04: 1943: the battle of Midway
Playing rules: Difficulty: Normal. Continues: Not allowed. Single-player scores only
Dip switch bank A: 1-5=OFF; 6-8=ON.
Dip switch bank B: 1-8=OFF
Current Record holders:
1st: 1,978,060 - Robert Macauley - 2002
....
7th: 32,200 - Jim Cook - 2000
A year later, game wise, and we have 1943 – the sequel. Now, i have to say – i have no experience of this game on anything other than the AtariST version, which although was fun in a “two player buggering about” sort of way, never really grabbed me. The reason for this was actually the main innovation since 1942, namely the energy bar. I don’t really like shooting games where your ship has an energy bar, i like to be on the edge, just a bullet away from death. This game felt like it took away some of the skill involved in bullet dodging. Twin that with the fact that the ST game had infinite continues (or at least several i don’t really remember) and you find yourself less than bothered if a bullet hits you every now and then. No sir, i don’t like it.
Of course it’s all bollocks, because playing it now on the arcade machine – it seems a whole different game. Of course, it still has the energy bar, but when forced to play with no continues and on a harder difficulty setting (i know it says “normal” up there, i’ll come back to that in a minute) the gameplay i loved from 1942 is back. Better than that, it’s actually more fun!
The premise of the game is the same, you control a plane and you have to shoot all of the nasty people. This time however, they have some tricks up their sleeves. With it being the battle of midway, there are plenty of boats and ships to muck you about as well. Add to that the dual-layered playing field (planes can duck beneath the clouds, or indeed suprise rape you by popping out below where you are) and you have quite a challenge. Also, as mentioned you now have a energy bar to manage, and you can top that up with little “POW’s” you find after killing the red planes dotted about. These POWs also turn into time limited weapon upgrades if you shoot them a bit before collecting them.
All very good, so lets get down and play the game.
First off, I mentioned earlier about the difficulty. The listed difficulty of “NORMAL” is actually misleading. As with all of these games in MAME, you should check the dip switch settings and use them as your guide, and the setting listed above actually give you a difficulty of 15 (out of a possible 16) where the default is only 7 or so. Make sure you change these first otherwise you’ll get a much easier game!
First game was fun. At the end of each level there is a big boat or plane for you to Duff in, and i managed to get past the first few levels even though i didnt actually kill the guardians, which was odd. Also, the energy bar was pretty low at the end of each level, but it is refueled before the next – which is nice! Anyway, not a bad score. What became very clear is just how poor that low record score is – my nanna could get 32,000 – and i had it by the end of level 1. My score of 82 thousand was only good enough to replace this at 7th mind you, as the next one was 100,000+
Score: 82,000
On the second go i learnt TWO valuable lessons.
1) DON’T crash into bigger planes – really, it’s not a good idea. I did, and my energy bar pretty much disappeared from full to nowt immediately.
2) The “shotgun” weapon upgrade is SHIT, i mean proper rhubarb. Imagine for a second the sort of weapon you would want on your world war 2 airplane when faced with heavily armed boats and planes aplenty. Done that? It wasn’t a fucking shotgun was it?! This weapon fires pellets of rubbish about an inch up the screen, where they then disappear. Rubbish. Capcom knew how rubbish they were as well, as it is the first upgrade it offers you as you shoot the POW symbol. DON’T pick it up, if you have to hit a bullet and lose the game rather than pick this up, thats the better choice believe me.
Ahem, they are my excuses melud and i’m sticking to them.
Score: 27,600 (i know, “me nanna could get 32,000″ – don’t go on, quit living in the past!)
Ok, third go. Pretty much the same as the first to be fair. Still didnt kill the guardians, but the game seemed happy with the beating i gave them and let me go by anyway. Still not enough to go above 7th mind.
Score: 90,600.
Seeing as i broke the loose rule of 3 goes on each game so early on, i fancy a 4th go, and i’m glad i did. Buoyed by the knowledge that i dont *have* to bust a gut to kill a guardian, i dont die at the same place anymore, i just float about a bit at the top after giving it a minor kicking and hoorah, next level!
That is until of course i take the piss a bit with a later guardian and barely scrape him before running away, where the game decides to tell me that i failed (who me?) and it dumps me back to the beginning of that level again. I getcha.
All in all though a good old run, enough to get me up to 5th in fact!
Score: 211,800
That’ll do for now. Another cracking game, really glad i played the arcade version as i genuinly thought the ST version was pump. I reckon the 1st place record wouldnt be impossible either, and this is probably the first game of this quest that i can say that for.