Paratrooper

Your cannon is planted in the middle of the screen. Helicopters pass overhead, paratroopers drop, and every shot you fire costs you a point. Paratrooper, written by Greg Kuperberg and published by Orion Software in 1982 for the IBM PC, turns that situation into a game of marksmanship and nerves: the turret rotates, but the base never moves.

At first it is enough to follow the air traffic and work out where each target will be when your shell arrives. The trouble starts down below. Paratroopers who land pile up on the sides; if four gather on the same side, they storm the cannon and the game is over. Watching only the helicopters is a fairly quick way to lose.

One screen, two threats

Your shots can intercept both aircraft and paratroopers during their descent. Since each bullet costs a point, sweeping the sky without aiming has a price. It pays to follow the movement, fire when the trajectory is favorable, and check how many soldiers have reached the ground before looking for another target.

Later, bombers appear. Their bombs add a direct threat to the turret and force you to split your attention between the sky and the flanks. The game keeps a four-color CGA presentation and sound from the PC's internal speaker; its instructions can be read from the title screen itself with the I key.

The RetroBat copy

This page uses the DOS package from our RetroBat collection. The launcher is PTROOPER.COM; the same ZIP contains TROOPER.COM, which in this copy has exactly the same contents. An alternate revision is also kept as a separate download. The browser player uses DOSBox with a fixed speed and CGA graphics to maintain a pace suited to this early PC game.