Chopper! Refreshing an 80s classic

Ah, Defender. How many shiny silver coins I wasted in your good name in my youth! For the uninitiated, Defender was a sideways-scrolling shoot-em-up from 1980 in which you controlled a spaceship on an alien planet. The aim of the game was to kill aliens (I believe that was a mandatory sub-plot of all games in the 1980s) and rescue humans, whilst trying to not to crash your spacecraft. Now, in 2009, Kiwi developers Majic Jungle have re-made this classic game in the shape of Chopper for iPhone. But is it worthy of its predecessor?

Just like the 80s original, Chopper is a very simple, uncomplicated game that you can pick up and get into straight away. The controls are very simple and make good use the accelerometer. Tilt up to fly up, tilt down to land, tilt left to… well, you get the picture. Weapons at your disposal include bombs and a machine gun which are a simple tap away.

'Ave it!!

The spaceship and alien landscape have been replaced with a helicopter and good old Earth, and I must say the graphics are very nice and smooth. There is good use of parallax scrolling as trees whizz past in the foreground and buildings are nicely but simply rendered in 3D, giving a good sense of depth. There is also a fairly wide range of settings from snow to rain, cities to wilderness.

Just like the original, the difficulty curve is fairly steep, but at least there are gradients of difficulty to choose from. As well as the normal easy, medium and hard there is a ‘pacifist’ level which is very taxing. On this setting, there are baddies galore but you are blessed with no weapons, meaning your accelerometer skills are really put to the test as you dodge missiles and bullets.

Yeah I meant to do that. You know, for the review.

The sound is pretty good with a good helicopter blade sound effect and lots of satisfying grunts and groans from baddies as you kill them. There is music between levels but not during them, which is a bit of miss as some well-chosen music could have added to the feel of the game even more.

The game remembers where you got to between plays so there’s no starting again from the beginning every time switch on. It also lets you pick up from the last level you got to even when you lose all your lives. If only arcade machines in the 80s were so clever, I’d have been able to afford comics too!

Chopper is priced at $4.19 which is reasonable. It’s a great little game that you can easily get into for a few minutes – it’s definitely one of those doctors-waiting-room or while-the-missus-is-trying-on-clothes games that you can’t really have too many of in my humble opinion. So get to it!

Tags: app, arcade, kiwi, Shoot-em-up
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