Tiger-Heli & Star Voyager retrospective: Micro(nics)aggressions | NES Works  

I think "You Have No Bomb And No Little Heli" is the best end-of-level screen message I've ever seen in an NES game. Although it does sound strangely depressing to me, like you've lost a close companion that had its own nickname.

I remember Star Voyager being my childhood's No Man's Sky. It scratched the same itch that game does now: Hyperspace travel, docking into stations, and landing on planets.

You can definitely see the DNA of Tiger-Heli in later Toaplan releases like Sky Shark. Speaking of, I'm looking forward to when you get to Sky Shark. Not just because I had it when I was a kid and played the hell out of it, but also because it's the NES debut of legendary composer Tim Follin.

"Oh heli no" Off to a fantastic start Jeremy.

My Lyft driver the other day was going on and on about NES Tiger Heli.

I don't know if you still read these messages, Jeremy, but I want you to know that I greatly appreciate your video series. It's what I listen to when making food, showering, and any other time I just want to relax while doing something I don't need to think about. Thank you.

Tiger-Heli was my dad’s favorite NES game. I just wish he had lived longer to see what games and systems and technology came out because he would have loved to see and experience the technological progress that’s happened over the last 35 years.

I rented star voyager as a kid and had thought about it many times over the last 30+ years but could never remember what it was called and it was too difficult for me to describe to someone from memory to see if they knew the name.. crazy nostalgia itch just got scratched well. Cheers mate

I absolutely love Tiger-Heli game. When I was at ITT and learning 3D I thought about doing a fan remake of Tiger-Heli.

Tiger Heli was one of the first NES games I ever played. I found it impossible to get far as a kid.

Star Voyager reminds me of Star Ixiom on the original Playstation. I still kind of think that doing this kind of game on 32-bit hardware is kind of crazy, I cannot imagine attempting it on 8-bit. Props to the devs for the attempt.

You should definitely consider doing retrospectives on these short lived developers, it's just fascinating they did such legendary titles, but are almost unheard of.

Love Tiger-Heli! I had a cousin that had it and we would play the crazy out of it trying to get as far as we can and get the high score. Every once in a while I could loop through it a couple of times.

Tiger-Heli was one of my childhood NES games and the one I played the least

Your critique of Star Voyager is spot on, but i still love that game to this day. The mood it creates of a lone starship pilot racing against the clock is amazing. The loneliness of space, and the mysterious objects you would sometimes run across while planet hopping. As another commenter accurately stated, it was the OG No Man's Sky. I've only managed to beat it twice, its harder than it seems. With Tiger Heli, i didn't understand that it was an arcade adaptation as a kid and i was certain that i needed to do something to end to loop cycle and reach the final boss. I never found it 😂

Nice video. That docking process in Star Voyager is a direct homage to Elite.

Tiger-Heli, the first shoot 'em up by legendary developer Toaplan, who also dabled into other genres here and there, in addition of being an overall fun title despite its age... ;)

We called it tiger hell when we were kids....

I remember playing a quite a bit of Tiger Heli back then. It wasn't very good, but it was, as Jeremy put it, "all right."

Tiger-Heli was one of my favorites as a kid for the reasons you perfectly outlined. It was easier compared to it's shooter contemporaries. Perfect for a youngin' Well done once again, sir.

"Twin Cobra is the sequel to Tiger-Heli and we'll look for to that in about 120 episodes". That's actually not an exaggeration.

Star Voyager reminds me so much of Star Fox 2. In SF2 you need to discover Andross's new base before his fleet destroys Corneria's shields and invade home base.

Tiger Heli was in that first handful of games we got with our NES in 1987 Christmas.

Having a lot of flashbacks to entire weekends lost to mediocre or outright bad titles including Tiger-Heli. That's what happens when the local rental place offers five games for five days for five dollars, you end up trying out a lot of games you wouldn't even glance at otherwise.

