1943: The Battle of Midway (1943 ミッドウェイ海戦, Ichi Kyū Yon San: Middouei Kaisen) is a 1987 shoot 'em up arcade game developed and published by Capcom. It was the first followup to Capcom's earlier 1942.
Gameplay[]
The game is set in the Pacific theater of World War II, off the coast of the Midway Atoll. The goal is to attack the Japanese air fleet that bombed the American aircraft carrier, pursue all Japanese air and sea forces, fly through the 16 stages of play, and make their way to the Japanese battleship Yamato and destroy her. 11 of these stages consist of an air-to-sea battle (with a huge battleship or an aircraft carrier as the stage boss), while 5 stages consist of an all-aerial battle against a squadron of Japanese bombers with a mother bomber at the end.
As in 1942, players pilot a P-38 Lightning. Controls are also similar: button 1 fires main weapons, and button two performs two special actions: a loop maneuver like in 1942, or one of three special lightning attacks in exchange for some of the player's fuel. Indeed, players now have only one life, in the form of a large "fuel" meter; constantly depleting, but refillable by collecting various powerups (chiefly "Pow" icons). In 2-player mode, when both players overlap their planes on screen, the energy bar can be transferred from the player with more fuel to the player with less. Destroying a complete formation of red enemy planes will result in a power-up, such as a health boost or a new main weapon.
There are cheat codes, different for every stage, ranging from holding down a fire button or pointing the joystick in certain direction, player(s) are rewarded with fully upgraded weapons.
Ports[]
Capcom released their own port for the NES, but the game has also been ported to the Atari ST, the ZX Spectrum, the Amstrad CPC, the Commodore 64 and the Amiga. In 1998 it was rereleased as Capcom Generation 1 for the Sega Saturn and the PlayStation. In 2005 it was re–released for Xbox and PlayStation 2 as part of Capcom Classics Collection, and again in Capcom Classics Collection: Reloaded on the PlayStation Portable. It also included as the initial game in Capcom Arcade Cabinet, a compilation of games released digitally for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on February 19, 2013 in which the games are sold individually or in packs. The overall faithfulness and quality of execution of these third party versions varies greatly.
NES[]
Released exactly one year after the arcade version, the NES version of 1943 introduced the ability to improve the player's plane by permanently upgrading certain aspects of its abilities. These include the plane's offensive and defensive powers, the maximum fuel level, and its special weapons and their durations. This somewhat alters the game balance and a different tactic is required to survive the game. For example, initially very few weapons are made available; more can be attained from power-ups by putting statistic points into "special weapons ability".
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