1943 Gameplay Tips & Walkthru by GJ (cubbies984@hotmail.com) version 1.2 2/8/00 --------------------------- WHAT'S 1943?! --------------------------- 1943 - n - 1. A year in the past. 2. A scrollin' shoot-em-up on the NES. 1943 is an action-packed shooter on the original NES system. You must fly a P-38 airplane into enemy territory to destroy critical targets. This document will have some general game tips. --------------------------- HOW TO PLAY --------------------------- Start button - Pause, menu selections A button - Lightning attack B button - Regular weapon, menu selections, powerup selections; note that if you hold it, you'll hear a charge up sound. Release it to shoot a laser burst. Select button - move cursor Control pad - Move your fighter When you start you will be given a mission objective and take off from your aircraft carrier. In the top left corner is your score. The bottom right indicator is marked with an "E". If this hits zero you do NOT die; rather, one hit by anything and you die. Three things lower this meter: 1. Time gradually reduces your energy. 2. Firing the lightning attack reduces your energy by a lump sum. 3. Getting hit by enemies reduces your energy by a small amount. There are two ways to increase your energy: grab a powerup or complete a mission for an energy bonus. It starts at forty points and increases as you defeat more difficult stages. Sometimes after you destroy an enemy you'll see a "Pow" icon on the screen. Grab it outright for plan energy. Shoot it a couple of times and another icon will appear. This is for a special weapon. Shoot it again and you get another "Pow" then a different weapon. The best overall weapon is the small cat (the last item) which has a powerful double laser. After you pick up a weapon a W and a number appear in the bottom left corner of your screen. This represents your remaining weapon energy. As you fly, you lose weapon energy. When it hits zero you revert to your regular machine gun. Prevent this from happening by picking up weapons of the same type as the one you're currently carrying. ------------------------- GENERAL TIPS ------------------------- Now for the heart of the document: the tips 1. THE NUMBER ONE RULE OF THUMB: *DODGE FIRST, SHOOT LATER*. You lose too much energy from getting hit to think about blowing everything up at first sight. Trust me on this one. 2. Use your lightning attack very sparingly. You will often get hit it's hard to afford use of this. However if you have a very high energy total (e >100) then use it to clear out huge numbers of enemies. 3. Once you pick up a special weapon, always recharge its power as long as you're okay on energy level. If a bad rendition of "Jaws" plays then you are not OK energy-wise. 4. If you are running low on energy and weapon power then be sure to take energy until you're better off. I hope you see a recurring theme here - energy is the MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD! Okay? 5. When you are fighting a boss enemy with lots of guns be extra careful. If you can, try to pick up a weapon before the fight that will let you attack the boss whilst remaining out of the line of fire. 6. Stay at the bottom of the screen. It gives you lots of time to react. In some cases you can't do this because planes come up behind you; stay as far toward the back as possible. ----------- POWERING UP ----------- You'll notice that, in addition to green fighters, there are red aircraft that come in groups of six or seven and fly in formation for a while. These are powerup formations. If you shoot every red plane before they get off the screen, the last one will contain a powerup. The list of powerups is as follows: POW - Increases Energy. If you continue to shoot at it it will become these weapons: First weapon - Short spreadfire weapon. Bad range, not a lot of power. I'm told that if you collect two of these the range will greatly improve. Second weapon - Long spreadfire weapon. Decent range, more power. Third weapon - Vulcan weapon. Shoots a rapid stream of lead. Quite good at taking down enemy formations, but somewhat weak... Fourth weapon - Missile launcher. Quite powerful, decent reload rate. Fifth weapon - Energy booster. Provides more of an increase to your energy than the POW does. Sixth weapon - Double laser. Super-powerful, and it cuts through anything like a knife through hot butter. GET ONE BEFORE BOSSES and you will find them easy. You may have noticed that sometimes your gun will hit empty space and there will be a red flash. This indicates that there is a hidden item there. Shoot at that spot until it appears. Usually it gives you more energy, but sometimes you'll get a weapon powerup that jacks it up over 110 weapon energy. Mantis Knight writes: "The power ups come in either 1 pt. flavor, or 2 pt. flavor. The power up system makes it more unique in that you can only get certain abilities with the more power you put into it." -------------- LEVEL SYNOPSES -------------- Here's a list of the levels and a synopsis (for those of you with slightly smaller vocabularies, summary) of each one. LEVEL 1 RIKAKU The Rikaku is a large destroyer that has an arrangement of guns with two in the front, four on the sides, and three in the rear. At the beginning of the level you'll just see fighters, but they won't shoot at you. Midway through they'll begin gunfire, and you can expect some more vicious attacks from the ships on the surface. Be ready by charging up your Energy. LEVEL 2 KAKU This level has more