RF Generation Message Board

Some game developers have an extensive repertoire of varying game genres that demonstrate their adeptness in game design. Other companies, however, no matter what they do, they are always associated with a particular genre. That's the story with legendary Japanese shooting game powerhouse Toaplan. Though they developed games of different styles, including the well regarded puzzle platform game Snow Bros.: Nick & Tom, they will forever be known as a shooting game company, due to their extensive history with the genre, and how prolific they were, from 1985 to 1993. During that 8-year span, they developed 16 different shoot-em-ups, many of which are considered essential classics. The first of those shooting games, released in arcades in 1985, is Tiger-Heli.

Tiger-Heli is the first game in the "Tiger" trilogy, which continued with Kyukyoku Tiger, commonly known in the west as Twin Cobra, and culminating with Kyukyoku Tiger II, which released after Toaplan had disbanded. After Toaplan declared bankruptcy, many employees went on to join, or form, other development houses, many of which continued to innovate in the shooting game space. Namely, former Toaplan developers went on to companies like Cave, Raizing, and Takumi, all of whom developed groundbreaking and influential shooters during the 90's and 2000's. Every great has to start somewhere, however, so we're taking a look at Toaplan's very first shooter development, published by Taito in Japan, and Romstar in North America. Come join the RF Generation Shmup Club, as we look at Tiger-Heli in November 2019 - both the arcade original, and the Famicom/NES conversion by Micronics!

Participants:
MetalFRO
Addicted
Duke.Togo
EZ Racer
zoydo
dtungsten
bickman2k

High Score:
Arcade version:
NES/Famicom Version:

Ooh. I had the NES version even way back. I'm in for this one.

Just ordered a NES copy and should have it in the next few weeks, so I'm in.

Just found out there was a PAL-release of Tiger Heli, i never knew that. Ordered a cheap copy, so i will be back for november.

50Hz-PAL-shmupping here i come!  :toilet:

Excellent! Glad to have you gents on board :D

Sign me up!

I'm going to try to play this one if possible!

074390 so far. This game (NES version) has lots of nostalgia for me, as I borrowed and/or rented it, maybe a few times. It's up there on my list of favorite old games/shmups.

I discovered the bonus for the red roof on the right in the first level back in the day.

Another bonus is the racecar in the first level. You get that by firing exactly 16 shots by the time you get to the tracks. Not coincidentally, there are 16 enemy targets to hit by that point.

The crosses will give you different things depending on the color they are when you collect them. Red: side shooting mini Heli, White: front shooting mini Heli, Green: Bomb

The first mini Heli obtained flies on your left and the second on your right.  When you collect a bomb and you already have 2 you get 5000 bonus points.

Your mini Heli and even your bombs can be hit. Destroying the mni Heli or triggering the bomb, but sparing your helicopter.

10 of those red diamonds give you an extra life.
You get 1 life at 20,000 points and one every 80,000 after that.

Thanks for the helpful hints, dtungsten! That should help give everyone a leg up for scoring, at least in the NES version. I'll be curious to see if those same Easter eggs are in the arcade original. I can say with confidence that the red roof trick is, so that's a relatively easy 10K points for anyone who wants to try for that in the first stage.

96,330 I did score over 100,000, but the display went weird and only showed 17,000. I have only a blurry picture of the >100,000 score.

That race car can show up in multiple places. I read about the 16 shots thing and there are actually only 12 targets before the tracks. It seems to intermittent, so I'm not sure exactly what triggers it.

I've seen the race car at the beach, and before another set of tracks.

117,520 blurry but readable. When it cycled through, the first 1 changed to a 0, so the clear picture I got says only 017,520.

146,120

Some good scores already! Here's my latest, from earlier this evening. As you mentioned on stream dtungsten, the game loops after stage 4, though it starts over at stage 2. It seems there's no way to "beat" this game, so this month will definitely be all about scoring, and maximizing that as best as possible.

Hey guys. Haven't been able to play a score yet, seems like my copy of the game is broken. I tried cleaning the connectors, but i wasn't able to get the thing working yet. :(

Maybe i have to look for another copy.

That's no good! Hopefully you can get it working. If nothing else, try some Brasso (or other metal polish) on the contacts, and then chase that with rubbing alcohol, to make sure all the residue is cleaned off. That usually saves the worst carts for me. And don't forget, you can also emulate the arcade version, if you like. I'll be doing that as well.

[/quote]
That's no good! Hopefully you can get it working. If nothing else, try some Brasso (or other metal polish) on the contacts, and then chase that with rubbing alcohol, to make sure all the residue is cleaned off. That usually saves the worst carts for me. And don't forget, you can also emulate the arcade version, if you like. I'll be doing that as well.
[/quote]

Thank you, i guess i give that a shot. Need to get me some metal polish. :)

Started streaming the arcade version earlier, and I managed to reach stage 3 once, and got a pretty decent score after a few tries. In some ways it's easier than the NES version, because the enemy bullet trajectories are more direct, bullets are smaller, and your hitbox is smaller, so all that combined makes bullets easier to dodge, in theory. As does the fact that it's in Tate/vertical orientation. The counter to that is, if you're not taking out enemies as quickly, you get bullet spammed pretty quick.

