Тигр-Хели: Вертикальный скролл-шутер от Toaplan

Tiger Heli (タイガー・ヘリ, Taigā Heri) is a vertically scrolling shooter game developed by Toaplan and released for arcades in 1985. It was published in Japan by Taito and in North America by Romstar. Controlling the titular attack helicopter, the player must fight endless waves of military vehicles while avoiding collision with their projectiles and other obstacles. The Tiger Heli has a powerful bomb at its disposal that can clear the screen of enemies when fired. It was the first shoot 'em up game from Toaplan, and their third video game overall. Tiger Heli was the creation of video game composers Masahiro Yuge and Tatsuya Uemura, who had previously worked on several titles for Japanese companies Orca and Crux before both of them declared bankruptcy. The development team drew inspiration from the arcade game Gyrodine. The team wanted to create a scrolling shooter that balanced between being entertaining and fun, and to have players keep wanting to play it after dying. The staff chose a helicopter as the player's craft as they felt it would work for a game that had the screen continuously scrolling. The soundtrack, composed by Uemura, was made to convey a sense of bravery, which was hampered by technical limitations. Tiger Heli was well received by critics for its gameplay, graphics and weapons, and helped establish Toaplan as a leading producer of shooting games throughout the 1980s and 1990s. It was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System by Micronics, selling over one million copies. A PlayStation version was released in 1996 by Banpresto as part of the compilation Toaplan Shooting Battle 1. It was followed by two sequels: Twin Cobra (1987), and Twin Cobra II (1995). The rights to Tiger Heli are owned by Tatsujin, a Japanese developer formed by Yuge. In 2021, the game was released exclusively in Japan for the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch as part of the Toaplan Arcade Garage compilation.

Tiger Heli is a military themed vertically scrolling shoot 'em up game, in which players take control of the titular attack helicopter through four increasingly difficult levels in order to defeat an assortment of military enemy forces like tanks, battleships, and artillery as the main objective. Besides some airplanes taking off, there are no flying enemies in the entire game. As far as vertical scrolling shooters go, the title initially appears to be very standard, as players control their craft over a constantly scrolling background and the scenery never stops moving until a helipad is reached. Players have only two weapons at their disposal: the standard shot that travels a max distance of half the screen's height and two bombs. A unique gameplay feature is the bomb mechanic; unlike other games in the genre released at the time, the bombs are powerful weapons capable of obliterating any enemy caught within its blast radius. The team wanted to create a game that balanced frustrating and entertaining sections, as well as inciting audiences to keep playing after losing a live and progress further, though the idea of playing as a helicopter was influenced by Gyrodine because the team felt it could work as a shoot 'em up title where the screen kept scrolling. When creating the artwork for Tiger Heli, which has been described as "polygonal" in recent interviews, Toaplan was realizing research for a possible flight simulator they could develop themselves and one of the project's designers implemented a sample image from the simulator into the game. Several other features were integrated into the project as a way to keep audiences playing such as the continuous stage scrolling during the high score screen, which was akin to a drama. The soundtrack was composed by Uemura, who also created the sound effects. When writing the music during development, Uemura intended the songs to convey a sense of bravery but he was limited due to technical and memory restrictions at the time of release. This version was also released in South Korea by Hyundai Electronics in 1987. Both the original arcade version and the later NES port are similar but have a number of key differences between each other such as the latter having a smaller color palette and lower screen resolution that led to sprites being recolored and the graphics redrawn in different ways, an arranged soundtrack by Masahiro Yuge, among other changes. Tiger Heli was included as part of the Toaplan Arcade 1 compilation for Evercade.

According to Masahiro Yuge, Tiger Heli proved to be popular in arcades during initial beta location testings. Den of Geek noted it to be the title from Toaplan which established their gameplay style that would later be refined in the future with other titles, as well as its introduction of a bomb mechanism. Computer Gaming World called Tiger Heli for the NES an excellent port, and concluded that it was "one of the most exciting arcade shoot 'em ups to turn up". However, fan reception of the NES conversion in Japan was mixed; in a poll taken by Family Computer Magazine, it received a score of 15.55 out of 30. The NES version sold over one million copies, making it one of the best selling games for the platform. A game of a similar style titled Tiger Mission was developed in 1987 by Kele Line and published by Status Software across Europe only for the Commodore 64. In more recent years, the rights to the game and many other IPs from Toaplan are now owned by Tatsujin, a company named after Truxton's Japanese title that was founded in 2017 by Yuge, who are now affiliated with arcade manufacturer exA Arcadia.