The Atari 8-bit home computer version of Dan Gorlin‘s Choplifter was published by Brøderbund in 1982. It came out not long after the Apple II original.

Choplifter is a helicopter rescue game where you have to avoid being shot down, while flying into enemy territory to rescue hostages. Tanks patrol the ground, jets fire missiles at you in the air, and there’s also a satellite that homes in on you.

You pick up prisoners by landing on the ground and waiting for them to run up to you and board the chopper. You’re extremely vulnerable in this state, though, so must immediately take off if threatened.

With prisoners onboard, you must then fly back to base and land on the helipad to offload them. From left to right, the three numbers at the top of the screen show hostages killed; hostages currently carried, and hostages rescued and made safe.

While controlling the chopper feels good, and has a nice inertia to it, the game itself is very unforgiving and will punish you if you go too fast. If you try to simply fly in, without taking your foot off the gas, you’ll run the risk of being shot down by a jet that will appear out of nowhere and fire missiles at you. The satellite can quickly home in and destroy you, even if you’re on your own helipad offloading prisoners, and tanks will immediately appear when you’re on the ground trying to board passengers.

The Atari 8-bit version of Choplifter also ends unceremoniously if you complete the first stage. It doesn’t continue on, which is a pity.

Choplifter on Atari 8-bit home computers is playable and challenging, but it’s not as much fun as other versions of the game. The Sega Master System version, for example, is far superior, as are the sequels, Choplifter two and three.

Note that if you load the game and get monochrome graphics, you need to re-start the game in ‘artifacting’ mode, or use an artifacting monitor if playing on real hardware.

More: Choplifter on Wikipedia