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Nostalgic Vacation: 1984 - 1942


On 09/15/2014 at 12:05 AM by KnightDriver

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1984: consoles pretty much dead with the crash of '83; the arcades still pretty good with titles like: 1942, Punch-Out, Marble Madness and Space Ace; PC doing well with King's Quest, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein.  I looked at a lot of video of these games and more from this year and decided on replaying 1942 within Capcom Arcade Cabinet on XBLA and within Capcom Classics Collection Reloaded on PSP. 

                                            1942

1942 is a vertically scrolling shmup that takes place in the Pacific theater of WWII. You pilot an American P-38 fighter plane and shoot down lots of Japanese Zeroes and battleships. Only thing is, this game is hard, especially in single player mode. I just barely got past the first objective and then not much farther. Back in the day, my friend Mark and I played this game co-op a lot in the arcades and I remember getting all the way to the end with not a lot of continues. The game seems made for two-player mode.   

                      42screen       

The XBLA version within Capcom Arcade Cabinet is a perfect port and has a Score Attack mode which disallows continues for the sake of posting on a leaderboard. By playing you can unlock concept art and wallpaper that you can apply to the screen around the play area. It's pretty cool. I just didn't remember it being so hard. My high Score was only 71,490. 

                                                    42cab

I tried to play the PSP version within Capcom Classics Collection Reloaded, but the screen is so tiny, I couldn't see the enemies shots hardly at all and had to stop. 

Capcom made a bunch of 194x games and I've played them all. 1943 might be the best of them, but 1942 is the first and has a special place in my memory. 

 


 

Comments

Super Step Contributing Writer

09/15/2014 at 12:38 AM

Didn't know about 1943.

KnightDriver

09/15/2014 at 01:54 AM

There's like four games in the series plus the remake 1942: Joint Strike on Xbox Live.

Cary Woodham

09/15/2014 at 05:51 AM

I remember seeing 1942 EVERYWHERE in arcades back then.  Even our church had a 1942 machine in the Youth area many years later!  I appreciate the simplicity of it, but other than that I don't like it that much.  1943 on the other hand, is one of my all time favorite shootes.  Even the NES version is good!

Let's see if I can post a really cool picture.  Here goes:

Cammy 1942

KnightDriver

09/16/2014 at 02:39 AM

Ah hubba hubba. There was a pin-up girl theme for 1942: Joint Strike on Xbox. And yea, you're right, 1943 is the best one. 

Matt Snee Staff Writer

09/15/2014 at 08:59 AM

I loved those "Quest" games by Sierra back in the day. We had a NES of course, but we always had computers because my mom was a computer teacher.  I remember playing those games in CGA, EGA...  we never had the most advanced machine.  Space Quest was a lot of fun.  This was before the internet, so when we got stuck me and my dad would go down to radioshack and ask people what to do.  So funny in retrospect.  

KnightDriver

09/16/2014 at 02:50 AM

That's cool. I watched some video of Space Quest. I know it's probably out for iOS now, but they should do a Special Edition like they did with Secret of Monkey Island. I want to play them on console.

Matt Snee Staff Writer

09/16/2014 at 03:53 AM

the problem is the early ones demanded a keyboard, because you typed in what you wanted to do.  man, was this a terrible interface.  you'd always be typing in stuff trying to see what worked.  

later editions were more point and click.  

KnightDriver

09/16/2014 at 03:01 PM

Ah yes, that's right. I noticed a lot of pc games like that. Basically text adventures but with graphics. Point and Click is the way to go. I wonder if they could be redesigned that way?

Matt Snee Staff Writer

09/16/2014 at 03:19 PM

some of them were remade.  

NSonic79

09/15/2014 at 12:59 PM

Though I appreciate this game on XBLA I prefer my copy of capcom classics collection on my Original Xbox. I don't know why but it jus tplays better for me. I wish I could actually play that versio on my 360 than the XBLA version but alas no B/C for that game =(. It's why I bought the XBLA version in teh cabinet offering but it's not the same. But the addition of a turbo button is helpful.

KnightDriver

09/16/2014 at 03:09 AM

That Capcom Collection is very cool because it has all the 194x games. . . or three of them. I forget now.

Alex-C25

09/15/2014 at 04:34 PM

I remember playing the NES version on emulator and also remember the game being hard as balls.

KnightDriver

09/16/2014 at 03:14 AM

My friend had the NES version. I turned my nose up at it. Should've tried it though. Might have been easier.

goaztecs

09/17/2014 at 11:09 AM

This game is so much fun, yet always kicked my ass. I never thought about playing co-op with this game, it would have made things a little easier. I dug these 194x games, and I think a couple of clone versions made it to Android (all you need is a stylus for tablet gaming)

KnightDriver

09/17/2014 at 01:08 PM

By buddy Mark and I played it co-op all the time. There's something about the pattern of planes as they come into the screen that seems designed for two players. Playing one player has you moving left to right too much making it harder to avoid all the stuff coming at you.

Remy LeBeau

09/19/2014 at 01:08 AM

I recently played through 1943 (the NES version), and felt that while it was a solid SHMUP overall, it wasn't worth the effort required to beat it. The game dragged on for FAR too long: 24 stages! That's insane for a NES SHMUP! It kept repeating itself. You'd fight the same bosses over and over. The difficulty was all over the place. I'd breeze through some stages, but then get stuck on others for hours on end. There was also some horrific slowdown near the end. So much that it almost made the game unplayable. The password system was really nice though, and it was fun... but again, it simply dragged on for way too long IMO. Sorry if this has nothing to do with 1942 lol Embarassed

KnightDriver

09/19/2014 at 02:25 AM

No that's interesting. I was wondering how the NES version played.

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