Choplifter!

The Good
The graphics and animation were extremely detailed for 1982. The hostages would run and wave as your helicopter passed by them, the flag at your base fluttered in the breeze, and everything was well drawn and colorful.

The gameplay was even better than the graphics. You controlled a rescue helicopter. One joystick button fired your cannons and the other switched the facing of your helicopter. Unlike other helicopter games, you could actually fly backwards or sideways if needed. Rescuing hostages was no easy feat. It was very easy to accidentally crush the hostages as you landed, shoot them while trying to kill tanks, get hit by the roving tanks before you took off, or get killed by missiles from the planes in the sky at the higher levels. Even more frustrating was filling your helicopter up and accidentally crash-landing at your base, losing the helipcopter and all hostages inside. Scoring in the game was simply done: the game kept count of the number of hostages rescued and number of hostages killed. It was nearly impossible to successfully rescue all 64 hostages. Even once you got good at the game, 48 rescued was a great score. (My best ever was 56 and I played this game to death)

The Bad
There is nothing not to like about this game.

The Bottom Line
In Choplifter, you have to pilot your helicopter across the border into hostile territory to rescue 16 hostages held in prison camps per level. Opposing you are enemy tanks, which shoot at the escaped hostages and your helicopter when it is on the ground, jet fighter patrols which shoot deadly missiles at you, and on the later levels, flying mines that home in on your position for the kill.

The Good
Choplifter features engaging music, colorful and exciting environments, fast and challenging gameplay, and a whole lot of stress! Your goal is to pass over enemy territory, blow open a base with your machine gun, and airlift escaped POWs back to your base. The first level is a desert battleground, the second an upland mountain region, the third is at sea (where you land on battleships and have subs firing on you), and the fourth features a horrible cave with stalactites and stalagmites looming all around. Suffice to say I never made it past this level but from what I have read it was the last one.

The Bad
I owned this game as a kid but rarely played it. It was more an ordeal than a fun experience. When you land your helicopter to rescue hostages, you will crush and kill them if you don't land beside rather than on them. Machine gun fire is hard to spot (being a pixel or two large), enemy planes and missiles come flying at you at great speed with barely any warning -- this game is a real nightmare, highly stressful, and not at all addictive.

The Bottom Line
A challenging and marginally-rewarding action game from 1986. I'll be happy to live a thousand years and never play this dreadful cartridge again.

The Good
While you must destroy and kill in self-defence, this game is about rescuing i.e saving lives and I think one feels more like a medic than an airforce pilot(your little pilot wears a red shirt, while the little POWs wear blue). It requires a lot of precision to control the chopper, dodge the enemy, land to take on passengers and avoid shooting POWs. Sega's arcade remake of Dan Gorlin's original has great haunting music giving the gameplay a sense of desperation (I'm not sure if the composer has been confirmed, but my guess is that it was Hiroshi Miyauchi-Kawaguchi for its resemblance to HangOn's music). I like the four stages i.e the scenes/backgrounds, first the desert, the ocean, then forest/cavern and finally the city with it's futuristic look.

The Bad
A lot of arcade games demand time, money and effort, just to past the first stage, but Choplifter is one of the most demanding. One thing I particularly didn't like was that when your chopper is shot down and lands on top of an anti-aircraft gun, the gun isn't destroyed, which I think is rather stingy of the developers. A more decent development team might have given the player a little consolation for being shot down.

The Bottom Line
A great game to watch and listen to, exciting to play, but draining. In the present day, there would be no shame in playing a home ported version and maybe using save states or altering the difficulty level.