1942 originally appeared in the arcades in 1984. It was released by Capcom and is a top-down (vertical scrolling) shooter set in the Pacific theater of World War II. Your character flies a P-38 Lightning fighter against various era Japanese fighters. The game was ported to the NES on November 7th, 1986 in North America. So the game is relatively early in the game library for the NES (which released in North America on October 18, 1985).
The game itself is fairly simple for a shoot em up. You only have one weapon so to speak (though the weapon does get upgraded) and you have a barrel roll move to avoid enemies. There are 32 stages in the game and essentially, you take off from the aircraft carrier, fly through each stage, and land back on the carrier at the end of the stage.
As you fly through each stage, look for the swarms of brown airplanes that appear. If you shoot them all down they release a "POW" that will upgrade your weapon to the quad shot and later it will upgrade to two planes that fly on your flanks and shoot.
The game is quite the grind though, as you'll need to make it through the 32 stages...there isn't a password system, but fortunately you can continue where you left off after a game over. At the end of every stage you land on the aircraft carrier and your points and bonus points are tallied.
The good news is that you also get extra lives based off of the points, so it's good to collect points and shoot down as many planes as you can in each level.
Now let's break down the scores for this game:
Graphics 15% - (3.5) The graphics are nothing bad for the time period. In fact I'd say it looks better than a similar NES game like Xevious. So I'm going to give it a slightly above average score of 3.5
Sound 15% - (1) The absolute worst thing about this game is the sound. The sound effects for the planes and stuff aren't so bad. But the music...if you can call it that...is horrible. It's just a constant high-pitched ring the entire time. This is a game that you'd probably want to turn the volume down for and maybe play some of your own music. It gets a score of 1
Control 25% - (4) Solid, simple, accurate. That's how I can describe the controls in this game. Input is solid and each button only does one thing. The simplicity is part of what makes this a great shoot em up. It's a formula that is found in most popular scrolling shooters. For this, it gets a 4
Fun Factor 45% - (3) Good, solid shoot em up is the best way to describe this game. In fact, I'd say if you were going to play your first shoot em up on the NES, this would be the one to try. It's paced well for a beginner and is a pretty fun game. However, the enemies don't change much and the game can seem repetitive as you go along for 32 levels. I still enjoy it a lot though, so it gets a 3
Final Average - 3.025 Average game, average score. Worth a look if you like shooters or want to get into the shoot em up genre.
eBay outlook - Cart alone (June 2020) - price ranges from $12-$20; Complete (June 2020) - $140-$250
Retroachievements (emulation) - 19 achievements worth 140 points (as of June 2020)
