Reviving this old thread to talk about Choplifter.
This is one of those rare cases where the arcade version actually came after the game itself. The original version was developed for the Apple II in 1982, and then to a bunch of other systems shortly after.
In 1985 they made an arcade port, and in 1986 they release the Sega Master System and Famicom ports.
Well friends, let me tell you.. The SMS version is the version to play. Not only does it look stunning for an 8-bit machine with tons of parallax scrolling, nice sprites, and beautiful colours, the difficulty has been toned down a bit so it’s actually fun to play. With a bit of practice you can wrap the game, and the amount of enemies on the screen is lessened a bit to curb the chaos.
By comparison the Arcade version looks better in some ways, but I much prefer the colours in the master system version. I also prefer the HUD on the SMS vserion.
I don’t find the arcade version plays near as well. Almost like it was designed to be a quarter muncher (shocking, right?). There are often way too many jets and bullets leaving you no choice but to take a death, and the angle your choplifter fires downward is much less steep which makes the control you have over what targets you hit much less accurate. You simply don’t have the time to react and time your shots to hit a specific target, leading to just button mashing at all times.
Arcade
Master System
What are your thoughts? Have you played this version, and what did you think?
