If you made it this far, I'll reward you with another early C64 game I loved playing - even though it was released on the dreaded Apple II first, but I didn't know that back then.

I'm talking about

Choplifter

You're flying a heli and collect people and return them to the base. That's about as much as I knew about the game after the first round.

Title screen and on the way to rescue the first batch of hostages.

Pressing fire on the joystick in port 1 starts the game, press up to go up and left / right to fly into that direction. Pressing fire lets you shot into the direction the heli is facing. Notable was the fact that the heli kept its orientation. You could change that by pressing fire and a left / right to turn the heli around OR facing the screen, which alows to shoot straight down and hit those pesky tanks.

Landing, eyeing the damn tank. Returning to the base and "unload".

Sooner or later you'll notice people on the ground, so land and let them get into the heli and lift fast enough to avoid getting shot by a tank. Then head back to the base and release them. Repeat. Once you've got 20+ of them to safety, you start the next level.

I hated the plane. ...and it hated me.

If you found the tanks annoying, wait for the first contact with the plane.

Overall, it's a nice little game, but tbh. I never made it "that" far, I'm not even sure if I ever managed to get beyond the second level (and I didn't try hard enough to get there this time).

I'd give it a 3.5/5 for replayability.