I was lucky enough to get to spend a week at a lake "resort" for early summer vacation as a youth. They had a little arcade that no one ever went to that was just a concrete box with a couple games in it and maybe even a laundry. Choplifter was one of the cabinets there.

Now, you'd think that a rowdy youth would be obsessed with a helicopter that can blow up jets and tanks, but for some reason this game didn't take up as much of my time as the other cabinet in that concrete box: Pac Man. Probably because we found a way to cram our grimy mitts into that machine and activate the coin counter...

At any rate, I recall the controls on Choplifter were also a bit tricky to master. I mean, helicopters are a crazy thing to fly around and people crash them all the time. Plus, rockets on helicopters that can shoot down jets? Bananas.

Now maybe if we'd figured out how to play for free...

Review from thedonproject.com

the game has a touristy vibe, with you racing in a variety of famous places across the world. the game gives each locale their own two billboards, a third miscellaneous decoration, a selection of non-player vehicles for traffic, a road pattern, and a background. i list each because while this variety is enough to make the tracks feel different from the others, it is not enough to make the ~3.5 minutes you'll spend on each track much more than mindless monotony...
outside that, though, the game's presentation is really good! the inter-race globe-trotting cutscenes are a treat, the soundtrack's good (though the engine sounds were too loud for me to hear it, uh), the text that's yellow and blue and green, it all comes together quite nicely.
at least the game isn't too long, as (according to 3.5 minutes per race multiplied by 17 races (err, i lost track of how long i played for)) it took me about an hour to complete.

I’m working retail for shit pay at a Christmas store in Downtown Chicago. It sucks. I don’t have the rent money. I need an overnight job. I’m sick of needing help from dad, I wanna carry my own weight as a man. I made a bunch of cuts into my arm a few nights ago, it stings when my sweater grazes it.

I played this game on my 30-minute break this morning. It was raw. You can charge the spirit gun when u fire. The stages look great. you have a dodge button and can dash. Plenty of attacks. Great sound design REIGUNREIGUNREIGUMREIGUN. It made me laugh. I was less tense afterwards. I love Yu Yu Hakusho. I hope I can also enjoy 120%. it looks cool.

Looks phenomenal, first of all. Big, colorful, very well-animated sprites for the (seven!) playable characters and many of the enemies and bosses. Lots of personality in both them and the highly detailed backgrounds. Thankfully the game doesn't suffer too too much for the big, good graphics like many other platformers that have them do. Controlling each X-Man (and they do each play quite differently, which is cool) takes a bit of getting used to because of some slightly unusual physics, a touch of occasional jank, etc., but it's fine with some practice, and the levels are designed smartly enough to not let the fidelity cause real issues.

Levels are pretty varied and kind of have a "right" way to play them which boils down to which character to use. This is cool in theory because it makes you learn each character's moveset and quirks and makes them all feel special and truly like their comic counterparts, but can lead to some frustration while you burn lives experimenting with who's going to work best, and of course, it means that you can't just play as your favorite character for the whole game. Well, you COULD, but some levels would be really hard, so.

The weak points are the somewhat unexciting story/villains and some pretty bad-Genesis-y sound and music, which is always a disappointment. But quite good, overall. Maybe the best X-Men game up through, I don't know, X-MEN LEGENDS? I'm probably forgetting some.

(Also, has there ever been another game that has a legit pre-credits sequence? Seriously, you press the power button and you're instantly just standing there in level 1 as a random character with zero fanfare. And then when you beat it, you finally see the SEGA logo and things start proper. That's frickin cool!)