"There is... another... Airwolf..."
SUPER CHOPPER
(Software Super Savers)
At first this might have looked like being rather a humdrum affair with very little to say about it, but thankfully there’s a story behind this game, which pleases me no end, and I am indebted to the omniscient Spectrum Computing site for many of the details which follow, so a big heart to them – what would we do without them? I’d be struggling to put two sentences together probably…
So kiddies, let’s settle down for a nice bedtime story. Once upon a time there was a big friendly monster named Ocean, who lived in the magical land of Manchester. This monster liked to make up games for folk to play, mostly quite good games apart from the odd stinker, and liked nothing better, when they couldn’t think up games in their own head, than to borrow other people’s ideas for games and pay them oodles of money for so doing. This was all hunky dory as everyone was happy with this arrangement. The designers of the games got rich, the monster got rich, and all the little gamer folk got more of those games which they coveted so greedily.
One day Ocean heard about a telly show featuring a little helicopter with shooty guns called Airwolf, and they watched ten minutes of it, and saw that it was good. Well, good enough to base a game on anyway. So they spoke to the people who dreamed up the little helicopter and asked if they could make a game for him to play in. The answer was yes, so the monster put lots of big shouty pictures in all the magazines telling everyone about this miraculous new game of theirs, with lovely big shots of the friendly helicopter himself. And they got a man called Dan to make the game, so off he went with his graph paper, making lots of cute little helicopter sprites and the like. He was happy in his work and all was well.
But then, out of the blue, another monster appeared, a naughty one by the name of Elite. He was big and bad and mischievous, and some would say he was all mouth and no trousers. He too approached the people who owned the little helicopter and offered even more oodles of money than the Ocean monster had done. And the ideas people’s eyes grew big and they agreed to give their idea over to cheeky Elite, forgetting all about poor Ocean. So poor Dan the man had to stop making his little game and the Ocean monster’s face was indeed red, as everyone had been eagerly looking forward to hearing about the escapades of the little helicopter for quite some time.
And as it happened the adventure the Elite creature cooked up for little Airwolf did verily vex the hell out of millions of people, but they made many oodles of spondoolicks out of it, and that was the main thing, wasn’t it? But what happened to poor old Dan the man’s aborted venture? Well, legend has it that Super Chopper by Software Super Savers could well be exactly what happened to it, as it was written by the very same Dan Hartley and has a little ‘Ocean’ label secretly hidden on the loading screen. Well well. Time for sleep now kiddies, the main review is about to start, and it’s not usually appropriate for minors, especially manic ones.
I’d imagine that the forum in Spectrum Computing has already borne witness to the fascinating question of “Which is the best Software Super Savers title?”, since they’ve done everyone else’s, and I think Super Chopper is up there with a chance, at the risk of spoilering this review somewhat. More because of the general ‘quality’ of their output, its other games being the mighty legion of Flip Flap, Fred’s Fan Factory, Freex, Loony Lander, Moonlighter, Shuttle Shock and Ziggurat. Famous names all. S.S.S. was Software Projects’ budget arm and it was fairly short-lived and made virtually no waves whatsoever. S.P. managed to get some high-profile titles out in the early days of the Speccy, including J.S.F.W. no less, but they were on a downward spiral by this time, after Matthew Smith’s initial miracles were drying up.
On the cover of this game is a guy in overalls and a flat cap flying on a magic carpet, while avoiding the eponymous chopper. Why? On closer inspection, I have discovered that most of S.S.S.’s titles feature the very same flat cap wearer. For Shuttle Shock, he’s a spaceman with a flat cap, in Fred’s Fan Factory he’s running around avoiding fans… while wearing a flat cap. For Freex, he’s standing under a nest of eggs while donning said cap of flatness. Moonlighter blah blah blah flying around with big boxes blah blah blah flat cap. Ziggurat yadda yadda stuck in a maze of doors yadda yadda flat yadda cap. My point is why the hell were they trying to promote software to young kids and teenagers by using Fred fookin’ Dibnah? No wonder no-one bought any of the bleedin’ games…
So onto the plot anyway. You play as Peter the pilot, the self-proclaimed 4th emergency service. He sits in his lookout station, primed for his next call to duty (probably playing Call Of Duty to pass the time). On his last mission he rescued some plane crash survivors in amongst rocky enemy territory while dodging hostile missiles. Who the enemy is we don’t know, but does it really matter? He’s a can-do gung-ho kind of a guy, so he loves it. He eats Stringfellow Hawke for breakfast and poops him out at tea-time. Or something suitably macho anyway.
