Written by Bob Whitehead and published by Activision in 1982, Chopper Command is a side-scrolling Defender clone with four game modes.

Granted, those four game modes are just difficulty and player settings and don’t really amount to much. There is “Cadet Level” one player and two player, and “Commander Level” one player and two player. There ya go: four game modes! 😉

The aim of the game is to blast your way through as many waves as possible, scoring as many points as you can, and to protect the trucks on the ground at the bottom of the screen. A small radar window (described as a “Long Range Scanner” in the manual) shows the location of enemies – just like in Defender. You can turn the chopper left and right and fire a big blue beam out the front to shoot down attacking aircraft. Your remaining lives are shown in the top left, with your score at the very top.

Playing Chopper Command now, it’s not too bad of an experience. The “scrolling” is something of an illusion, created by the mountains in the background and the trucks at the bottom of the screen, but it works well enough. Controlling the chopper feels quite good and the shooting action is somewhat satisfying, if a little bare-bones and repetitive. Overall, Chopper Command is okay. It’s simple, and not terrible. Which is about as much as you could hope for for a 4K* game!

*= That’s four kilobytes – not 4K resolution! 🙂

More: Chopper Command on Wikipedia