"Classic gaming at its finest."

Ah yes, a game that I grew up with. Choplifter is one of those titles that really brings back the memory and the true gaming feel of blowing up whatever is in your way and rescuing hostages, only to take them back to base! The story line isn’t all that much, in which you pilot a chopper and have to rescue hostages that are being held throughout various locations. The action of the game is more or less just making sure that you avoid whatever is coming at you, and that you rescue as many of the hostages that you can without getting them killed in the process. Considering that there are several different stages that you can traverse through, the main focus of the game rests on the extreme challenge that comes about later on in the late stages of this title. For those of you who have played ‘classic’ games throughout your life, you’ll find that there is nothing here that shows more classic gaming quality, and for those who have never had the pleasure of playing Choplifter, there is a certain amount of addictiveness that can be found here, resulting in several hours of good old fashioned game playing.

The game play is strictly your run and gun fashioned game play in which you pilot a chopper through several different locations to pick up hostages and return them to base. The challenge of the game however, is to try and avoid the incoming fire that comes at you from each and every turn. Through the different stages, you’ll have a set amount of hostages that you can pick up with your chopper, forcing you to return to base as often as you must to drop of these hostages and ultimately complete the level! As you go through the game, the requirement of how many hostages you have to pick up rises, and you may find that in later stages, you can’t make a single mistake if you want to be able to proceed. Now this is where the actual challenge of the game comes in, in which you have to make sure that you destroy everything around the bases that contain the hostages. Because of the enemy AI, you’ll find that if you don’t do these strafing runs to clear out an area, the enemies will then start firing on the unarmed hostages and kill them, preventing you from a better stage ending.

The control that you find here in Choplifter is pretty simple, and you’ll find that most of the game is spent just traveling back and forth through the different locations, firing on whatever looks dangerous and then picking up the hostages. What you’ll find though, with some of the more enemy filled stages is that the NES controller doesn’t quite have all of the precision or even the more intricate turning that you would hope for, resulting in a couple of cases of getting shot down! Picking up the hostages is nothing more advanced than just moving down in the stage and allowing the hostages to run into your chopper, but again, you have to move them back to the base and unload them there. Honestly, it’s easy enough that any gamer of any age can pick up the control and start playing without having ten years of experience in the action gaming genre.

Visually, the game is about as crisp and clear as an NES game can get without stepping into later formats such as the SNES. The locations all reflect the different environments that you travel through, from the baked deserts to the dark caves beneath the earth. All of this small details and visuals make up for a rather impressive looking action game that is hard to find for a system such as this! The chopper that you pilot doesn’t really look like much, and it does tend to resemble one of those old school choppers that you may have seen in the old army series MASH on television. Even with that aside, the character animations and otherwise look pretty cool, and as the game moves on into later stages, you’ll find differences that you can really take notice of.

Audio wise, the game has this type of adventure music that really puts enough feeling into the theme and overall goal of the game, but doesn’t do much else to make you remember what it has to offer. Each of the stages has their own little bit of flare to them, and it does tend to make you stop and think about the location that you’re adventuring through, but there is little else here that will make much of an impact on the senses! The sound effects are also limited in what you’re hearing, in which the most prominent sound effect available is the game is machine gun fire. Of course, you have your assorted sounds of explosions and otherwise that come through in different situations, but if you can get used to the constant sound of that tinny gunfire, then you’ll find yourself right at home.

Choplifter is one of those games that really doesn’t have a set genre, and has all of the elements of a good action game. When you take into effect the basis and plot of the game, what your goal is and all of the locations that you run through, it’s hard to find another game this old that presents itself the way that this title does! With easy to use control that doesn’t take a rocket scientist to learn, any gamer can just pick up the control and work with the game without having to learn anything too advanced. Visually, the game can start out at a slightly average presentation, but again, it only gets better as the game progresses which is another plus. The audio is something that could have been worked on though, with the game trying to work out the system audio and coming up at just the right point. When you place all of these smaller functions into the game and then tack a name such as Choplifter onto it, you’ll find that the game was well ahead of its time and spawned a ton of sequels that were just as fun and addicting to play!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/02/02, Updated 01/02/02