Submission #8092: nymx's C64 Chopper 1 in 00:31.26

As with the three previous Compute's Gazette submissions, I wish to continuing seeing my memories of these games come to new light. With Astro-Panic!, a TAS was certainly necessary to see the end of the game, as it was way too hard to play. Even the author's comments was teasing me to figure out what was going to happen at the end. Continuing with Royal Rescue, I saw that these simple games were not so limited...yet had an edge to explore over human effort. Lastly, Miami Ice...which showed case some very unique and challenging skills for such a simple looking game. Now, I present to you my 4th installment of another game that I recognize high TASing potential. I've not found one human who could master this game enough to make a good showing. Maybe feos will like to take this challenge. :)

As the sole trained pilot for the army's top-secret "Chopper 1," an attack helicopter equipped with a powerful pulse laser, you're sent to defend your city when it's suddenly invaded by aliens. The city's other defense is a glowing force field which hovers above the skyline. The alien's spaceship passes back and forth over the city while continually dropping bombs which gradually blast their way through the force field and, eventually, into the city itself. The bombs will also destroy your chopper if contact is made. You've been sent to destroy the bombs with Chopper 1 's laser before they reach the city. The alien's spacecraft is made of an indestructible alien alloy, and it's invulnerable to your laser blasts. It will, however, destroy you if you' get in its path.

This game features 9 Levels of play. Level 1, being the easiest and slowest, while Level 9 is much faster. The difference between the easiest and hardest, is the speed and rate at which the bombs are dropped. All other aspects remain the same. As for the ending, Level 9 repeats over and over...and showcases the best this game has to offer. This game is played on Level 9, which is the reason for the delay at the "Title" screen...as the Level is slowly increasing, with an "Up" input on the joystick. (I tried going down, but it is one direction only)

As with many other games, Left + Right combinations play an important role in helping me to hold a good direction that helps me to keep my firing towards the dropping of the alien bombs. Performing this task was a bit odd though. In order to pull it off...you have to be going for one frame in the direction you want to shoot, followed by the opposite direction. Now...this technique doesn't work the same for both directions. One direction requires that you also add "Up" to maintain it...otherwise, the helicopter will move forward. As for the opposite direction, pressing "Up" will hinder this glitch. So there is obviously a priority at work here. Without this glitch, optimization wouldn't have been as tight...although alternate strats would have been in play to recover a lot, but not all, of the losses.

Here is the only video I could find, of someone attempting to defeat the game on Level 1.

ThunderAxe31: Claiming for judging.

ThunderAxe31: This run is very straigth-forward. It starts from the last level, which is done from the game intended level select. This corresponds to the hardest difficulty, which is also good because we allow for the author to pick whatever difficulty mode they prefer.

Regarding the execution itself, it seems very optimized to me.

Accepting.

despoa: Processing...