Humpday Gaming: Tiger Heli (NES)
Tiger Heli was one of those games I got out of nowhere as a gift without ever asking for it, and was forced to play it because I was poor and couldn’t afford games. I was also a kid. Kids don’t get shit. Well, at least I didn’t. So any game that came by was poured over with hands that would make any archaeologist proud. Tiger Heli was given to me at Christmas by my Mom’s family. Who, if you remember back a month or so ago, was also responsible for giving me the reprehensible Jaws for Christmas as well. I don’t know what their problem was. Thankfully though, Tiger Heli was a much better game than Jaws could have ever been.
Tiger Heli is essentially just a shooter. There’s nothing special about it at all, except for the fact that you could blow up houses and other shit on the ground for points. Even as a kid I thought that was a pretty huge asshole move. The houses and ships never once shoot at you. And there could very well be innocent people in those houses, living out their daily lives, unaware that a murderous chopper was about to snuff out their entire existence for a few hundred points. Yes, I was genuinely concerned about such things as a kid. Yes, I did need to go outside more.
Beyond that, Tiger Heli got brutally hard. That’s not a big problem, as the majority of every shooter ever made is completely impossible for me to beat. The problem was that Tiger Heli was one of those games that took absolutely FOREVER to ramp up to that difficulty, though. What this produced was me being able to cakewalk through fifteen minutes of the game, only to be completely decimated by a developer that suddenly remembered games are supposed to be challenging at some point. This drove me absolutely mad about Tiger Heli, since I had to sit through a dozen minutes of almost nothing happening, just to get to the parts that killed me. And there was no accelerator on that bitch either. No, you had to wait patiently as the screen scrolled ever so sloooowwwwly to wherever it wanted you to go. God, I’m getting angry just remembering it.
Regardless, Tiger Heli isn’t a bad game. It just takes its sweet time to get rolling. And Hell, as a kid that worried about imaginary people in a house in a video game that didn’t even exist, I had plenty of time on my hands.
Hey, at least it’s not Jaws.
Man I loved this game. They had it at the arcade I would go to and then I was super excited when they ported it to NES. I don’t even remember ever getting that far but something about this game was just awesome. And yeah, eventually just HARD like you described.
Awesome arcade game. Terrible NES port. Would anyone think AKKLAIM could do better?
Holy shit. I’ll never forget this game. Oddly, this was my first game with the NES my parents got me way back when. Well, and mario/duckhunt. I can’t remember if I loved or hate this game, but I can remember every damn noise. Noise of Awesome.