Tiger-Heli an Average Shoot’em Up on the NES

Tiger Heli is an arcade shooter. This is one of the games that I remember renting. My brother picked it out. I think that he thought it said Tiger Hell, but I’m not sure. He always picked out the games when we were little, and I doubt he remembers why he chose what he did.

I remember it being a fun game, but I don’t remember much about it. There were a lot of these types of games that we rented over the years. This game and Iron Tank are the two that stand out to me.

The most notable thing about the game is who made it. Tiger-Heli was made by Toaplan. They made a bunch of very good shooters. This isn’t one of their better ones, but it is a fun weekend rental.

TLDR: A Decent Shoot’em Up that Doesn’t Stand Out.

Gameplay

Tiger-Heli has simple controls, but the movement is sluggish. It’s almost like there is slowdown in the game, which isn’t unusual in an NES game, but it feels different in this game. Avoiding enemy bullets can be difficult because of this slowdown.

The controls are easy. The B button shoots, the A Button is your special attack, and the D-pad moves you around the screen. The special attack/bomb is odd.

You can use the bomb by pressing the A Button, but it will also go off automatically. It is like an automatic defense mechanism. If you’re about to be hit, you might shoot a bomb off instead. This doesn’t always happen and feels random.

You do have some power-ups in this game. You can collect more bombs, lives, and smaller helicopters that act as shields and fire to the side. At the end of each stage, you get bonus points for the number of bombs and small helicopters you have.

You’ll notice that your bullets don’t go very far when you start playing. The enemy bullets travel the whole screen, but your bullets only travel 2/3 of the screen. This encourages you to move around. The game seems to want you to stay in the middle of the screen.

You also have to deal with having a large hitbox. Most of the sprites in Tiger-Heli are big, but it becomes annoying when you get into the later stages, where the enemies get smaller. You do shoot a large projectile, but having a large character sprite makes this game feel more annoying than it needs to.

Like other arcade games, you can only get hit once. This isn’t as much of a problem as not having continues. Tiger-Heli does have extra lives and checkpoints, but not having continues on a home console is annoying.

Not having continues is a common problem for NES games. That is one of the things that makes this an average game.

Overall, the gameplay is fine. It isn’t as bad as other games, and it has the same problems as many NES games. Tiger-Heli was an attempt to bring the arcade experience into the home, and I think it did that for better or worse.

Edit: This was an arcade game. I should’ve checked before I started writing. Regardless of that, somethings should’ve been changed when this was brought to the home console.

Visuals

Tiger-Heli looks like an average NES game. There isn’t anything about it that stands out to me. The graphics aren’t bad, but there are some quality-of-life things added to it.

You know you’re playing a bad Shoot’em Up when you can’t tell what hit you or when the enemy’s bullets blend into the background. The bullets flash red and white and stand out from the backgrounds of mostly grey, green, and blue.

This makes it easy to see the bullets, but it is still hard to avoid them. More on that in the gameplay section. Enemies pop out of nowhere, but they don’t fire right away.

Each enemy has a turret. The turret swings in a direction that it is going to fire, and it is easy to tell where the shot is going to go, but it can be hard to avoid it. The best bet is to move around the screen, but it isn’t as easy as you think.

You can’t move everywhere on the screen. An invisible barrier prevents you from going all the way to the top. This can make things annoying when you’re trying to avoid bullets.

Overall, there isn’t anything that stands out to me. The graphics are fine. Tiger-Heli looks like an average NES game with the same issues as more games on the system from the late 80s.

7/10. This is a fine game that can be fun in short bursts. It doesn’t do anything special, and it has some flaws. It isn’t a bad game, but it isn’t going to wow anyone. This is an average NES game and what you should probably expect from an 80s Shoot’em Up.

Pros

• Decent Graphics
• Decent Gameplay
• Pick-up and Play

Cons

• Slowdown
• Sluggish Movement
• No Continues

Conclusion

Tiger-Heli is an average NES game. I kept wondering what made this game different from 1942 and Stinger. Those are the two games that I can think of to compare to this game.

Nostalgia plays a big factor in why I think 1942 is better than Tiger-Heli. Both games are vertical-scrolling shooters and are fairly basic. However, 1942 feels like a more fair game. The hitbox isn’t so big, and the controls aren’t as sluggish.

Stinger is just a better game overall. It has a few perspective shifts, the power-up system is unique, and it is just a better game. It also had more charm than Tiger-Heli did.

This is one of the games I initially looked for when I started collecting games. I wanted to get all the games I owned and then the games I rented. If I hadn’t rented Tiger-Heli in the early 90s, I wouldn’t have remembered this game.