green fighters and less red ones. Expect to see gunfire and formations of about 5 or 6 small fighters coming at you at an angle. There will also be medium green planes that duck out of the way of your fire and come up to shoot at you. Surface contact provides some larger ships and waves of fighters. If you have the energy, a lightning attack might come in handy here. The Kaku is an aircraft carrier with more powerful guns. Small green fighters will also come up and shoot at you. You may want to destroy the launch platforms to deal with the fighters, then take out the cannons. LEVEL 3 AYAKO I This is much like level 1, except you'll see fire from the start. The green ships are more abundant and they're much faster. (They're also better shots, and they happen to be more agile. In short, they are now deadlier.) The small fighters tend to be flanked by larger ones that will fire more powerful missiles at you. Staying at the back of the screen and shooting everything down won't work anymore. You'll have to do some fancy flying to evade enemy fire and keep your energy level high. After a while you will come up against a rather sizable plane. Just keep shooting at it, and I hope you upgraded your weapons. The plane will shoot spreads of fire, with five shots each. Keep moving back and forth, up and down, trying to dodge the bullets. Aim for the engines to take it down rather aptly. LEVEL 4 KAKUSHI You'll notice even MORE green fighters. They shoot more now, and their movements are quick and precise. They also fly in distinct formations. Usually these formations prevent you from getting at them all at once. You can usually down four or five, but there'll still be a couple left to shoot at you. Dodge his weapon and he'll fly offscreen. The double laser is a quite powerful tool to have here. The Kakushi is just a large ship with lots of green fighters and nice big guns to blow you up with. If you have a weapon like the double laser you'll be able to cut right through the pitiful attempt by the Japanese to defeat the U.S. of A. LEVEL 5 KYOSHU Actually, the level itself isn't so bad this time around. You'll see more concentrated gunfire than in previous levels, but there are less powerful planes and more powerups. The Kyoshu ship is a powerful aircraft carrier with quite advanced weapons technology. It'll blast you out of the sky rather quickly if you're not careful. Get the machine spreadfire weapon to take it down at a distance. I had some trouble with this boss for a while, and then I realized that you should increase your focus on dodging and decrease your focus on shooting. If you have the spreadfire weapon like I suggested then you'll do just fine with this strategy. If your weapon is a regular one or one with a low radius then you'll need to try something else. LEVEL 6 GANRYO Look, it might just be me, but I found this level to be EXTREMELY easy. The Ganryo is not a ship or plane in itself; rather it is a unit of bombers. At the beginning, don't worry about getting a lot of energy up. Instead get a double laser. Then a fleet of red ships with different wings will come along; shoot them down for a 140-energy powerup. Then you'll see ENEMY BOMBERS SIGHTED across your screen. Take them down one by one with the double laser and you should be fine. There, now wasn't that simple? LEVEL 7 CHOKO Come to think of it, this level isn't all that bad either. It's quite short, and it has a lot of powerups. All you have to do is cut through basic fighters. The boss is the worst yet, however. TWO aircraft carriers will launch powered-up green fighters at you. This makes you deal with fighters and powerful sea weapons at the same time. I barely made it out of this level alive. Get a reliable weapon before you take the Choko carriers on. LEVEL 8 ROKUSHU Heh heh heh... this level is PAINFUL. You will have encounters with homing planes that not only shoot at you but try to follow you (at least they're slow) and hyperactive planes that come in rather quickly and have a tendency to run into you (at least they don't shoot.) Then there's the ground attack where three destroyers and an aircraft carrier or two shoot high-powered concussion bullets that hurt you pretty darn bad (read: kill you) if you touch one. Have fun, kids. Note that there are 24 levels, but I have yet to get to a lot of them. This should be enough to get you off to a great start, however. Good luck! ---------------- GAME GENIE CODES ---------------- ZESNLLLE 10 power points GOSNLLLA 20 power points TOSNLLLE 30 power points AEVYZLAE Start on mission 5 ZOVYZLAA Start on mission 10 GOVYZLAE Start on mission 15 TXVYZLAA Start on mission 20 -------------------- DOCUMENT INFORMATION -------------------- This document is copyright 2000 by GJ. It may not be sold for profit or printed out for distribution. It can only appear on http://gjsgameshouse.cjb.net/ and http://www.gamefaqs.com/. If you are reading it from anywhere else that site's author is a total SOB and I'd appreciate it if you would inform me immediately so I can flame his sorry butt off. REVISION HISTORY: Version 1.2 - Corrected a couple of mistakes and added a couple of tips. Started the Credits. Version 1.1 - Added level synopses and generally rounded out the FAQ. Version 1.0 - No one ever saw this version because it wasn't posted. It was a shrunken 1.1. ------- CREDITS ------- MantisKnight [mantis_knight@yahoo.com] for information on powerups and levels GJ, for writing this entire FAQ. Thanks for reading, GJ cubbies984@hotmail.com