Toaplan's Tiger-Heli is rightly regarded as one of the most influential shmups of all time, so it's somewhat surprising that it hasn't been ported to more home consoles. For many years, Micronics' much-maligned NES port was the only way to experience it outside of the arcade, and while it has made its way onto several compilations in subsequent years, the lack of '80s ports is curiously at odds with Tiger-Heli's sizeable impact on the genre.
One console which really could have done with a port of the game back in the day was the Atari 7800, which struggled to replicate the commercial performance of its forerunner, the 2600. Thankfully, Atari and Plaion – with assistance from the super-talented programmer Bruno Steux – have corrected this oversight a few decades down the line.
Published with Toaplan's blessing (well, it's technically Tatsujin's blessing, the company founded by former staffer Masahiro Yuge, which owns the IP), the Atari 7800 version of Tiger-Heli is a towering technical achievement, even if it pales in comparison to the original arcade version. In terms of gameplay and challenge, it's as close a match as you could possibly hope for on a console designed in 1984 – the year before Tiger-Heli arrived in arcades.
Outside of the visual downgrade, the fact that the playing area fills the screen horizontally rather than vertically is the most significant difference, but it never feels like it impacts the action too much. Your craft is capable of firing bullets and launching bombs; these can also be detonated by enemy shots, depending on where they hit your chopper (oo-er).
Mini-helicopters can be collected, which fire either vertically or horizontally, and these are massively helpful when it comes to tackling the waves of ground-based enemies which flood the screen. If you collect enough bonus items, you'll earn an extra life.
As a 7800 game, Tiger-Heli is undeniably impressive; you can certainly see the original coin-op's visual design shining through, despite running on humbler hardware. It even includes a POKEY chip for music, which is pretty incredible for a 7800 soundtrack. The elephant in the room is the fact that it's not 1985 anymore, and there are other, superior ways to experience Toaplan's shmup debut.
It's on the PS1 as part of Toaplan Shooting Battle 1, and, more recently, came to modern platforms in M2's Kyukyoku Tiger-Heli. You can also play it on the Evercade family of systems via Toaplan Arcade 1. All of these ports are arcade perfect, which renders the 7800 version somewhat redundant, unless you're in the (very unlikely) position of only having a 7800 in your home.
Still, that's rather missing the point; there are plenty of Atari fans out there who love to see the company's vintage hardware pushed to new limits – and it's fun to see the 7800 stretch its legs with such a robust, enjoyable and downright difficult shooter.
Comments 11
Felt like a comparison to the NES version was a critical part of doing this review.
Thanks, Wade
Still confused how Plaion is making these things (and how they're more readily available than LRG's modern console releases. You know, the ones with the user count in the millions? Funny that, isn't it?)
Although pixel-perfect arcade emulation is now easy to find, there's still some joy in seeing how hard developers worked to squeeze games into less powerful hardware. It was such a different era. There was no middleware. Everything was built from the ground up for each console. Sometimes games would even be improved in translation (does anybody prefer arcade Contra to the NES version?).
It was a time when consoles left their unique hardware fingerprints all over the software they ran. It gave consoles personality, and I'll always love that. Nowadays, we carry on about subtle differences between ports that no normal human would even detect if not for Digital Foundry slowing down the footage and pointing them out.
No shade for DF, mind you. Love their work. It's just evidence of radically different time and tech.
The Toaplan comps also have a standard physical release on Switch and PS5, just ordered both Switch collections.
Definitely better than the NES port.
I love to play ports on different consoles.
If I wanna play the arcade version, then there are "billions" of other choices to do so.
Wonder what would have happened, if the US videogame crash didn't happen, and the 7800 was released in 1984, as original intended.
And if it had more recent arcade ports, from the era, instead of just releasing yet another bunch of ports of Asteroids, Centipede and Ms Pac Man.
Commando was amazing on the 7800, yet another one, beating the NES version.
Same with Ikari Warriors (except the music)
Would love to see more new arcade ports for the 7800.
@Exerion76 The 7800 was more powerful than the NES, and as is common with Atari hardware, sported vastly better color. It was demonstrated that the 7800 could take on R-Type too. If you have studied the 7800 hardware, you'd notice how much more flexible the 7800 was compared to the NES, offering so much more freedom to make games. It was just the shared memory bus that made things a bit difficult, because thats where you really had to optimize your code. Bruno Steux who did this Tiger-Heli port, talked about that, and his code in this game is so tight, and refined, he was able to pull off full screen vertical resolution, and still maintain 60fps and make the game 99.9% flicker free.
@KrunchyTC
Thanks for the info, now I really wished, that Capcom and Konami would have made plenty of games for it, in the 80:s.
Imagine what Castlevania, Contra, Gradius, Mega Man etc, could have looked like, on the 7800.
@Exerion76 Agreed. All those games were indeed easily possible on the 7800, and they wouldn't have had any flicker. And would have had better color too. And I imagine that 3rd party Japanese devs in the 80s would have also chosen there own sound chips too, since the 7800 can be easily equipped with any sound chip within the cartridge.
My copy just came today! Haven't popped it in yet, but Folks at Atari age were so excited about it, I had to check it out myself.
More like this.
Technically, 7800’s (and to an extent, 2600’s) are somewhat more accessible thanks to their 2600 and 7800 + units. They may be on the pricier side of things but thankfully not nearly as much as say a switch 2
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