Mr Heli - Memories

Telecomsoft signed IREM's Mr. Heli around the same time that they snagged Taito's Rainbow Islands to convert for the home computer market. The Firebird label had already published a number of coin-op conversions, including Bubble Bobble and Flying Shark to much acclaim, so further conversions were inevitable.

Erstwhile developer Probe Software was chosen to write the conversions. Not only had they coded a large number of Telecomsoft's arcade games in the past (including a number of budget titles), but they also had a lot of experience when it came to converting coin-op games, including titles like "Out Run" and "Solomon's Key".

Probe employed a mixture of in-house and third party programmers and graphic artists. They covered all of the major publishing platforms, including Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, Atari ST and Commodore Amiga.

On every version except for the C64, the main game 'window' for Mr. Heli was smaller than the original coin-op, yet the sprites and backgrounds remained about the same size. This unfortunately meant that the Mr. Heli sprite had less room to maneouvre.

The decision to use a smaller area was made for technical reasons. Scrolling a larger window would have slowed the game down (on most versions) to an unacceptable level. Probe's in-house graphic artist Alan Tomkins had wanted to redraw the main sprites to correct the proportions, but the decision to reduce the window was made late in the day, and there wasn't time to make the necessary changes. A comparison between the coin-op and the ST version shows this more clearly. The ST version also suffered from only having 16 colours to choose from. The blue sky was therefore sacrificed in preference to black.

Different versions of Mr. Heli included slight deviations in gameplay from the coin-op original. In the z80 versions, every crystal was a large one (worth $100), whilst the other versions also featured the smaller $20 crystals. None of the home versions kept track of the time, and the coin-op had an alternate two-player game that didn't feature at all. The z80 versions also didn't include the 'shield' upgrade, although you could gain a shield by buying more fuel when you already had the maximum allowed.

The C64 version gave the player the option to choose the stage to play - (1) The Cavern, (2) The Maze, or (3) The Core. However, to access the latter two stages the player needed to possess a 20 character level code given at the end of the previous stage.

Some players found the z80 versions of Mr. Heli a little too easy. Mr. Heli was a satisfying blaster, but it was possible with a particularly dexterous player (and a good joystick!) to weave in and out of the bullets without suffering too many hits. Although I don't remember it being specifically mentioned at the time, the generous collission detection was probably added to compensate for the smaller game window. The C64 version was faster, slicker and had sprites that were better proportioned.

I can remember testing Mr. Heli at a time when there were almost weekly strikes on the London underground (during the summer of 1989). I used to work from home on the days of the strike, and would often borrow the office Amstrad CPC 464 and take it home on the train so I could test it at home.