less polished. Everything just looks a little... blocky (but in a 2D way). The game is quite challenging as earlier mentioned, but offsetting this, the movement controls are beautifully responsive. Firing appears to only work in short bursts, I think this is by design. So although the game is hard, it doesn't necessarily feel unfairly - if you really wanted to put the time and effort into getting good at the game, you would be able to.

Just heading out to sea, I'm sure it will be safer there...

The music side is a little bit of an oddity too. Chopper X supports playback through an external device through the MIDI port. Obviously on most devices, it plays back through the Yamaha chip. Since it's sharing the 3 channels with sound effects, this can make the music hang for a fraction of a second - just long enough to be noticeable. In a weird way, this kind of helps stop the music be quite so repetitive, since it's the same theme tune from the intro that plays throughout the game. Anyway, you're concentrating so much on staying alive that the endlessly looping music nowhere near as obtrusive as it should be, somehow!

Overall, Chopper X isn't a terrible game, perhaps not even a bad game, but one that hasn't lasted long in my memory. It's worth a go if you like top-down shooters and are actually good at them!

Maybe not much safer... that explosion is me...

Intro Music

Gameplay Video