Buried Bucks

In both games, the player uses a helicopter to shoot holes in the ground and unearth money and other items while an airplane drops dirt to repair the terrain. Contemporaneous reviews cited the original concept, but overall the gameplay was considered repetitive.

• Title — Chopper Hunt • Developer — ANALOG Software • Designer — Tom Hudson • Publisher — Imagic • Released — Buried Bucks 1982: Atari 8-bit Chopper Hunt 1984: Atari 8-bit, C64 • Genre — Shoot 'em up • Modes — Single-player • Platforms — Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64

The bottom third of the screen is a cutaway view of terrain—items beneath the ground are visible—and the player flies a helicopter left and right above it. The joystick button fires bullets which dig holes in the landscape. Bullets arc out in front the helicopter depending on the direction it is facing, and it can also rotate to point out of the screen making the bullets go straight down. Visible beneath the dirt are bags of money and oil barrels which can be picked up when a path to them is clear. The helicopter must drop-off each treasure on a platform on the left side of the screen to get credit for it. A plane flies along the top of the screen dropping dirt clods which slowly fall and fill in holes in the terrain. A life is lost if the helicopter collides with the ground or falling dirt. Collecting and returning all of the items ends the level. In later levels, the landscape is taller so more digging is required, and there's less sky to maneuver in. Underground pools absorb bombs, preventing them from damaging the terrain.

Chopper Hunt was originally published in 1982 as Buried Bucks (with the name sylizied as Buried Buck$) by ANALOG Software, the game publishing label of Atari 8-bit magazine ANALOG Computing. Programmer Tom Hudson documented the bitmapped explosion effect used in the game in an article in ANALOG titled "Graphic Violence". The article includes the 6502 assembly language source code. The same effect is used in a later type-in game for the magazine: Planetary Defense. Hudson told Atari Explorer in 1986 that Buried Bucks was his first Atari 8-bit game and called it "pretty simplistic". In 1984, Imagic released the game as Chopper Hunt with some alterations to the visuals. A Commodore 64 port was published simultaneously.