Tiger-Heli

Le jeu

It is the first entry in the Tiger series and the first shoot 'em up from Toaplan. Tiger-Heli (NES) The player controls the Tiger attack helicopter fighting against enemies. The helicopter is equipped with missiles that can hit targets and bombs that destroy any enemy and their bullets within range. Tiger-Heli was programmed by Masahiro Yuge, Tatsuya Uemura, and Yuichirō Nozawa. Their previous work, Performan, was not as successful as the team had hoped. They revisited Vastar (1983) and decided their next project would be a shooter, drawing inspiration from Gyrodine. The staff wanted to create a game that balanced between being stressful and exciting, and to have players keep wanting to play it after dying. The team chose a helicopter as the player's craft as they deemed it suitable for a slow scrolling shooter on a cocktail cabinet. The soundtrack, composed by Yuge and Uemura, was made to convey a sense of bravery, but was hampered by technical limitations. Tiger-Heli was a hit that helped establish Toaplan as a leading producer of shooter games during the 1980s and 1990s. The game's introduction of the bomb concept would also become a staple of the shoot 'em up genre. The NES version sold over a million copies in North America, but received mixed reception from critics. It was followed by Twin Cobra (1987). The rights to Tiger-Heli are owned by Tatsujin, a Japanese developer and licensee formed by Yuge. In 2025, an officially licensed version was released for the Atari 7800. Tiger-Heli is a vertically scrolling shooter game. The player controls the Tiger attack helicopter, fighting against air and ground enemies such as tanks, gunboats, artillery, and aircraft. Other targets include buildings, level crossings, cars, fuel depots, tents, and mine carts. The helicopter is equipped with two weapons: short-range missiles and bombs. The missiles can hit both air and ground targets. The bombs can destroy any enemy and their bullets within range when fired. If enemy bullets hit a bomb carried by the helicopter, it will detonate automatically. The game employs a scoring system; the player's score increases as targets are destroyed. Destroying ground targets also allows the player to discover secrets that provide bonus points. There are three items the player can obtain by shooting cross-shaped bunkers that alternate between green, red, and gray: extra bombs and two small helicopter gunners. Shooting a bunker when it is green will spawn a 'B' icon and the player will be able to re-equip the helicopter with up to two bombs upon pickup. Shooting a bunker when it is red or gray will summon smaller helicopters to join the player's formation on the left or right side, providing additional firepower support. Red ones fire laterally, while gray ones fire forward. The player can recruit up to two units and combine both variants. If the player picks up any item when not needed, it will only award bonus points. The game consists of four stages where the player flies through various terrains. After completing a stage, the player arrives at a helipad and receives bonus points for carrying bombs or small helicopters. The player is given three lives, and additional lives are awarded upon reaching certain score thresholds or destroying ten diamond-shaped blocks. The player is sent back to a checkpoint if they die and the game is over once all lives are lost. In the NES version, the player can resume from the last stage reached using a hidden continue option. After the final stage, the game loops to the second stage with a higher difficulty.