Rotor Rescue: Choplifter
VTOL Gunship Rescue Action
Free · Designed for iPad
The ultimate tribute to Choplifter! Fly a VTOL gunship through 17 war zones. Rescue every hostage. Survive the endless gauntlet.
ROTOR RESCUE – the definitive Choplifter tribute and helicopter rescue action game. Fly a VTOL gunship through 17 hand-crafted campaign sectors, blow open detention barracks, and extract every last survivor. Lose your chopper – or let a hostage fall – and the mission is over. Built for desktop and mobile with modern visuals, procedural terrain, and relentless action.
THE MISSION
Blast barrack doors, hover low to load up to 8 hostages (16 in Classic mode), and race back to the landing pad. Every second on the clock is worth extra points – speed and precision count. Four difficulty tiers (CADET to LEGEND) adjust aggression, armour, and mission clock.
17 CAMPAIGN SECTORS
Each battlefield brings unique terrain, weather, and tactical twists: rolling dunes, salt flats, monsoon ridges, iron quarries, ice crevasses, obsidian spires, storm corridors, gravity vortices, and more.
Sector 15 – TERMINUS: a rising coolant flood drowns low‑lying cells; Sentinels fire tracking beams; the shielded Architect is invulnerable until you destroy its 3 orbiting nodes. Only the best pilots clear this gauntlet.
LAST BIRD FLYING – ENDLESS SURVIVAL MODE
Unlocked after the campaign: one helicopter, one life, no resets. The mission clock tightens, enemies multiply, and aggression ramps up without limit. Your run resumes from the last wave completed. How long can you last?
KILL 'EM ALL – EXTERMINATION SORTIE
Also unlocked: a massive open battle arena holding every hostile type in the game at once. No civilians, no time limit – the clock counts up and the sortie ends when the last hostile dies. Completion time sets your record.
ENEMY ROSTER & COMBAT
Face T‑90 Anvil tanks, MiG Shrike interceptors, ZS‑4 flak nests, homing Wasp drones, floating mines, PK‑6 Stingray gunboats, SP‑9 Sentinel pylons, the Warden (320‑armour prototype gunship), and the shielded Architect. All documented in the in‑game Field Codex.
WEAPONS & POWER‑UPS
Manage your cannon, bomb bay (up to 18 bombs), and flare cartridges. Defeated enemies drop supply canisters: Afterburner (+45% speed), Rapid Fire (2× fire rate), AP Rounds (one‑shot kills), Shield segments, Bomb reloads, and Health kits.
DIFFICULTY TIERS
CADET (6 lives, 0.7× score) · PILOT (5 lives, 1× score) · ACE (3 lives, 1.5× score) · LEGEND (2 lives, 2× score).
42 COMMENDATIONS & FLIGHT RECORD
Earn military decorations – Perfect Extraction, Warden Slayer, Untouched, Iron Nerve, No Cheater, Campaign Closed, and more. Your permanent Flight Record tracks per‑sector best scores, total rescued, and every campaign completed.
CHEAT MODE
Optional training wheels: permanent Rapid Fire, reinforced hull (+250 HP), increased airspeed, extra bombs and flares, and +30% mission time. Sectors cleared with Cheat ON do not count toward the "No Cheater" commendation.
CHOPLIFTER CLASSIC MODE
A pixel‑perfect recreation of Dan Gorlin’s 1982 Apple II masterpiece: 280×192 hi‑res geometry, 4 huts, 64 hostages, T‑62 tanks, MiG scrambles, and a 480‑second timer. Built for today – exactly as you remember it.
GENERATIVE AUDIO
Each sector features its own musical mode, tempo, and instrumentation. Stereo WebAudio with ping‑pong delay and dynamic intensity that responds to combat. Title theme can be toggled on/off.
ADAPTIVE GRAPHICS
The renderer automatically adjusts to your hardware: MAXIMUM (full bloom, lens dispersion, water reflections, caustics, micro‑detail) or BALANCED (smooth framerate through explosions and weather).
14 LIVERIES
Choose from Jungle Green, Desert Sand, Gunship Grey, Midnight Navy, Arctic White, Crimson Lance, Black Tiger, Olive Drab, Sunburst, Nightshade, Glacier Ice, Command Gold, Sharkmouth, and more.
CONTROLS
Touch: virtual stick + action pads for FIRE, FLARE, BOMB. Keyboard: WASD/arrows to fly, Space to fire, E for flare, B/C for bomb, P to pause, M to mute.
ROTOR RESCUE is a love letter to Brøderbund’s 1982 classic – Choplifter. For every pilot who never left a soul behind.
Download ROTOR RESCUE and bring them all home.
Ratings & Reviews
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The developer, Luca Govoni, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Luca Govoni
- Size
- 29.1 MB
- Category
- Action
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 13.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 13.0 or later. - iPad
Requires iPadOS 13.0 or later. - iPod touch
Requires iOS 13.0 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 13.0.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Copyright
- © 2026 Luke Garrison