Caltrops - Mischief Maker's Maker's Mark





	[quote name="Ice Cream Jonsey"]<center><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c2/Chopper_Commando_base.png"></center> Mark Currie wrote this in Pascal at the age of 15. It is a mission-based mix helicopter sim with arcade and strategy elements that involves taking missions in some unspecified shithole hot spot. While some of my fondness for this game is due to the fact that there really wasn't much to play in the very early 90s for the PC, it really is a neat and original concept, due to the fact that it is one of the few games to correctly embrace "dead means dead" as a design decision. When you start the game, you'll create a pilot. You can have up to four or five at one time (sorry, it's been a while). You can select the type of mission you want to go on - from easy to medium to difficult, if I remember correctly. Some of the missions just involve you flying to the right, landing, and returning. Others have you doing a whole bunch of crazy shit. But the real payoff is in growing and developing a pilot, and getting him through the most challenging missions. The pilot doesn't get better or anything - your only reward is that high score table. But we had so much <i>time</i> in the late 80s, early 90s, that it was enough. My generation of game players would sit through 162 baseball games in something like RBI Baseball for the NES and record our own statistics. I learned how to use Lotus 1-2-3 to simply calculate earned run average for my pitchers. I'm not even looking back on this time with fondness - it sucked. But a game like Chopper Commando, which gave you about two dozen missions, deformable terrain, the ability to eject, and controls that were Asteroids-like in their beauty, would soak up hours of play. The graphics are even shitty like a fox: the green stuff can be destroyed, the brown stuff can be destroyed as well, but oftentimes are necessary for the mission to be completed, and at any point you can jump out of your copter and possibly find yourself in fistfights with other human enemies. I think what I like most about it, is just the thing's appreciation of the art and craft of game design. You really never knew what you were in for the first few times you'd try a mission. There was real mystery and tension, and I love that sense of wonder. (Mark Currie later went on to form <a href="http://www.inhumangames.com">Inhuman Games</a>, and created the (excellent) RTS game Trash a few years ago.) I think Chopper Commando is actually a little bit better, because one of life's greatest joys is playing with the boys, and it's my ninth favorite indie game in recorded history. the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey![/quote]