Tiger Heli was one of my first games that I bought and I loved it. That and 1943 started my love for shooters

I absolutely loved Star Voyager as a kid. It was my introduction to the wonderful world of space combat sims beyond Atari Star Wars, and at the time I was blown away by the amount of freedom it game me. Plus the attention to detail, like the animations of boarding the ship or leaving dock. And then it led me to unhealthy obsessions with Elite and Wing Commander in my teenage years. (pours one out for Wing Commander... sigh...)

The best part of this episode was the incredulous delivery of "apparently" at the very end.

Best thing about Star Voyager was the title music. That thing jammed .

I got my NES when I was 5 in 1987. I had Mario and Duck Hunt of course. The first game I ever got to rent was Tiger Heli. It blew me away when I was 5. Then I got two new NES games for Christmas. Star Voyager and Ice Climber. That is my original 3 NES games I ever played. So odd that you put those two together in this video.

I hope someday you cover Zanac! My favorite shooter of all time.

I sense a BIG history lesson next episode.

Star Voyager definitely ignited my imagination as a child, though admittedly, I never much enjoyed the combat and mostly just flew around in space, making up my own highly derivative stories as I did.

Man, can't wait for Bokosuka Wars! To this day I can't figure out how to play it, it all feels so random!

Star Voyager reminds me of a game that would come out later for SNES and Genesis/Megadrive called WarpSpeed.

I got Star Raiders as a loose cart as a kid in the late 80s. It blew away pretty much everything else I'd seen on the 2600 (which, having played tons of Amiga & NES at friends' houses, wasn't a high bar), but since I didn't have the pad controller or instructions it confused the ever-loving heck out of me.

I owned Star Voyager, and I haven't thought about it in years. That music just made me shiver. May have been my favourite game.

Love this channel so glad rich recommended this to me!

I had such bad luck choosing NES games as a kid. I only got like, 2, maybe 3 games a year, so I really tried to make my choices wisely. Struck out twice with Tiger-Heli and Karate Champ.

Tiger-Heli falls under the very specific category of "games I don't think I would especially enjoy but for some reason I kind of want to play them anyway." As a kid I played a Windows-based Star Trek game that was definitely based on Mike Mayfield's game. It added a graphical sensor display and some useful calculator dialogs, and replaced the Klingons with Romulans (I think it might have been intended as now taking place in the TNG timeframe, where Klingons were now allied with the Federation), but the actual gameplay was unchanged as far as I can tell. I was also really bad at it. Anyway, Star Voyager's name retroactively became very funny in the nineties.

Growing up, Star Voyager seemed to be the game that everybody owned, but no one knew how to actually play.

Love your videos. They really bring me back. Micronics is your LJN. If people hate JJ Abrams for lens flares, Micronics is the king of flicker.

My only experience with Tiger-Heli is the bootleg copy I own. I guess pirates weren't very particular when it came to quality.

Feels like Star Voyager owes something to Elite, with the spinning docking and matching rotations. which was released for computers in 1984, though it wouldn't get a nes release till 1991.

Thanks for the videos, they are great...very in-depth. Can’t wait until you get around to Burai Fighter and Isolated Warrior...my fave NES shooters as a kid.

I love that an enemy bullet causing the bomb strapped to your chopper to detonate leaves you in a *better* position than if that same bullet had just perforated the fuselage. Video game logic at its best.

“You have no bomb and no little heli NO BONUS” This is one of those games I always saw over at a friends house growing up but never got around to trying.

I played the heck out of NES Tiger Heli. I don't know if it was a game feature, a bug, or my NES overheating, but I remember the stages in the infinite loop gradually changing/corrupting as you kept looping through them?

Really looking forward to Episode #176!

More outstanding work Jeremy. Keep it up!

Always Love your vidz mr parish, keep it up...

