Retro spotlight: 1942

It’s kind of incredible how quickly Capcom became a significant piece of the arcade scene. The company originally started in 1979 as I.R.M. Corporation by Kenzi Sujimoto, and if you think that sounds similar to Irem, well, Sujimoto was also president of Irem at the time. One of I.R.M.’s subsidiaries was Japan Capsule Computers Co., which was both a manufacturer and distributor for electronic game machines, named that way to make it clear that the company wasn’t developing personal computers. You can see where the name Capcom eventually comes from there — it’s a portmanteau of Capsule and Computer.

Capcom’s first couple of arcade machines weren’t video games, but medal games, both released in 1983. Their first video game released in May of 1984 — the scrolling shooter Vulgus — and three others would follow that same year. There was SonSon, a combination platformer and shooting game, and Pirate Ship Higemaru, a maze game which took clear inspiration from Sega’s 1982 arcade game, Pengo. These games found some success in the arcades at the time of their release, with Vulgus a top-10 game in Japanese arcades per Game Machine in June and July of ‘84, and SonSon cracking the top 10 a couple of times as well before sliding into and then out of the top 20, but they weren’t certified hits with staying power.

In December, though, just before the end of 1984, Capcom released 1942 into arcades. And with that, it had truly arrived as an arcade developer. 1942 would debut at No. 4 in Game Machine’s rankings on January 1, 1985, and while it would slip out and back into the top five again and again in this stretch, it remained a top-10 arcade game until the October 15 rankings, which still had it at 11. It then reappeared in the top 10 the next month, and stuck in the top 20 until July 15 of ‘86, when it was still in the top 25. After releasing in December of 1984, it took until the mid-August rankings of 1986 for 1942 to drop from the top 25… and then it still reappeared within it another two times that year, and on another seven occasions in 1987 before finally dropping off the list for good. It was the fifth-highest grossing table game of 1986 in Japan, a full year after its initial release. Now that’s a run.

And, while this was happening in arcades, Capcom decided to try its hand at the living room as well. A year after 1942 released in arcades, a port of it arrived on the Famicom in Japan, co-developed by Micronics, and released in North America in ‘86, as well. It became one of the system’s many million sellers, settling in alongside the likes of Bomberman, Adventure Island, Tiger-Heli, Hydlide, Gradius, Castlevania, and Metal Gear, and proved there was an appetite for Capcom outside of the arcade in the process. Pretty good for a game released within the first year of Capcom even developing video games.

Of course, Capcom had some outside help here that helped speed the process along. The designer of 1942 was Yoshiki Okamoto, who came over from Konami right at the time Capcom was planning to make its pivot from medal games to video games. Okamoto was behind two innovative shooting games for Konami in Time Pilot and Gyruss: the former is a multidirectional shooter that saw you traveling across different time periods, while the latter is a tube shooter where your ship moves around a perimeter in a circular path, and all of your shots are fired off toward the vanishing point at the center of the tube — avoid enemies and keep on firing as you move around this perimeter, with the moving stars making it look as if you’re flying through space.

Both of those games were critical and commercial arcade successes for Konami — Time Pilot more so — that saw ports to various home computers and consoles of the day, but that didn’t mean Okamoto’s job was safe. For one, he wasn’t even supposed to be making Time Pilot, per the man himself: he had been ordered to develop a driving game, but instead just pretended to when his superior was around while sending along code for a shooter to the rest of the team. In an archived interview with Video Game Spot, Okamoto revealed that his boss admitted he was right to ignore him to make Time Pilot because it ended up being such a success, but Okamoto didn’t get the credit for it in the end.

Then, Okamoto asked for a raise, but wasn’t satisfied with the size of the raise and threatened to quit over it, so instead of giving in further Konami fired him the next day. This is where it should be pointed out that Okamoto not only designed 1942 for Capcom a year later, helping to create a rival for attention for Konami in arcades and at home in the process, but that he would go on to serve as a hands-on producer and designer for both Final Fight and Street Fighter II in the early 90s, then shift into overseeing development for Capcom games in general before founding the internal development team Flagship, which often focused on scenarios and narrative in a co-development role with other studios and teams, and worked in this capacity for nearly a decade on multiple Resident Evils as well as handheld entries in both The Legend of Zelda series and Kirby in the aughts. Maybe you should have just paid the guy, Konami.

