Choplifter had a twist that felt genuinely new at the time: you were not there to blow everything up, you were there to bring people home. Fly your chopper behind enemy lines, land next to the barracks, wait for the little hostages to sprint over and climb aboard, then get them back to base without meeting a tank or a jet head on. You could face the helicopter left, right or straight out of the screen, and learning to fight while facing the wrong way was half the game.
This was one of the earliest games in my C64 life, from the days when just seeing that smooth scrolling felt like magic. I lost a lot of hostages to my own landings before I worked out that the skids come down harder than you think ;)
