"Apathetically charming and undemanding."

One summer I spent a month at a math camp at the US Naval Academy. The social area had a basketball court and in the corner were two video games and a pinball machine. The games were Rush 'n Attack and 1942. Rush 'n Attack got more attention from the video gamers, because it seemed that four levels should be easier than thirty-two, you got a lot cooler weapons in Rush 'n Attack anyway, and the Cold War was still on. Perhaps with the continue feature, we would probably have spent less money finishing 1942 in one swoop than we did overall on Rush 'n Attack, but 1942 just wasn't as intense.

Not that it's a bad game. There are lots of planes looping around at different seeds, but the experience on the whole feels more like sitting on a back porch in some rural area than actual combat. Most enemies give up on you after flying around a bit. And after lectures about Menelaus's Theorem the small cadre of video game junkies(as opposed to the bridge and Hearts crowd) needed something a little faster-paced, and so we usually went with taking out the Russian army with a knife over whacking the Japanese air force with a serviceable fighter. Still 1942 was a nice change of pace, because it's harder to feel dumb when you're ambushed and blown up than when you have an hour to sit and think about a problem. And anyway it graded you after each level. It was hard to get below sixty percent of enemies shot, which was not only better than Galaga's hit-percent but also far above the grades we got on our exams(33% or so.)

The game starts out with a whistle and drumbeat as your plane zooms off an aircraft carrier. You're in the 32nd-last stage, apparently, and pretty soon you will be engulfed by planes half your size that loop in circles, dive down and back up, or act as kamikazes. It's not necessary to kill them--just avoid them(you've got two-thirds of the screen for that) and their pinpoint orange bullets--and in fact the only enemy you have to kill is an enormous plane every four levels, with wings spanning the screen, although you do get a percentage bonus at the end of each level. I always looked forward to this. Maybe it was just that we had math tests where you got fifty percent, and when I pick up the game today to tinker with it I'm still fighting against some of the more annoying failures in high school. Or maybe it's because the whistle-and-drum that sounds like a bad parade crossed with an overzealous gym teacher give way to a fake typewriter act printing your stats and a brief roar of engines as you dock at an aircraft carrier and recharge your loops.

Oh yes. I forgot about the loops. I usually do during the game too but apparently they're quite useful if you know what to do with them. You get three to start a level or life, and when you loop you're invulnerable to bullets or to crashing into enemies. Settling back in often ends in tears if you just use loops for jollies but I find that I lurch violently between using them right away and forgetting them in a tight jam, which is a shame, because they choke off that darned whistling for a few seconds too. Recently I've managed to remember to hit the loop when in a jam, but apparently you need foresight and not just reflexes for it to work perfectly. Bummer.

Fortunately there aren't just green and brown planes half your size to bully around. If you take out formations of five or ten reddish planes, which fly in orderly predictable formations, a 'POW' appears on the screen. Depending on its color you can get extra firepower, another life, a small plane on each side of your main ship, or an extra barrel roll. You can also vanquish all bad guys on the screen. It's fun to play chicken and wait to the last minute to zap all the bad guys, and you can also take out some of the larger planes by crashing one of your smaller planes into them. It's a wonderful chance to get revenge on all the suiciders that clipped you, in this game and others. And the best part is that if you are killed the red planes frequently appear when you regenerate. So you can start with a power up.

On your resurrection you may also get the chance to shoot down some of the bigger planes before they get a shot in at you depending on where you crashed(well, some actually don't fire anyway.) Larger planes always take several hits and although they're easy targets they can really spray out bullets or flat out block off a chunk of the screen for a bit. Some are t-shaped and others have different sized engines, and there are even extra large planes that serve as a sort of boss fight. All big opponents also flash niftily when they're near the end, and you can even shoot them when they're half off screen and have given up.

And overall you'll want to nail as much as you can. It's good survival tactics, and just feeling as though you outsmarted planes by blasting them at the last possible second is fun. After a while I kept myself honor bound to blast a few big planes, or a few suicide planes that swerved at the last moment, before they got to the bottom. There's a certain art to this as staying at the front may leave you open to more immediate attacks, but learning how to pull back and forth can leave opponents' shots straying helplessly, or their turns are similarly fruitless. If 1942 isn't exciting, it's certainly obliging, and I find myself returning the favor--okay, I'll try in good faith to blast whatever's there.

It took me a while to sit down and play through the game, but not as long as I'd feared, or it didn't seem as long as I feared it might seem. The game's continue feature is usually generous except at the level's end when you're kicked back to a power-up that may help you to defeat the boss ahead. And every fourth level, after a big boss, you have a ''percent and point up'' scene where the rank and file just don't bother to fire at you. It's not a total break as you need to learn evasive action but it makes the game feel that much softer. The only problem may be the high-score and game summary. Even the cool tune(one of the few I could describe as peppy without feeling embarrassed) you get for a top five placement, and the eight-word message you can place, doesn't allay the annoyance of forgetting to hit FIRE with your 1UP so you can continue.

And thirty-two levels of relative sameness is potentially very dreary. I feared it after it became clear the game clung to the whistling(which to be fair isn't as irritating as someone who whistles badly--it helps that you constantly get to shoot things in the process) but couldn't they have rotated four clips depending on the scene? Fortunately the islands started popping out different terrains, and planes unveiled new formations, speeds and ways to hurtle out of control in my general direction. Even the no-fire levels pose some challenge with planes converging on you unexpectedly. The backgrounds also beef up over time. At first, islands are incidental, but later they serve not only to make bullets harder to see but also to establish how far along you are. Once you see the beach beyond the forest, the carrier can't be far. The grassland and lakes and occasional desert had me wishing for a river basin or two to pop up but just when I'd seen enough jungle the terrain changed. Iwo Jima(next-last set of four) has cool contoured hills which look like cinnamon buns with palette swaps gone awry, and Okinawa, the last stage, features a bunch of cities. They seem to soften you up just enough but still feel like a reward for defeating the mongo-planes that often fire clumps of bullets you can't duck normally.

Given that 1942 was made by a Japanese company, Capcom, there's a bit of irony in the 'We Give Up!' at the end. It's a contrast to the rather plain rest of the game, although you could just say that's part of its insouciance. Whatever the intent, 1942 was a surprisingly pleasant little shooter that maybe gave too many breaks, but then you don't always want an immense challenge. Back when I wasn't much good, I didn't get to the percent and point up stages on one play, and I still found it untaxing. Now it's perfectly fluffy for a long stretch at first and only enrages me when I get a bit too comfortable.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/01/01, Updated 09/16/03