You ever boot up a game so old it basically growls at your modern PC like “what is this sorcery?” That’s Paratrooper, developed on DOS in 1982 by Greg Kuperberg and Orion Software. Black screen, a tiny cannon in the middle, and a sense of dread that creeps in faster than any cutscene ever could. No soundtrack. No backstory. Just you, a turret, and the sky full of everything trying to end you.
Man, I still remember the first time I played it. It came on a dusty floppy that barely worked. I thought it was broken because nothing happened for like three seconds. Then, the chopper noise hit. That mechanical whir, the kind that sounds like it was recorded in someone’s garage with a fan and a kazoo. Suddenly, little dudes with parachutes started raining from the sky. And just like that, it was on.
Here’s the thing about Paratrooper—it feels like war. Not the Hollywood kind. More like the claustrophobic, panicky arcade war. You’re not some roided-out super soldier. You’re a lonely turret. That’s it. Your whole existence is spin left, spin right, shoot up. That’s the entire control scheme, and yet it somehow turns into this hypnotic chaos where you’re juggling priorities like your life depends on it. Because it does.
Planes drop bombs. Helicopters drop soldiers. The soldiers march. And if four of those little guys land safely on either side of your turret? They pull off this weird, synchronized suicide jump and wreck your whole operation. Game over, just like that. No health bar. No forgiveness.
What gets me is how tense it stays. You start to feel this creeping pressure the longer you survive. Miss a guy and he parachutes down too close to your cannon? Now he’s marching. You kill a plane, but it drops a bomb before it goes? Now you’re dead. It’s a game where surviving past two minutes feels like a minor miracle. Every second is a victory. Every bullet counts. There’s no glory, no upgrades, no progression system. Just you and the constant threat of being overwhelmed.
That minimalism is what makes Paratrooper stick with you. No filler. No distractions. It’s pure gameplay, distilled down to the fight-or-flight part of your brain. And the sound—those sounds, man. The blippy gunfire, the chopper blade loops, the wet thud when a soldier hits the ground. It’s not elegant, but it’s memorable in that raw, gritty way that only early PC games nailed. Like someone hardwired tension into a .exe file.
I think that’s why Paratrooper still hits. It’s not trying to impress you—it just is. It’s a little time capsule from when games didn’t explain themselves, didn’t coddle you. They just dropped you in, gave you a gun, and said “good luck, champ.”
If you’ve never played it, dig it up. It’ll run on anything (probably even a microwave at this point), and within ten seconds, you’ll get it. And if you have played it? Fire it up again. Just once. I bet you’ll find yourself slipping right back into that old rhythm—eyes darting, trigger finger twitching, praying that next chopper doesn’t come in too low.
They don’t make ‘em like this anymore. But sometimes, it’s nice to remember when they did.
GameDive24 Rating: 9/10
And you? How many points did you score? Let us know on our FB!
