October 2018 Shmup Club - 1942

[MetalFRO]

[img width=700 height=215]http://arcademarquee.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/1942-marquee.jpg[/img]

The year? 1942. The place? Over the Pacific Ocean. Destination? Tokyo. You are a pilot in the US Air Force. Your mission? Reach the Japanese airbase and eliminate their fleet. Are you up to the challenge? Can you prevent further destruction to US forces?

1942 was developed by Capcom, and released in 1984, by Capcom themselves in some regions, and by both Midway and Romstar in North America. It's among the earliest vertical scrolling shoot-em-up games, and one that helped establish the formula that would be the standard through the 1980's. Despite being eclipsed 3 short years later by its successor, 1943: The Battle of Midway, 1942 still stands as an important game in the genre. Whereas nearly all shooting games up to this point had focused on space flight or combat, Capcom's 1942 was the first to focus on more real, down-to-earth warfare, with planes instead of spacecraft. Also, it was a bold move for a Japanese developer, as it plays from the perspective of an American fighter pilot, in pursuit of Japanese pilots, and ultimately, leading to the destruction of the Japanese air fleet.

1942 was ported and converted to a number of different systems. It was an early release for the Famicom and NES, and appeared on Nintendo's Game Boy Color a number of years later. Several microcomputers received versions: the MSX, PC-8801, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and Commodore 64, with the last one receiving a custom soundtrack. Other notable versions include a conversion for the Windows Mobile platform. The game was part of the Capcom Generations series, showing up in volume 1 on the Sega Saturn, and in the collection on PlayStation, though only in Japan, in both instances. It's also included in several iterations of the Capcom Classics Collection releases on PlayStation 2, Xbox, and PSP. And finally, the arcade version was even available on the Wii virtual console.

Participants
MetalFRO
Addicted
EZ Racer
Duke.Togo
Bickman2k
Normatron
Dingo
Square_Air
Nupoile
Deadman
Crabmaster2000

High Scores per Port/Conversion/Version
NES:
Game Boy Color:
PS2:
Xbox:
PSP:
Commodore 64:
Wii VC:
Arcade:

[Addicted]

I'm in of course.

[EZ Racer]

I'll be on NES

[Duke.Togo]

Count me in. Hopefully I can track this down for the C64 and give that a try.

[MetalFRO]

Welcome aboard, gents! Thanks for jumping in. @Duke.Togo - I look forward to hearing your impressions of the C64 version!

[bickman2k]

I'll try to play this one on NES. Possibly MAME as well.

[Normatron]

I'm going to try it out, playing it on ps3 capcom collection

[Normatron]

Ps2 collection

[MetalFRO]

Welcome aboard, Normatron, and welcome to RF Generation!

[Dingo]

Officially here to enter the Fray!

[MetalFRO]

Welcome aboard, Dingo!

[Square_Air]

I'm back again for this one. Unfortunately my monitor doesn't seem to be working well, but I have ways around that this month. My vote was for Xevious, and I would have preferred Deathsmiles, but 1942 is decent. This is one very loooong game though, so i'm not sure if I'll clear this since I might die of old age before the end ever comes.

My favourite quote about 1942 comes from Perikles in which he says "Few people know this number was chosen since this is both the year of development as well as the number of stages in this game, meaning it was a rather practical choice!"

[MetalFRO]

Welcome aboard, Square_Air, glad to see you're participating again. And yes, 1942 is super long, though the stages themselves are relatively short. Howlongtobeat.com has it listed at 2 hours to beat, and I'd believe that. It might just be the longest finite-length shooter out there, in terms of a single first loop. We'll definitely get to Xevious and Deathsmiles at some point. I literally just got my Deathsmiles LE package for Xbox 360 in the mail a week and a half ago, so I'm prepared for it whenever we decide to go there.

I'm a little unclear about the Perikles quote - with 32 stages, I'm not sure how that lines up with 1984 (when it released).

[EZ Racer]

So I started playing and got on a pretty good run. Hope it's not considered cheating but had to take a few pause breaks (NES without using a turbo controller), and I muted the TV. Also realized Silver Surfer's soundtrack fits pretty well with 1942.

[nupoile]

I keep forgetting to post here that I am also in!

Now I'm just hoping for time to actually play it and chat about it.....

Also, don't be surprised if my scores are really low, shmups are pretty hard for me.

Oh, and I like your tv EZ Racer, I have 3 of them myself