Let’s see how this title measures up to Elite’s masochistic masterpiece then. Sort the keys out, press ‘S’ to start. Oh, a quick blast of that famous 5-noted Close Encounters Of The Third Kind riff, that’s… odd. Anyway, a colourful little vista appears with your whirlybird front and centre. If you ever played Krakatoa or Blue Thunder, you’d be well at home here as it’s similar in looks. You’ve just got to fly around and rescue however many poor souls it tells you to rescue. Self-propelled enemy rockets fly on set paths around the place, static scenery is certainly to be avoided, but strangely clouds also kill you, which seems unfair – they’re soft, fluffy things surely, not hard-edged harbingers of death? Okay, so avoid absolutely everything.
Each area has its own theme, which reminds me of Kosmic Kanga for some reason. First off you play the coast guard and rescue folk from drowning. Then on level 4 you’re the desert patrol guy, who rescues folk from… quicksand possibly and flat cap men flying magic carpets (seems a bit dodgy now), or just getting burned to death. By contrast, level 7 sends you to the Arctic where people are having the opposite problem. Level the tenth takes pilot Pete to NYC, where skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty (or is it Matthew Smith?) are the appropriate scenery. Amusingly stage 13 takes him to Mars – that ‘copter sure is an engineering marvel – where quasi Pac-Men are in pursuit of him. ‘Cos that’s where they live, innit?
So is it easier than Airwolf? Most things in life are, so it’s a big yes. It’s quite therapeutic by comparison, to whizz around and pick up survivors, though everything seems just a little bit too sedate and straightforward. No replenishing walls or enormous death rays or anything. If you leave the controls, your machine just hovers, rather than slowly losing altitude, and while this makes proceedings much easier, it kind of lacks excitement as a result. There’s no scrolling, the screen just jerks over to a new bit when you reach the edge, which is a shame. The number of people to rescue goes up and down randomly I thought, and the obstacles tend to be in the same place on each level, albeit changing graphically every few. And you’ve got a fuel limit, but I never actually ran out, so at least that’s a good safety feature in a helicopter.
And now what I’ve decided to call the aesthetics paragraph. In other words (patronise, patronise) what the game looks, sounds and smells like (a bit dusty in most cases). The graphics are cute if not revolutionary, and the helicopter moves well enough. Colour is used plentifully, but let’s be honest, this game would look fairly ridiculous in monochrome. Soundwise, there’s a constant engine noise which isn’t too irritating, plus several spot effects. When you beat a level, you get the Laurel And Hardy theme tune (obviously) and of course, when you die, you get the obligatory Death March, albeit a funky little rendition to take your mind off dying slightly.
Super Chopper is the opposite of Airwolf really. It doesn’t aim for the stars (until you reach the outer space level), but it also doesn’t make you want to rip your own head off in frustration. It’s pleasant enough and fulfils most of the criteria for an acceptable budget game, but what it lacks is a bit of edge. To add tension, I tried attempting to do a level without losing a life, or sometimes by not firing my own rockets, maverick that I am. And that helped a bit. It’s kind of a shame that Dan the man didn't get the chance to collaborate with the Elite chaps to make a game with the polish of one and the playability of the other. But it all makes for a good story anyway.
SUPERSAVER SCORE
62%
THE GAMES THAT TIME FORGOT: 1984 EDITION
3rd out of 5
