I was lucky enough to get to spend a week at a lake "resort" for early summer vacation as a youth. They had a little arcade that no one ever went to that was just a concrete box with a couple games in it and maybe even a laundry. Choplifter was one of the cabinets there.



Now, you'd think that a rowdy youth would be obsessed with a helicopter that can blow up jets and tanks, but for some reason this game didn't take up as much of my time as the other cabinet in that concrete box: Pac Man. Probably because we found a way to cram our grimy mitts into that machine and activate the coin counter...

At any rate, I recall the controls on Choplifter were also a bit tricky to master. I mean, helicopters are a crazy thing to fly around and people crash them all the time. Plus, rockets on helicopters that can shoot down jets? Bananas.



Now maybe if we'd figured out how to play for free...