Nintendo is Great is a Substack devoted to exploring the world of Nintendo - their games, their consoles, their merchandise - in mostly chronological order, starting with the NES and continuing to the upcoming Switch 2.
If you’re interested in following/playing along, or if you’d just like to catch up on previous posts, the Master Games List will help!
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Chronological Stats
I’m not sure how many of my readers actually care that I’m progressing through Nintendo’s console/handheld output in chronological order. But for those who find it interesting, here are a couple fun stats:
September 1987 had the most NES game releases by far in one month, at a whopping 15! As the NES gets more popular, later months will see far more releases. At this early stage in the console’s life, however, 15 games in one month is impressive.
For context, both 1985 and 1986 only saw 17 and 19 NES game releases respectively for the entire year.
Today’s three games are the last we’ll cover from September 1987. If you’re interested in any of the other games from that month (or other months prior), check out the Master Games List above.
Starting next week, we’ll move into the final quarter of 1987 and some solid titles, like Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!, the first Mega Man, and, er, The Goonies II? Sure!
Stinger
PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Konami
RELEASE DATE: Nov. 21st, 1986 (JP - FDS), Sept. 1987 (US), Mar. 26th, 1993 (JP)
ALSO AVAILABLE ON: Famicom Disk System, Virtual Console (Wii, Wii U)
Video games used to be insane. No idea suggested by developers was too quirky or weird for the game-playing audience.
Take Stinger, for example. Television sets and coat hangers fight alongside mutant ants and buzzsaws. Bells launch out of clouds, and if you shoot them enough, they’ll change colors and give you precious power-ups, the kind you’ll need to make it across the earth and rescue Professor Cinnamon.
Stinger is a shoot-em-up, but it doesn’t stick to one direction. Each level alternates between side-scrolling and vertical-scrolling, although both styles feature the same basic elements. You control a Stinger craft, equipped with pellet shots that destroy air-based enemies and bombs that wipe out ground-based enemies. In the side-scrolling sections, you also launch hearts out of the top of the craft. These hearts serve no purpose, other than to look pretty and help you juggle bells while you shoot any busted shoes or pizzas that interfere with proceedings.
The bells are Stinger’s downfall. To advance in later stages, your upgrades should include: laser shots, decoy ships flanking you and tripling your attack, and a shield for good measure. All these powerups can be obtained by shooting the bells a specific number of times (the greater the powerup, the more you have to shoot the bell), but the enemies come so hard and fast that it’s difficult to juggle the bells for as long as you need to while also keeping the enemies from killing you. To make things worse, sometimes your shots appear as if they hit the bells, but the bells don’t react and quickly fall away.
Even with the bell issues, Stinger’s worth experiencing for the bonkers atmosphere. Few games let you battle among the pyramids and fight a boss that’s a sentient boombox. Cherish what you have when you can get it.
Tiger-Heli
PUBLISHER: Acclaim
DEVELOPER: Toaplan (port by Micronics)
RELEASE DATE: Dec. 5th, 1986 (JP), Sept. 1987 (US), Jan. 7th, 1990 (EU)
ALSO AVAILABLE ON: Arcade, Atari 7800 (as of July 2025), Linux, Mac, PC
Tiger-Heli is some good ol’ fashioned homespun shooting, the way Mom used to make. Get in a helicopter, shoot everything that shoots at you, including tanks, boats, and turret cannons. Heck, shoot at things that aren’t inherent threats, like a parked car, the tops of homes, or even handcars on the railroad; who knows, maybe they were looking at you cock-eyed.
Your helicopter is equipped with unlimited missiles and two bombs for maximum damage. Cross markers appear at specific intervals throughout the stage and change colors from red to green to gray. Shooting the red or gray marker produces an assist helicopter that attaches to your side and launches missiles either horizontally or vertically, depending on the color. Shooting the green marker adds another bomb to your arsenal. For the most part, missiles will carry you through the entire game, but bombs are especially helpful for destroying the large gray vehicles that take up to fifteen hits.
Behold, the quirks of Tiger-Heli, the small things you notice while playing that make the game stand out.
First, like many NES games that cram too much action on-screen, the game has a heroic amount of flickering. Flicker on, you crazy shoot-em-up!
Second, the music changes slightly when you have an assist helicopter fighting alongside you; a simple, nice touch.
Third, if you have a bomb equipped at your side and a stray bullet touches it, the bomb will explode, but your helicopter will be safe.
That’s all Tiger-Heli has to offer, really. Nonstop shooting across five stages that, once beaten, repeat from stage two onwards. No bosses at the end of any level either, just your helicopter landing on a helipad.
Admittedly, Tiger-Heli is propulsive enough that you won’t care about that while you’re playing, but the lack of variety and small number of stages hinder the game’s immediate replay value.
Winter Games
PUBLISHER: Acclaim
DEVELOPER: Epyx (port by Atelier Double)
RELEASE DATE: Mar. 27th, 1987 (JP - FDS), Sept. 1987 (US)
ALSO AVAILABLE ON: Atari (2600, 7800, ST), Amiga, Apple II, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Mac, MSX, PC, NEC PC88, ZX81/Spectrum
The torch is lit. The athletes are freezing but determined. The crowd and judges are ready to cheer or jeer, depending on the performances. The Winter Games are here, whether you’re ready for them or not.
Don’t get too excited about this year’s lineup, though. Four events – Hot Dog Aerials, Speed Skating, Figure Skating, and Bobsledding – are all that’s in store.
In Hot Dog, you ski off a slope, do some flips and tricks, and hopefully land upright. Speed Skating is a versus race against another person on the ice, while Figure Skating is a solo affair, a graceful, elegant display of jumps and spins, also on the ice. Finally, Bobsledding is a downhill trek in a bobsled and is not nearly as fun as “Cool Runnings.”
If you succeed in impressing the judges with your wide-ranging athleticism, shiny medals are your reward, and the Games will be over in 15 minutes or less. Getting the gold isn’t so easy, though, and most of your time with Winter Games will be spent deciphering its cryptic instructions.
In Figure Skating, for example, one must perform seven movements or more perfectly to get the best score. Each movement is assigned to diagonal sections on the D-pad, along with ‘Up’ and ‘Down.’ To pull off any move, however, hold down the direction on the ‘D’ pad, hit ‘A,’ watch your skater perform the move, release the D-pad, then hit ‘A’ again and hope you don’t fall. Doing this once or twice is a miracle, let alone seven times. Even when you think you’re entering the inputs correctly, sometimes the skater just won’t execute the move.
The fire is out. The hotels are trashed. The contestants are drained. Everyone just wants to go home.
The Winter Games are over and not a moment too soon.
Switch 2 Mini-Update
Hey, thanks for reading! Before I go, I just wanted to tell you that, as of May 12th, I still have not received an invite from Nintendo, begging me to spend lots of money on their new console and accessories.
I’m hopeful I will, but… who really knows.
In the meantime, I hope Nintendo takes full advantage of this 90-day tariff pause between China and America to send all the Switch 2s over to the US as quickly as possible.
The “will-I-or-won’t-I-get-a-Switch 2” saga continues!
Tiger Heli is video game comfort food. Go forward and shoot bad guys. It's as simple as mac and cheese and just as satisfying.
I'd somehow forgotten all about Tiger Heli. I don't know if I played it much (I wasn't a huge fan of shooting games, even then), but I definitely watched my brother play hours and hours of it, flickering screen and all