Mr. Heli Appreciation Thread

[lukester]

I seldom see this fine little shooter mentioned on the forum, let's change that!

Anybody ever play Mr. Heli? I love how unconventional it is...kinda like a more polished Atomic Robo Kid.

The basics are that you freely navigate the level, and shoot the crap out of rocks everywhere. Crystals from the rocks can be used to buy hidden weapons and health. Each level also has vertically autoscrolling segment, and an underground level before the boss.

Certain bosses scale in difficulty depending on how powered up you are.

Nice environmental destruction, level design, and magical tunes. The art style is also really good.

There's also a hard mode (3 hit death) like the arcade version...never got too far. The PCE mode is pretty easy to 1CC once you play it enough though.

I think the only flaw is the slowdown in the "underground" levels...but overall it's honestly one of my favorite games period. Might be the nostalgia talking.

http://www.thebrothersduomazov.com/2009/04/mr-heli.html Decent summary

[esteban]

Great game. It was one of the first I got for PCE many, many moons ago.

TG-16 fans from back in the day saw this game advertised on a billboard in VIGILANTE....but we did not know it was a video game! I thought it was a fictional advertisement  using random English words... Ha!

If folks like Mr. Heli, I usually mention trying Barunba (HuCARD).... another quirky title that seems like a kindred spirit. WARNING: You may hate Barunba.



A much better game that is closer in spirit to Mr. Heli, IMHO, is Cobra Command (NES). Cobra Command is a completely awesome game with both autoscrolling segments and free-roaming underground levels to explore. I think a lot of people unfairly bash Cobra Command because it is challenging + sensitive controls...but it is so wonderful if you stick with it.

If you like Mr. Heli (and you clearly do), you should check it out.

[technozombie]

I like the look of this game and was hoping I could pick it up in a lot sometime, but alas it hasn't happened. I'll try it out on the Everdrive soon.

[elmer]

Great game. It was one of the first I got for PCE many, many moons ago.

Me, too. 

It's on my short-list of top games on the entire PCE.

It's colorful, beautiful, and fun, and just-plain-impressive as an early release (1989).

Just like R-Type, when it came out it showed what the PCE could do that the previous generation just couldn't.

The slow-down in sections isn't perfect, but can be forgiven IMHO for the amount of stuff that gets thrown around.