Kyuukyoku Tiger (1989)

You're an elite chopper jockey, ready to launch your Cobra against the coastal defenses of an evil superpower. They've got the numbers. You've got the might and the fight! You're Twin Cobra, the most awesome attack weapon in the skies! Bank in low over the desert and start pounding. The enemy's all over you! Knock out swarms of attack copters while you avoid smoking sheets of ground fire! Blast battalions of tanks into smoking craters. Then it's open ocean warfare! Machinegun a fiery trail through wave after wave of heavily armed gunboats. Bomb huge battleships and destroyers. Strafe gigantic armored carriers as they pour on the firepower. The longer you live, the tougher you get. Your weapons fire faster and harder. But the hostiles keep coming! See how much you can make the ground grunts scream! It's your war now. Kyuukyoku Tiger is a vertical scrolling shoot-em-up and is the sequel to Tiger-Heli which continues the tradition to include the word Tiger in the title of each game in the series. Subsequent Japan-only sequels would use the same title, which roughly translates as "Ultimate Tiger". The helicopter comes equipped with a default forward-firing weapon that is able to hit both air and ground targets, as well as a finite supply of bombs which hit enemies in a wide radius for massive amounts of damage. The player can find power-ups by shooting down the relatively sturdy Chinook enemy choppers, which initially allow the player to upgrade their standard gun to include more shots, but will eventually allow them to pick up weapons that can fire in different patterns. These include a four-way shot that fires in the four cardinal directions and a spread shot that fires forwards and outwards in a cone. The player can also find additional bombs by destroying this type of enemy. At the end of each stage, and occasionally partway through, is a boss. These take considerably more damage than regular enemies and can fire a lot more projectiles as well.

• Release Date: May 1, 1989