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Who Remembers This Underground Helicopter Game?


geo255

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1 hour ago, Bill Loguidice said:

Is it possible it was a type-in (especially with the "slow pace" you describe) or do you think it was a commercial release? It would be odd to have a vertically-oriented game on a home computer at the time. 

Caverns of mars… made commercial vertical 

 

river raid…

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heliman.png

 

no... but thanks for your persistence :) 

 

The helicopter sprite in the game I remember I'm pretty sure looked very much like the one I drew in my mockup. Simple and white. It wasn't a heli-pack guy.

 

I've also tried scrolling through lots of random game screenshots to see if I recognize it. 

 

I'll keep looking and report back if I ever solve this mystery!

 

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1 hour ago, geo255 said:

heliman.png

 

no... but thanks for your persistence :) 

 

The helicopter sprite in the game I remember I'm pretty sure looked very much like the one I drew in my mockup. Simple and white. It wasn't a heli-pack guy.

 

I've also tried scrolling through lots of random game screenshots to see if I recognize it. 

 

I'll keep looking and report back if I ever solve this mystery!

 

Ill keep looking, i been looking at screen shots, videos and trying games from collections just to see. I honestly feel ive seen your game before. I will stay on the hunt.

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21 minutes ago, geo255 said:

I've scoured the Google and Google Books for these keywords: atari, helicopter, tunnels, flood

I did all that and water and caves and caverns

 

now im just persistently going through atari game collections and loading roms with possible names or names I do not know. If its out there we will find it. It sounds sooo familiar, I think I have played this, if you never find it I will be checking till I find it or truly run out of dumps to check.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
14 hours ago, oo7 said:

I wonder if it was a diff platform?

I'm 98% sure it was the Atari 800. The only other computers I interacted with during that era were an original IBM PC and a TRS-80 model I -- neither of which could generate the "complex" sounds this game had.

 

Speaking of sounds, I seem to remember the game using the Atari's white noise generator to produce some kind of ominous hissing sound when the caverns were in their flooding phase.  And there was likely some kind of helicopter sound too, while flying.

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4 hours ago, geo255 said:

I'm 98% sure it was the Atari 800. The only other computers I interacted with during that era were an original IBM PC and a TRS-80 model I -- neither of which could generate the "complex" sounds this game had.

 

Speaking of sounds, I seem to remember the game using the Atari's white noise generator to produce some kind of ominous hissing sound when the caverns were in their flooding phase.  And there was likely some kind of helicopter sound too, while flying.

Hmm i only say this because im sure i had a game like this, i was sure it was on my atari xl and xe systems but i had also moved up to st and ste and used my xl xe st stes all together for years so having run through as much as possible and found nothing im wondering if im confused and am remembering st. But it seems you maybe didnt go st?

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If we were in the Blade Runner universe, we could

 

"Enhance 224 to 176. Enhance, stop. Move in, stop. Pull out, track right, stop. Center in, pull back. Stop. Track 45 right. Stop. Center and stop. Enhance 34 to 36. Pan right and pull back. Stop. Enhance 34 to 46. Pull back. Wait a minute, go right, stop. Enhance 57 to 19. Track 45 left. Stop. Enhance 15 to 23. Give me a hard copy right there."

 

And see the title on one of the disk stickers! lol

 

 

Currently going through the Tosec collection, in the atr c directory...

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After poking around with this for awhile, it seems google searching won't help. I was going through a mega collection just trying to narrow it down by the filename using the find command on linux with things like heli, huey, chop, copt, cav, canyon, lava, escape etc. but came up empty, The name might actually be a made up word or something unrelated or generic like Apex Warrior. Then I was thinking if you could remember any text in the game or an exact bit-map or something I could mass-convert each binary atr/xex/cas/rom etc. to a continuous string of hexadecimal representations, then I could mass grep through all titles looking for a pattern match. But I feel we wouldn't be able to specify anything to that level of detail, or we would have been able to pinpoint it with that info in the first place.

 

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I went through .mads gamebase and could not find a match from the description. I'm beginning to wonder if it was a type in. Do you remember it taking a while to start OP? Probably Basic with machine code data being poked in for some parts, either way it would take a few secs to initialise on a machine.

 

As for the pic, yeah very 80's wallpaper which is all good, we had no issues with it at the time ;) As for the game on the TV, looks like Flip and Flop to me..Fun game too..

 

Hope you find this missing game as I guess we are all keen to see it now :)

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1 minute ago, baktra said:

I would try looking in online archives of various Atari magazines from 80s. Perhaps there will be a listing or a screenshot that will ring a bell. It would be a tedious job, though.

That's exactly what I was thinking and wrote in my post just behind you....That isn't a fun job...

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