Helicopter Rescue

Games back in the early 1980s often had descriptive titles. Helicopter Rescue is one of them: you have to use an helicopter to rescue stranded pilots in the desert and in the sea.

The player controls the helicopter with the joystick, moving up to fly up and down to land. Once the helicopter is in the air, the player can choose to go left or right. Going left takes the player to a desert scenario, where the game field is in 2.5D. Moving the joystick up flies the helicopter ahead, moving it down lands the helicopter to pick up pilots. In the desert, tanks will try to shoot the helicopter down and capture the pilots before the player can rescue them. To shoot them, the helicopter must be moving vertically. Flying to the right of the main screen takes the player to a sea scenario, where the same rules as the desert apply, but as expected, instead of tanks the enemies here are ships.

The helicopter has a fuel meter which, when depleted, will make the helicopter crash. The helicopter gets refueled when the player lands on the home base and returns rescued pilots. Each round has the player trying to rescue 8 pilots. The round ends when all 8 pilots are either rescued or killed.