257. Tiger-Heli (Micronics, Famicom, 1986)

Tiger-Heli is the Famicom port of an arcade game by Toaplan released the previous year. Toaplan is now known as a developer of some of the most formative early scrolling shooters, and Tiger-Heli was their first. The Famicom port by Micronics (who also ported game# 214, Exed Exes) does a pretty good job of mimicking the arcade version, though it does lack some of the depth and detail. This being an early Famicom game, nothing looks amazing, though the game uses a lot of bright, solid colors, to its benefit.

Gameplay is pretty standard for a scrolling shooter of the time: you have a standard shot that goes forward or a limited bomb that covers a much wider area and protects you from enemy attacks. Like other shooters of the late 80s, your vehicle's hitbox is huge, which makes survival more dependent on memorization than fun dodging. Enemies pretty much exclusively will aim in whichever of the 8 cardinal direction is closest to you and fire a single shot, so there isn't much going on in terms of engaging enemy patterns either. That said, Tiger-Heli brings enough small tweaks that keep it from being just another Famicom scrolling shooter.

One of my favorite parts of scrolling shooters is destructible environments, so I was delighted to see those used copiously in Tiger-Heli. Even if it is just the same smoldering crater sprite that gets pasted oin top of stuff I shoot, blowing up the environment feels good, and lends a nice bubble wrap popping texture to a game that otherwise typically has 0-2 enemies on screen at a time. There are also pickup icons that you can shoot that will drop extra bombs or a small backup helicopter, as well as symbols that grow and shrink, and can be shot at maximum size for bonus points. Most interestingly for the time, your bombs will deploy as soon as you are hit, avoiding an instant death. This is a common (and merciful) feature in a lot of modern shooters or reissues of older shooters, but I never would have expected to see something like this in a game from 1986.

3/5, a vertical shooter with a lot of good ideas, brought down by a large hitbox / slow movement