When I was a young gamer (showing my age here) the arcades were nothing like they were during the high times of the 90’s etc. Instead of big fighters like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat etc. there were games like Kung Fu Master, Galaxxian, Galaga and Frogger. Back then you could be worshiped by little kids like myself as a god-gamer if you could flip the score on Defender etc. Well one guy in our local arcade was a god, I remember his initials only since he never spoke, it was “IAN”. Anytime a new game would come out IAN would ace it and we would sit around the machine in awe of his skills. IAN was the player who made me love Tiger Heli, for the rest of us gamers it was such a hard game but he would dance between the enemy’s bullets like it was nothing and I wanted to have that kind of dexterity.

When Tiger Heli came out for the NES the graphics weren’t as awesome as I remembered them but the gameplay was close enough for the muscle memory to kick in. It lacked the loud bass of the engine sound that would echo whenever you’d drop your coins in and as with all NES converts from the arcade, it went from realistic to super colorful. Still it was a good enough transitions to garner hours of game play and help hone my “shooter” skills for future hardcore followers on better systems. Tiger Heli is not only a kickback to the classic arcade for me, I consider it to be one of my first forays into military gaming. Wow it seems so long ago… wait it is, never mind.