Video games - 1943: The Battle of Midway

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	Video games - 1943: The Battle of Midway

1943: The Battle of Midway is a vertically scrolling shoot'em up arcade game made by Capcom in 1987. 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 2005 it was released for Xbox and PlayStation 2 as part of Capcom Classics Collection
. The overall faithfulness and quality of execution of these third party versions varies greatly. 1943 is the second game in the 1940s series, following the successful 1942
.

Gameplay

The game is set in the Pacific Theater of Operations in World War II, off the coast of the Midway Atoll. The goal is to attack the Japanese Air Fleet that bombed the players' American Aircraft Carrier, pursue all Japanese Air and Sea forces, fly through the 16 levels of play, make their way to the Japanese battleship Yamato and destroy her. 11 Levels consist of an Air-to-Sea battle (with a huge battleship or an aircraft carrier as an End-Level Boss), while 5 levels consist of an all-aerial battle against a squadron of Japanese Bombers and a Mother Bomber that needs to be destroyed.

As with 1942, players pilot a P-38. Unlike 1942, the player only has one life, the player only has one refillable energy meter which dwindles as follows:

Getting hit by Enemy Fire (Minor Energy Loss, about 4-16 points)
Getting crashed by Enemy Planes (Major Energy Loss, Players lose more energy if hit by large planes, can be as severe as (circa) 88 Energy Points!)
Time
Grabbing a Special Weapon

The game is over when all of the P-38's energy is gone.

In addition to the Loop-the-Loop techniques (2 Loops per stage), the P-38 was re-tailored to carry more weapons as outlined herein:

Shotgun (Clears Enemy Fire, grab a second one to increase its power)
Three-Way Machine Gun (Widens the shot burst)
Auto (Fires an extremely fast burst with one touch of the button)
Super Shell (Hold the button to continually fire—double the power of normal bullets)
Laser (Rarity that can pierce even the toughest targets)
Lightning (Mega Crush—Destroys all flying objects)
Tsunami (Mega Crush—damages ships)
Cyclone (Mega Crush—clears all enemy fire)

WARNING: Using either the Lightning, Tsunami, and Cyclone will decrease the player's energy meter beyond imagination.

If the level ends with a surface attack, the ship targets will count towards the score; otherwise all air targets are accounted for. The player must succeed in destroying 70% of the boss or face a return to the scene to finish the job. Upon level's completion, most of the energy meter is replenished and points are awarded according to the percentage of destroyed targets and the number of loop moves remaining.

Destroying a formation of red enemy planes will result in a power-up, the most common type of which is the POW icon, which will replenish a little of the energy meter. Optionally, the player can fire at the POW icon to turn it into a variety of weapon power-ups as described above. As the weapon power-up currently in effect wears out with time (one point per second), replacement power-ups need to be picked up on a regular basis, or weapons will revert to the stock guns. The last of the regular power-ups, the rare double canister, will replenish most of the energy gauge. Apart from chance encounters straight from a red squadron, it is acquired by firing at a regular power-up icon for a very long time - it finally turns into one.

Other rarer power-ups exist. Occasionally a red squadron will yield Capcom's famous "Yashichi" symbol, which will replenish the energy meter completely. A plane symbol will provide reinforcements in the form of two wingmen. Sometimes a small, green plane will enter from behind, destroying it will reveal a star-shaped score bonus. Every level also contains hidden bonus items that can be spotted by firing randomly, if it would appear that bullets are hit an invisible target then continuing to shoot at that spot will reveal a hidden bonus. The most noteworthy of these is the curious cat-shaped statue, which will teleport randomly around the screen. Picking it up will enable the P-38 to use the laser weapon for roughly 65 seconds.

Bosses (from start to finish)

Tone (Japanese Heavy Cruiser)
Kaga (Japanese Aircraft Carrier)
Ayako 1 (Japanese Mother Airship)
Fuso (Japanese Battleship)
Akagi (Japanese Aircraft Carrier)
Daihiryu 1 (Japanese Aircraft Squadron)
Ise (Japanese Battleship)
Hiryuu (Japanese Aircraft Carrier)
Ayako 2 (Japanese Mother Airship)
Mutsu (Japanese Battleship)
Daihiryu 2 (Japanese Aircraft Squadron)
Yamashiro (Japanese Battleship)
Souryuu (Japanese Aircraft Carrier)
Ayako 3 (Japanese Mother Airship)
Nagato (Japanese Battleship)
Yamato (Japanese Battleship and Final Boss)

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for 1943: The Battle of Midway ]

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