1943: The Battle of Midway (Arcade)

With the World War II shoot-’em-up 1942, Capcom had themselves a hit, and it’s little surprise they wanted to get the player back in the air for a sequel to capitalize on their success. The name of the first game was already perfectly suited for a sequel, the battle in the Pacific Theater lasting up until 1945, so naturally, the sequel to 1942 could be 1943. However, the game’s subtitle muddies things a bit, because while the Battle of Midway is certainly a memorable skirmish appropriate for adaptation in a game where you pilot an American fighter plane, it took place in the middle of 1942. The first game even began in Midway, but not letting reality get in the way of a good name, 1943: The Battle of Midway aims to bring that fight to life with some exaggeration to make for a more exciting vertical shooter.

 

1943: The Battle of Midway sees you once again piloting a Lockheed P-38 Lightning as part of the U.S. Army Air Corps, the player’s goal being to wipe out enough of Imperial Japan’s naval and air forces to sway the battle in America’s favor. Across the game’s 16 stages, this fight can take place high in the air or low near the water, and while every level leads in with an initial push forward fighting airplanes, most stages will shift to have the second part involve targeting enemy ships as well. Long vessels loaded with turrets and launch bays must have their individual parts destroyed, this second half actually requiring you to destroy enough of the enemy’s forces or it will force you to repeat the section until you’ve reached a certain percentage benchmark. In the few stages that remain aerial dogfights, you still must clear out a certain percentage of airborne foes in a similar manner or be forced to repeat the section, this adding some appreciated extra tension to a stage’s backend since you can’t just let your foes fly off as often and need to put yourself in more danger to continue onward.

To start with, your plane’s standard machine gun fire is pretty plain. It can destroy the smallest enemy planes easily and fires in two lines directly in front of you, but to be better equipped for large aircraft or those runs on enemy ships, you’ll want to shoot down formations of red fighters to make a power-up appear. 1943: The Battle of Midway has a few possible weapons to pick-up, the three-way shot great for clearing out the often very busy skies over Midway while the Shell instead thins your shots to one big attack down the middle for higher damage. The shotgun weapon is strong but you need to get close if you want to hit with its bullets, but the auto weapon is a bit underwhelming. It fires more quickly than your machine gun so you don’t have to hammer the fire button as often, but it won’t shift play up as much as the others or give you the sense of power the others provide. All weapons come with a ticking clock though, the plane reverting back to regular machine guns once the timer runs out, but you can usually get a good bit through a level before the power ends so you don’t feel like you’re starving for more interesting battle options. You can also pick-up two side fighters that will fly alongside you and sometimes join in with their own weapons fire depending on what you’re using, but they are fairly fragile. Them taking the hit instead of you is definitely preferred, but with the skies often filled with many planes and small shots coming your way, it’s often not worth the effort to dodge and try to keep those little fighters next to you.

 

If you do get shot though, 1943: The Battle of Midway is a kinder game than 1942. Getting hit is not an instant death, the plane having a health bar with there being some ways to replenish it. Beating a level gives you some energy back, some pick-ups like the energy tank are purely about restoring health, but the POW is interesting because it’s one of a few pick-ups that can be shot to change its nature. POW is normally a small heal, but you can sometimes shoot it to shift it into a bigger one or even transform it into different weapons, allowing you to select what you need most in the moment. You do get a few lives per credit and continues let you keep going, but managing your health can become an interesting part of the second half of stages. When the automatically scrolling screen is trying to push you past a good power-up or an important target like one of the warships, you can take some shots on the chin to do what you need to. In fact, 1943: The Battle of Midway also lets you spend your health to unleash some super moves. Be it lightning attacks in the air or tsunamis down below, you can damage most every enemy on screen by sacrificing some of your health to quickly unleash nature itself on your foes, although if your health is too low it’s not possible. You can do a somersault to become briefly invincible, although 1943: The Battle of Midway incentivizing you to fight in a level’s second half does mean you have to mix aggressiveness in with your defensive maneuvers.

As you fly through the game’s 16 stages, it will usually be the shift to facing the naval fleet that makes for interesting variation. The air forces do start coming in different patterns, some from behind you, others flying in unique patterns, but beyond the occasional giant plane boss, you are mostly just flying about when high in the sky dealing with similar opposition throughout. Even when above the warships it will still mostly be planes harassing you, the turrets on the ships firing on you of course but since you need to mow through a great deal of them to continue to the next stage, you’ll probably destroy many of them before they can even get in a shot edgewise. The ships aren’t helpless, some move left and right so you can’t so easily line up quick turret kills, and it is notable the game’s final boss is the famous battleship Yamato. The fact it just feels like most other big end of level ships though shows that the game doesn’t try anything too drastic with its designs even when it would be appropriate, but considering the game is throwing in huge groups of planes and ships for that final stretch as well, a tough final boss would probably be wearisome after having to survive the armada at its most oppressive.

THE VERDICT: 1943: The Battle of Midway makes some smart improvements to the shoot ’em up action found in its predecessor. Having each level contain a second half with a specific amount of damage required to continue encourages aggressive action, your health bar allowing for risky or desperate play. Defensive tricks and a range of weapons gives the game a bit more to do than just firing in front of you, and having to fight both aerial and naval foes shakes things up fairly regularly. The opposition does pretty samey though and abundance isn’t wholly a substitute for the greater excitement that would have come from more diverse dangers.

 

And so, I give 1943: The Battle of Midway for arcade machines…

An OKAY rating. 1943: The Battle of Midway probably didn’t expect most players to invest the quarters needed to reach the Yamato, so most of its investment was in the enemy types that appear early on and everything after is shuffling and increasing quantities to add some difficulty. Luckily, the game does have a good sense for shifting up flight patterns and things like how many battleships need to be fought at once, the player under pressure and still seeing slightly new twists to how the fight unfolds even if the level designs don’t present many tricks or maneuvers that would really shake things up. The weapon system is a good source for a bit of variety, the player not sure what the pick-up will be when one appears and the timer allows you to use it for a fair bit of time while making it inevitable you’ll have to swap to something new instead of settling into one preferred type. The naval battles do feel like they could have been more elaborate, battleships not feeling too different in design and other vessels in the water could have played some interesting support, but instead its more planes in your path which does lead to the sense the game isn’t evolving too much.

 

1943: The Battle of Midway is a better game than its predecessor, although 1942 being more important and fresher on its release means it will likely earn more love and discussion. Here we see a sequel that saw some areas for improvement and mostly made the right decisions, but the changes weren’t drastic enough to push it to the next level. The life bar, the ship bombardments, the new powers and weapons, it all makes this shoot ’em up more entertaining, but you’d hope in the three years since the original that more ideas could have been added to make 1943: The Battle of Midway into something more electrifying. Maybe it was a safe sequel not meant to rock a successful boat, but because it didn’t grow all that much, its not too surprising this sequel doesn’t get discussed as much as 1942.