Choplifter (1986)

I always have a good time lifting my chopper. Sorry. I don’t know why I started with that, it was appalling. Besides, it simply isn’t true – but it would be all the more distasteful to go into exactly why. Let’s talk about the Master System game Choplifter instead. It’s good! I like this a lot. This was originally an Apple II game, but this version is a fancy little glow-up. Your mission is to head out from your base and rescue POWs by blowing their various places of holding to smithereens, picking them up and heading back where you came from to drop them off. The chopper you command can hold up to 16 prisoners at a time, but getting yourself shot down by enemy craft will also result in the deaths of all those charming hostages. As will you landing on them by accident – sorry, chaps! I really like the controls here, though others won’t – by pressing Button 2, you’ll shift between strafing and bombing modes, allowing you to target different areas of each scene, but also offering a degree more in the way of pleasingly subtle handling. The sprites are small, but I think it looks great. There’s a terrific parallax effect on the ground, the POWs have a Lemmings-ish delight about them (despite having a tendency to cause flickering), and… ooh, it’s just a really fabulous game. Also, amusingly, there are cameos from Superman and E.T. Really difficult after the first couple of stages and very difficult to master, but I liked it a lot. ****

Chuck Rock (1992)

Er, oh dear. I quite like Chuck Rock in his Mega Drive form, but this port is a touch on the disastrous side. It plays basically fine in terms of movement and collision, but a complete lack of music (?) and flat black backgrounds (?!) make for a bizarrely ugly and half-arsed take on… well, okay, not a classic but a thoroughly solid platform game from Core Design. I genuinely don’t understand why this is so crap – it’s from 1992, for god’s sake! That’s well into the Master System’s lifespan. There’s no need whatsoever for it to be so lacklustre. It was much the same on the Game Gear, too. Surely there’s got to be a story of some kind, there. The title screen informs me this was converted by Gary Priest, who was also responsible for the much better The Flash and the genuinely excellent Impossible Mission, so what the heck? I can only assume it was rushed to market for some reason. I should also note that as well as seeming half-finished visually and sonically, it’s also pretty slapdash in its design; numerous areas in this version allow you to throw (well, chuck) rocks out of your reach in a way that renders progress completely impossible, something that I think would extremely difficult to do on another console, if indeed it could be done. Naturally it’s fine if you don’t piss about with the rocks too much, but that isn’t really an excuse. A shame that they unga-bungled this one. Chuck Rock says “unga-bunga”, you see. That’s why that was funny. That’s why you laughed. **

Chuck Rock II: Son of Chuck (1993)

This is quite a lot more like it. Almost an apology for its predecessor, this is a cut down but still accomplished and entertaining version of the Mega Drive game, which was itself a step up from the original Chuck Rock. Here, you’ll be taking control of Chuck Jr., an unbelievably ugly baby who is also the esteemed son of Chuck Rock, hence the name. While he hasn’t yet developed the ability to throw (well, chuck) rocks, he can bash them around with a massive club. Ditto a host of comically caricatured dinosaurs and neanderthal nasties. There’s nothing even the slightest bit new here, but everything runs at a fair old lick and it all feels nice and chunky. It’s almost like an apology for the last one, what with its backgrounds and music and not being shit and all. ****

Cloud Master (1989)

Also known as Chūka Taisen, this is a rather enjoyable horizontal shooter that sees you take control of (it says here) Mike Chen, riding around on a cloud not at all unlike Sun Wukong or, indeed, Son Goku. It’s based on a 1988 arcade game developed by the excellently-named Hot-B and this conversion offers a remarkably close experience. It’s a lot of fun blasting all these mythological monsters I know absolutely nothing about, occasionally ducking into a bonus room to pick out a sub-weapon and bopping my leg to the funky tunes. Visually it’s almost perfect, though sprite flicker becomes a major problem when bullets are all over the screen, as it has a nasty habit of obscuring them entirely. Perhaps it’s a little overambitious in that respect but it’s still quite a lot of fun to play through, offering a meaty challenge and a pleasing aesthetic that’ll paper over the frustration to some extent. The original arcade version is available on the Switch and offers a thoroughly similar experience, but the Master System port is very good. It’s just a shame about that gosh-darn flickering! ***

• sega
• master system
• Stuart Gipp
• sega master system
• master system directory