The relation between companies in Tiger-Heli is kinda crazy. Toaplan developed the arcade original so they probably had copyrighted the source code and the design handbooks; Taito published the arcade original and the Famicom version so I assume they have the trademark and aesthetic design choices; Micronics stayed behind the scenes for the Famicom/NES version without any credit; Acclaim was the western publisher of the NES version.

played the crap out of tiger heli as a kid but never heard or seen of star voyager until today! :o. great episode as always, I can't for 120 more to get to Twin Cobra!

My brothers and I rented Star Voyager as kids and were so confused by it that we took it back to the rental store to swap it out for something different.

Like many others in the comments, I couldn't figure out Star Voyager as a kid. But being inscrutable meant all things were possible. I'd dream of alien planets and spatial anomalies just beyond reach. It's not a good game, but it was a fascinating one. If I had the instruction booklet I'd be afraid that magic would have been lost.

Just a slight error... the version of Star Raiders that came out in 1979 was for the 400/800 line of 8-bit computers. The 2600 version wouldn't come out until 1982.

I think you've missed on the inspiration for Star Voyager. The spinning docking routine strongly suggests the game was directly inspired by "Elite".

The micronics Famicom games are an interesting bunch as well.

4:20 OH FUCK THAT OST IS SO GOOD

I forgot all about this tiger heli game I know I played it alot watching it now it kinda reminds me of alpha misssion

Star Voyager makes me glad for the port of Elite we got later.

tiger heli! i love this game. i used to play this when i was a little kid all the time. :D im surprised someone is talking about it. it seems to be underrated and overlooked.

Star Voyager was my first video game EVER.

I always thought Star Voyager was way ahead of it’s time for an NES game.

Hey Jeremy, I've noticed that your NES video, which I think you source from your AVS, is showing some graphical garbage at the top with certain games, if you adjust your "Vert Border" by a notch or 2 it will hide this. It's normally in the overscan area and not actually seen on CRTs, so you're not technically cutting off anything that is meant to be displayed. Just thought I'd mention this in case youve overlooked the setting.

Wing Commander could easily be assumed a successor of Star Voyager from your description...

Original developer was Toaplan? I was just thinking the style and gameplay reminded me of Truxton and Fire Shark somehow!

I really love that first-person "strategic" space game like Star Voyager, Star Raiders and all the clones from that era. Kind of a shame it's sort of fallen to the wayside, though I suppose something like Elite Dangerous kind of calls back to it?

Micronics are like old friends at this point. As terrible as most of their games are, they've certainly grown on me over the years. 😅

wait, i just read Micronics made Elevator Action. Seriously, you need to show them respect!

Oof I love tiger heli. I watch your NES works because half the games are on this bootleg GBA cart I have. Muscle. SMB 1 Majong tiger heli 1942 Chubby cherub Mighty bomb jack Etc Now if you could do an episode on Sky Destroyer

Micronics is the secret MVP of NES Works

I will play the arcade version of tiger-heil. 😀👍🎮

Wow, Rare’s Captain Skyhawk definitely ripped off that rotating docking routine...

STAR VOYAGER! Man , that brings back memories! I have a love hate relationship with that game. My friend had it and I tried to beat it many times and hardly could get anywhere. BUT we would also load it up on the TV in his bedroom on sleepovers and use it as a mock star-ship bridge and pretend his room was a spaceship in some adventure and for that I kinda still love it... :-D Great video Jeremy. Keep it up!

Man. My bro and I had Tiger heli!! Was there an end?

Hmm..... seems like Star voyager owes a lot to Elite actually? Especially the docking routine. Weird that the review doesn't mention it. Now, i know Elite was only a hit on micros in Europe but i feel like it's possible the japanese devs of this game got to see it in action. I don't know. It's weird i lived through the NES years and was pretty sure i knew every single game that came out in NA....but i'd never heard of this one. Oh and Star Raiders is among my earliest VG memories when i was 5 or so playing Atari 2600 at my babysitter's.

If the BBC Micro could run Elite probably the grandaddy of space simulaters the NES has no excuse.

I had a version of Mayfield's Star Trek game basically from the instant my family had a PC and loved it. I got Star Voyager within a few months of getting an NES, almost two years before getting a PC but never linked the two.

