NES Games I Beat #33: 1942

    1942 is an old school, hardcore, pretty basic but revolution arcade top down or overhead view flight shooter by the at the time illustrious Capcom. This was one of their early hits and was an early NES title from 1986. 
This game has always scared the fuck out of me. There’s a term “NES Hard” used to describe games like the Castlevania Trilogy, Ninja Gaiden, Kid Icarus, Contra, and of course Mike Tyson’s Punch Out. That was originally what I classified this game as but honestly Capcom was really pretty fair about their difficulty for the most part like Megaman which is hard but practice makes perfect. Other Nintendo games can be relentless and unforgiving. In this regard, 1942 wasn’t as hard as I had thought it was going to be going in. A million times more forgiving than Gradius with unlimited continues on a 3 live system with a bonus life for 20,000 points. It’s nice and balanced unlike a lot of arcade that limit your continues, rendering a lot of those great ports nearly unplayable due to difficulty. 1942 shows that challenge can come from more than just losing all your lives.
    The difficulty here is balanced. The game is pretty challenging with the tens of enemies and bullets surrounding you at all moments that you must dodge because one hit and you’re done. This is balanced out by unlimited continues though so at least there’s that. Also, at random intervals in a level there could be a checkpoint or at the beginning of each level you can continue from there if you lose all your lives. So thank God this system is pretty fair but lack of a password system means you have to do all the stages in one go, which luckily I was good enough to do.
    There are 30 stages altogether as indicated by the counter between levels. Most weren’t too hard and would take only a few luck attempts but stage 14 and stage 3 gave me hours of hell due to insane amounts of enemies and bullets. Every 5 stages or so there’s a boss which is pretty easy once you know his pattern but the screen filling bullets he can produce will fuck you up if you’re not in his rhythm. The lack of a final boss is fine because it’s an arcade game so I get it. The larger aircraft in most levels would generally fill my need for mini bosses because they were essentially that with all the normal enemies still coming so it was always a tense challenge to take them down. There were some bullshit moments of death due to the generally insane gauntlet of enemies on the final stretch to the exit of each stage but they were always enjoyable nonetheless.
    This game is a predecessor to all the modern ship shooters so the small amount of powerups is also ok. In fact for its time this system must have been pretty above the bar. There’s a power up that nukes the screen, one that add two guns to the side of the ship which makes you a longer target and can be taken off by enemy fire, and finally a bullet increase from two to a wider ranged six, which if gotten while the two guns have been added boosts them as well. Another useful trick is a turbo controller or use the NES Four Score to turn a regular control into one.
    That’s the method I used as I tried the Advantage but the arcade stick made movement very clunky. The D-Pad works incredibly well here, very precise. Firing is done by tapping B but that gets extremely tiresome and tedious so Turbo is a must. Everything is very face paced which is the appeal to dodging and managing your shots, it puts you in a near zen like state of concentration. At times the NES actually lags a bit which led to some cheap deaths but it’s a limitation well known of the system and this only happens in the insanity of late game anyway like Stage 3.
    Overall this is a really solid early NES game that I’ve always liked but never thought I’d beat because of the difficulty of games like Gradius but even terrible players like me can make it with a lot of work and one solid night’s effort. This game is a lot of fun albeit a pretty challenging but balanced experience. If you can accept that it’s pretty simple to play but hard to master like older arcade style games, I think there’s a lot to appreciate here. With tight control and good powerups as well as short but engaging level design it’s easy to find something to like about this game. It’s considered an ultra classic for a reason. I’m awarding 1942 a 8.1 out of 10. If I had gotten this as a game back in the NES days it would have been a fun game to have and master and I believe it holds up really well today.