Despite its simplicity and archaic gameplay, it manages to actually have a decent bit of depth and good bit of challenge. Routing is very much important here, lest the screen get absolutely flooded with bullets. The shot has a very short range, which means you must be quite aggressive, but all enemies (except the few simple "bosses") go down with a single shot, which is quite satisfying. Powerups consist of a forward shooting option, side shooting option, and a bomb, but any of these are hit a single time and they are gone. It also introduces a lot of mechanics for the first time such as auto-bombing and screen clearing bomb.

I feel like this is actually a great starting shmup for anyone interested in the genre, because it so quickly teaches and emphasizes many basic mechanics such as routing, aggressive play and point-blanking, needing certain powerups, saving bombs for a certain section, etc. into such a short and simple game. The fast and tracking bullets that will flood the screen if enemies are not dealt with, the slow ship speed, the short range shot; all of these work together to reinforce these ideas and they will force you to play in the proper way, with no real crutches to help you out.

It certainly does have its flaws and show its age; minimal enemy variety, nonexistent projectile variety, no environmental hazards, and it is necessity to memorize enemy spawns for high level play.

But ultimately, there is such a particular rhythm, flow, and inherent satisfaction to the core gameplay when played at a high level that few games come close to replicating.

The period from 1985-1987 was a seminal era for the Shmup. Whilst games from before 85 are very occasionally pretty decent, notably Robotron 2084 and Mad Planets, games like Gradius, R-Type, Darius, Twinbee, Fantasy Zone and Hizousame really codifying many things like general game structure, gameplay loops, use of music and various other tropes little things that add up to give late 80s games a very different feel to them to games not even 3 years old.

Tiger Heli is interesting in that in part it feels like one of these redefining shmups whillst at the same time feeling extremely old and simple. With an extremely limited enemy variety (there's like legitimately 4 different enemies in this game and 90% of what you will face are identical tanks), music which loops legitimately every 20 seconds, and frankly, it looks like shit.

But at the same time, the game design approach here, particularly in regards to level design, is way more modern and actually pretty good. The combination of an extremely slow ship, almost all bullets being aimed at the player, and a very short attack range for the player gives the game a puzzley edge and puts an extreme emphasis on working out a good route and taking a more strategic approach to each stuation, especially in the later levels.

On top of this, there is the bullet-clearing bomb, which this game actually was the first to introduce. It's value here is way more offensive than the typically defensive bombs of modern games, as they're basically the only way to quickly clear out groups of enemies, which adds a nice layer of resource management and gives more options in the routing, as well as just being satisfying to lose.

And generally, I think the game is a good time. Honestly it's pretty remarkable how solid the level design is and how well it still kinda plays considering it was both Toaplan's first shooting game and its 36 years old - but it is also extremely limited.

The level design is pretty strong, but there's only 4 of them, and once you have figured out a route... the game's kinda over. There's very little room for freedom as well due to the heli's very low speed, and so many of the enemies are just the same tank which behave identically. The game's simplicity is neat, but much like games like Xevious, the sheer amount of copy-pasted assets and enemies gets a bit much, and the game doesn't have the incredible core twitchy gameplay that could make it work long term.

Oh, and I did mention the presentation was awful, right. The NES version of this game looks like a dumpster fire and the Arcade version isn't much better. And whilst the standard background music is legitimately nice, the background music whilst you've got a little-heli - something that preferably you would always want - is an astonishingly annoying and prompts me to play the game on mute.

Overall, I feel Tiger Heli just about holds up the test of time, at least if you've got a mind towards exploring the curiosities of gaming past. The strong level design bolsters the game high enough for at least a few credits, which is probably more than can be said for frankly the vast, vast majority of shmups of the era. And it's an early window into some of the magic that Toaplan would produce in the following years.

Boa parte do tempo é só muito chato, todos os inimigos possuem o mesmo padrão de balas miradas, e a única coisa que muda, é onde eles estão posicionados, o que deixa a situação mais complicada, já que o posicionamento em si também é problemático. Um dos maiores problemas desse jogo, é a velocidade e a hitbox da nave, muitas vezes a tela enche de balas, fazendo com que você tenha que esperar os caminhos se abrirem para passar entre elas, mas muitas vezes, esses fatores tornam reagir a isso muito complicado, morri várias vezes por estar tentando passar no meio de algumas balas e elas acabarem acertando a ponta do helicóptero. Além disso, a pouca capacidade de reação também cria situações problemáticas com o spawn dos inimigos, muitas vezes eles nascem atrás de você ou do seu lado, e você não tem muito como reagir a isso, as bombas e os power-ups até ajudam um pouco nesse sentido, mas também não é como se isso fosse tão bem usado, a bomba limpa apenas uma área, e ela demora pra dar iframes para você, te deixando numa situação de risco antes disso, já que a tela vai estar poluída e você não vai conseguir ver as balas direito.

As the first major title from Toaplan, Tiger-Heli is following the trend of vertical shoot'em ups. At first glance, nothing seems to distinguish it from its predecessors, but it has some peculiarities that make it, for the worse, a unique title. The attempt is not exactly new, as the development team – then part of the Crux studio – had already tested the concept with Gyrodine (1984). To mark this continuity, Tiger-Heli is published by the same publisher, Taito.

We play as a helicopter fighter, having to attack the terrorist country of Cantun, which harbours imperialist ambitions. The name sounds vaguely Cantonese and one can perhaps read in it the historical enmity between Japan and China, whose militaristic doctrine evolves at the end of the 1970s with offensive prophylactic measures. These doctrinal developments also coincided with the modernisation of the Chinese military. In any case, Tiger-Heli opts for a rather slow vertical scrolling, imitated by the speed of our helicopter. In the first loop, this makes the game extraordinarily boring, as no action is happening on the screen: this impression is reinforced by the lack of dynamic upgrades. While it is possible to get additional sideways helicopters, it is difficult to keep them. Indeed, if the first loop is very poor, the following ones decide to crank up the difficulty by increasing the enemy rate of fire. This would not be a problem if the handling of our aircraft was so poor. The low speed makes it impossible to dodge projectiles effectively, especially as their sprites are not particularly legible when blended with the background. The task of keeping the main helicopter alive is demanding enough, so it's generally impossible to keep the side ones. The ad nauseam repetition of the same levels and the inability to pre-position oneself – as enemies spawn in often opposite locations – ends up creating critical frustration.

There is very little to save in Tiger-Heli and Toaplan appears to be a studio riding on the success of shoot'em ups in the 1980s. The lack of originality and polish make it a title to be avoided, which is why Twin Cobra (1988) comes more easily to mind, when one thinks of this particular studio.