So who's collection did you borrow a CIB copy of Stadium Events from?

"It's here. It functions." is definitely better than a nontrivial chunk of the NES library. Gotta give credit where it's due! Phoning it in with "okay" is the recipe for kids with obsessions over thoroughly mediocre but otherwise fine creations. Relatedly, I've always had a soft spot for Tiger-Heli. I enjoyed Terra Cresta and it a lot even though in retrospect they're both pretty slight.

Since Elite's NES port was apparently Europe-only you're not going to cover it on NES Works, right? Seems like Star Voyager would look a bit pitiful in comparison.

Heh, even in Video Games Star Trek goes where noone has gone before.

Toaplan Forever.

it's crazy to think super mario bros. 3 was released just a year after these meh games

I swear, NOBODY was saying anything bad about Ikari Warriors until the AVGN reviewed it. Even CGR praised it, but then AVGN reviews it, and the masses are suddenly like “OMG THIS GAME SUX!”.

Star Voyager's generic name makes it easy to confuse it with Star Force or Star Soldier when hunting for cheap NES games. There is a game by the same name for the Atari 2600, made by Imagic. And looking at screenshots for it it's the same type of gameplay. So I wonder what the story is there. Did Acclaim look at Ascii's game and thought it like Star Voyager and decided to use that name to cash in on the small amount of fans of the Atari game? Did they buy the rights from Imagic or had that company gone under by then and they figured no one was going to stop them?

No offence intended but I'm kinda sad you didn't mention Elite when talking about Star Voyager. I mean obviously elite took influence from the arcade games you mentioned but it was huge at the time. The docking sequence especially reminds me of it. Anyway Great video, I'm really enjoying this series, it's one of the most thorough but not nostalgia blinded looks at the NES library I've seen.

for the life of me I could never figure out star voyager, go figure. and tiger heli is at least better than their last shooter, 1942?

Star Voyager looks awesome, very good starfield. but basically Star Raiders clone

Star Voyager was one of the top three disappointments of my NES era. Just above Dynowarz and well behind the Power Glove.

I must have lower standards, because I found 1942 playable (not as good as the arcade version of course but I never expected NES arcade conversions to be that accurate) and Ikari Warriors never gave me any trouble. Neither were amazing games, and I certainly spent more time on other titles in my library, but I never found them that much worse than other games I owned. But I completely agree with this review of Star Voyager. It contains the kernel of what could be a really good game, held back by its platform; it's enjoyable for the potential of what it could be but overall it just turns out to be insufficiently compelling in its own right to stand the test of time.

You can just tell it's micronics with that goddamn jitter. Seriously, why the hell is their scrolling always janky? It's as if instead of using hardware scrolling they have to calculate the next tiles to show up through software and it ends up looking like a ZX Spectrum game (not to criticise the speccy, people have done wonders with that little machine)

reviewtechusa

Tiger-Heli is okay, a super basic Toaplan shooter. Could be better. Star Voyager was an ambitious game but ambition only gets you so far.

Both look like pretty mediocre games

dudes being really harsh on star voyager

I played “Tiger-Heli” for the NES and it was okay, but the music is annoying. One of the first games from Acclaim that it was bad. “3D Worldrunner” was a decent game, and it was made by the same company and developed by Square Enix, the same people that brought you the “Final Fantasy” and “Kingdom Hearts” series. The second one is “Star Voyager”, another bad one for the NES, and it was a boring game. I remember “PlayItBogart” did a video of this horrible game, and they used clips from “Spaceballs”, a “Star Wars” spoof that it was released the same year as this game which was 1987. Both of these bad games came from Acclaim, and that was a double whammy of the first of two bad NES games that are both from Acclaim before the toy company turned game publisher LJN bought it in 1990.

I wasted my time playing star Voyager when I was a kid and it's sucks.

So what you're saying is, Starfox 2 ripped off Star Voyager