How to play Chopper Command online
- Fly up and down: up and down arrow keys
- Turn and fly left or right: left and right arrow keys
- Fire the cannon: Space bar (hold it down for continuous fire)
- Start a new game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
- Choose a game (1–4): F11 (the console’s Select switch)
- Fire rate: F4 toggles the Player 1 difficulty switch, F9 the Player 2 switch
- Player 2 (games 2 and 4): T/F/G/H to move, A to fire
Gameplay
Your job is to rack up points by knocking enemy aircraft out of the sky while keeping yourself and your trucks alive. The landscape scrolls and wraps around as you fly, and your helicopter turns around instantly when you push the joystick the other way, drifting a little after each turn. A strip at the bottom of the screen, the Long Range Scanner, shows the whole area: your chopper, the trucks and every enemy, including the ones you cannot see yet.
Each wave brings twelve enemy aircraft against a convoy of twelve trucks, and there are ten waves, each faster than the last. The enemies fire missiles that split in two after launch. You cannot shoot these missiles, so you have to dodge them, and they can destroy your trucks as well as you. Flying into an enemy or into one of your own trucks also costs you a helicopter (and the truck). You start with three choppers and earn another every 10,000 points, up to six in reserve.
| Target | Points |
|---|---|
| Enemy helicopter | 100 |
| Enemy jet | 200 |
| End-of-wave bonus | trucks left × wave number × 100 |
Game variations and switches
There are four games. Games 1 and 2 are the Cadet level for one and two players; games 3 and 4 are the harder Commander level for one and two players. In two-player games the players take turns. The difficulty switches control your fire rate: position B gives fast continuous fire when you hold the button, position A gives slower fire. The manual suggests starting on B.
Tips
- Wait on the left, facing right. Both the trucks and the enemy formations travel from right to left, so parking on the left side lets you start shooting the moment enemies appear.
- Shoot early. The closer an enemy gets, the harder its split missiles are to avoid, so take it down at a distance.
- Use the scanner to plan, not to aim. It shows where enemies are coming from, but you can only hit what is on the main screen.
- Protect the convoy. Every surviving truck is multiplied by the wave number at the end of the wave, so trucks matter more and more as you go deeper.
The story behind Chopper Command
Bob Whitehead was a senior designer at Activision, and before Chopper Command he had made Boxing, Skiing and Stampede for the company. The game came out in 1982, and its scanner and wraparound battlefield led many reviewers to compare it with the arcade game Defender; author Brett Weiss summed it up as “Defender in the desert”. It won Best Action Video Game at the 4th Arkie Awards.
The game also had its own fan club: players who scored 10,000 points or more on the Cadet level could send in a photo of their TV screen and receive a “Chopper Commandos” emblem. Chopper Command was later included in the Activision Anthology collection.