Finally starting to get a feel for this game. The "parking lot" on stage 1 always seems to give me trouble, though.

That's a pretty good score so early, though! And yes, the parking lot was a bit of a sticking point for me at first, also.

I managed to get a little further on the arcade version tonight, and hit 136K points! My best suggestion, particularly with the arcade version, but also to the NES version (to a lesser extent), is to "bob and weave" when dodging. Everything targets you in the game, so move up a bit, so they target you there, then fall back a bit, to avoid that bullet, and pick them off.

Got on a good run last night. Thoughts so far- A solid shmup, but I wish the heli was a little more manuverable. I have to take frequent breaks from my left hand cramping. Enjoy that there's lots of targets to take down.

Once we get to it, I think you'll find that the sequel, Twin Cobra, improves upon this. Also, the arcade version definitely feels better, so keep that in mind. And yes, hand cramping is a problem with this game; I found that even playing the arcade version with a legit arcade stick.

I'm inching forward a bit in the arcade version. I still can't even get through Stage 1 consistently, despite having tried to route through it. There are spots where tanks come on screen, and because they shoot immediately, it's nearly impossible to avoid their shots, unless you're far enough away. It's quite frustrating, and something that Toaplan would definitely improved upon in subsequent games.

Sorry for the late entry, but i couldn't revive my copy, so i needed to get another one and now im on track.

This was my first attempt to the game:

(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49093502401_794cfec0f1.jpg)

That's a pretty awesome first attempt! Way to go on that initial score! I assume you've already looped the game, and will be besting my score soon :D

Thanks. :)

The PAL version runs a bit slower than the NTSC version, so i might have a slight advantage here, idk.

Had another pretty good run yesterday, made it to stage 6 and was around 230.000 pts, but the game didn't save my score to the title screen after the game over, so i couldn't capture it. No need to tell you how pissed i was...

Anyone else experienced that?

Yes, you need to take a photo right after you get the score - after it goes from the title screen to the attract mode again, when it goes to the title screen the next time, it cuts off the 100K position digit in the score. It's a bug in the game. I discovered this while streaming as well, and someone on stream (dtungsten, maybe?) confirmed this as well.

@MetalFro: oh man, what a bummer! :(  Thanks for the heads-up.

So i guess next time i will pause the game and take a picture, when i'm on my last life.

Funny thing is, that there is a similar issue with Kyuukyoku Tiger on the PC Engine. That game doesn't save the score at all, after game over.
So you need to do the same thing to capture your score. Or you have to be real quick and pause the game right after losing your last life to take a photo.

I tweeted it out a couple days ago, but figured I'd give you all a crack at the question of the month as well - reply to get your answer read on the podcast!

If you were going to design a shooting game based around an animal’s name, or characteristics, what animal would you choose, and why?

Here's my update from last weekend (posted this on Twitter already). Can't remember if it was stage 6 or 7, but the bullets were prety fast and hard to see because of the sprite flickering. Very hard to recover after losing a life.

(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49125242258_7354599d6e.jpg)

Monster score! I managed to loop the NES version, but that's quite an achievement. No way I'm catching up with that before the end of the month :D

Thanks! :)

I don't think i will find the time to play another run the next two days, so here are some final thoughts about the game:

This was the first time i played Tiger Heli, but i played the successor (Kyuukyoku Tiger) and some other Toaplan games before, so playing it felt a little familiar  from the beginning.

Even though it has some serious technical issues such as the sprite flickering and constant artifacts from scrolling at the top of the screen (plus the PAL-bars and slowness, in my case), i really had a good time playing the game. I never played the arcade version, so i can't tell if it's a good port (guess not) but it's fun anyway.

The lack of bosses sometimes makes it hard to tell in which stage/section you are and in the later stages the bullets are very fast and dodging is pretty tricky because of the sprite flickering.

After all Tiger Heli is a fun game and i will most likely return to it sometime.

Forgot to post my most recent score on the arcade version! 191,680 points.
(https://i.imgur.com/TRT2jA8l.jpg)

If anyone has any other final thoughts or scores to post, please do so quickly! We'll be recording the podcast episode in a few hours, and I'd like to make sure we include everything.

Had an extremely busy 2nd half of November, so wasn't able to put as much time into Tiger Heli as I had hoped. Definitely recommendable to pick up for its current price (got mine for $5), but it also shows its age at times, as some of its ideas have been improved upon as the genre has progressed. One element that I started to really appreciate was the auto-bomb, and that the game encourages you to save bombs, as there isn't any areas that their use is 'required'.

Fun for a quick occasional play, but I never got drawn in, have to play again to get a little further, the way I did with Strikers and Gradius III earlier in the year.