Chopper Commando is a former freeware video game offering that was written by Mark Currie for the MS-DOS operating system on the personal computer. The coolest thing about this was that Currie was a teenager when he wrote this game. It was released for play in the very late eighties and was revamped as Chopper Commando 2.0 and re-released in 1990….when Currie was only fifteen years old. Chopper Commando was designed for single player play, and is a standard scrolling shooter with a helicopter as the main unit of play.
It was popular enough to spawn some clones, such as Death Squadron.
Chopper Commando was a good game for its era. It offered several features that were uncommon in shooters, if not completely unique. One of the most notable of these features was the deformable terrain. In other words, a user flying a commando mission could blow holes in the objects he encountered in the background. This was the manner in which the user could sometimes find secret helipads in mountains that looked permanent and impenetrable. Secret helipads would offer the user some power-ups in the form of super bombs and missiles. Sometimes the user would blast his way into a secret area to find messages or other feelies. Another oddity with this shooter is the
ability to eject the pilot from the chopper and control the pilot as he glides, launching grenades at his enemies.
The game features four color graphics, which were beautiful in the day, some dry-humored dialog, and some pretty good sound effects. Chopper Commando is a mission driven game, and the pilot will have to fly his chopper against any number of enemies that include tanks, other helicopters, airplanes and incoming missiles. The helicopter is not without its ordinances, being armed with nukes, bombs and missiles of its own. The missions have to be completed one at a time, with each mission growing more difficult than the next. As you complete missions, your pilot will advance in rank and your score will grow accordingly.
Chopper Commando is an oldie but a goodie. It has to be, given that it “inspired” numerous other games. The fact that the source code was written by a programmer as young as Mark Currie is also an inspirational factoid for budding gamers around the globe. Chopper Commando features a fast pace, a lot of action and flying bullets, and is overall an entertaining play.
