1942 (Arcade)

Released in arcades in 1984 by Capcom, 1942 is a vertical scrolling shooter for 1 or 2 players (alternating). The game is set during the US' operations in the Pacific during World War 2 with the player flying a biplane fighter jet against waves of enemy planes. The player flies a P-38 Lightning plane armed only with machineguns and the ability to do 3 loops per stage/life, indicated by "R" icons in the lower-right corner. Loops allow the player to evade and become invincible for 2-3 seconds at the cost of control. Waves of red enemy planes drop different color POW items which may award double firepower (more bullets), two additional support planes (one on either side which last until they take a hit or you lose a life), an additional loop, bonus points or even an extra life while one POW clears all enemies & bullets from the screen. Enemy planes come in a few different patterns, colors & sizes with small planes destroyed by one hit but bigger planes able to take several hits, all while firing at you. If you get hit anywhere by an enemy bullet or collide with an enemy plane you lose a life. The game is over if all lives are lost. Each stage begins & ends on the deck of an aircraft carrier, with the name of the location changing every 4 stages. Interestingly, the game's progression starts with the number of stages left and counts down to zero as you complete stages, so it goes “Last 32/31/30/etc Stage” instead of “Stage 1/2/3/etc”. Every fourth stage is a bonus round where there are many more planes but they don't shoot back (except for big planes). After each stage the percentage of enemies you destroyed is shown and you receive bonus points based on that, along with 1000 points for each loop you didn't use if any. A few stages have much larger boss planes which take many more hits to destroy, but not a lot. There are 32 stages in total, but oddly the final boss plane comes on the 31st stage and not the 32nd-the final stage is just a normal bonus round. If you complete the 32nd stage, you complete the game. But oddly, after the game ends at this point it gives you an option to continue. This was the first game in a long-running series of vertical shooters with the World War 2 theme, in which Capcom oddly went back to “1941” then jumped to “1944” after doing 1942 and 2 “1943” games, plus one later dubbed “19XX”. Essentially it was Galaxian/Galaga if set during the World Wars. Despite the difficulty being high across the games they were very successful and laid the early groundwork for military-themed shooters. Oh, and very annoying background music/sounds-that whistling-like background noise will either grate your ears quickly or lull you to sleep. And watch for a funny and strangely incomplete message at the end of the game! The game was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985 in Japan and 1986 in the US and also for Nintendo Game Boy Color in 2000. It was also re-released for PlayStation 2, Xbox & PlayStation Portable in 2006 as part of "Capcom Classics Collection", a version also featuring remixed soundtracks to make the whistling far higher pitched and maybe slightly less annoying.