Let’s talk 1942 itself, though. As Okamoto explained in a 1989 interview, 1942 was designed with the “Western market” in mind for Capcom for the first time, and was meant to be a game that would be “easy to get into,” which were both reasons for the World War II setting, and also why this Japanese-developed game starred an American fighter taking down Japanese aircraft in an adaptation of the Battle of Midway.

1942 was originally a table game, making it vertically oriented, and its setting helped to differentiate it from many shooters of the time that featured starry black backgrounds to represent space. It had vertical scrolling, too, with changing backgrounds and the player able to control the “Super Ace’s” movements not just horizontally, but up and down as well — that gave it some separation from the likes of Galaga and other fixed shooters of the time, and brought it more in line with the likes of the genre-shifting Xevious, from which very few shooters of the day were able to escape the gravity of after its release in 1983. However, Galaga was very much still on the mind of Okamoto while making 1942, even in this post-Xevious world — the enemy behaviors, with their dive-bombing toward the player and firing off shots that need to be dodged during that motion, resembles Galaga more than just a little bit. Some dive bomb directly at you, some act independently of your location but can get in your way through your own actions, and many change direction while others continue right off screen. Not a huge surprise there, given Galaga’s hold over the industry as well as Okamoto himself.

There is also quite a bit of Galaga in the design of the game’s various shots. You don’t ever upgrade the power of your fighter, a Lockheed P-38 Lightning, with the power-ups you find in the game, all of which are earned by taking down an entire squad of red-colored fighters that don’t shoot at you but do fly in a pattern trying to get away from you in a hurry. Instead, what you upgrade is the width of your shot. One gives you a wider single shot, for instance, which makes it far more difficult for enemy craft to evade your fire even as you dart back and forth just given the size of it, and the other adds two smaller aircraft to your wing, creating what is basically a doubled-in-size shot for your fighter. Similar to how Galaga has you sacrifice a life by letting the enemy forces capture your ship and then rescue it back to double how many shots you’re firing at a time while also creating a larger target for foes, 1942 grows your fighter’s size and hitbox, but does so by adding one smaller one on each wing — you can take damage to one without losing the other, and it works in concert with the other shot upgrade, too.

One major difference, however, is that 1942 also features some larger aircraft. These larger planes can’t be taken down with a single shot like the rest, but instead, have a fixed number of shots that it takes to down them, regardless of the weapon you’re attacking them with. That shots don't become more powerful is fine in the context of these craft, as you get points per hit in addition to the kill score — why would you want to take them down faster it if meant you scored fewer points? There are what look like huge planes at first that are actually just medium-sized, flying in a pattern that loops in between the smaller craft coming in, and you need to down them before they go in order to get the 1,000-point bonus for defeating them. Then there are massive bomber-style planes, which fly up from the bottom of the screen — watch out, because you will die if they hit you — and fire off multiple rounds at once in multiple directions as they climb toward the top. These are worth multiple thousands of points for defeating them, and you also score for each hit before the kill. In addition, each large plane you destroy is worth more than the last one, so be sure to complete these kills in order to have it pay off both in the present and later as far as points go.

While 1942 predates the use of screen-clearing bombs in an STG, there is still an item in here that serves a similar-ish purpose, both in terms of gameplay and in scoring. You start with three “rolls,” which see your fighter perform a somersault to dodge incoming fire or an enemy fighter — just like you would press a bomb to clear the screen and avoid damage at the last second, these looping moves can save you. The thing is — just like with bombs — you are encouraged to learn how to play without ever having to use them, as you get bonus points at the end of the level for each roll remaining. For each unused loop, you get 1,000 points at the end of a stage, and you also pick up 1,000 points for acquiring another roll item when you’re already at the maximum of three. There are 32 stages in 1942, so, at 3,000 points per stage, that’s 96,000 bonus points right there over the course of the game just as a reward for not using them. Which isn’t that many in the grand scheme of things since you get 10,000,000 points as a bonus for clearing the game, but [takes a look at the online leaderboards for Capcom Arcade Stadium’s port of 1942] good luck joining the ranks of the few people who have done that on present-day hardware.

That being said, the decision to use the rolls or not use them is a matter of survival vs. scoring. Each time you choose not to use a roll, you’re choosing the possibility of scoring over further survival. At a high enough level of play, though, it’s survival that gets you the higher score! Still, it’s worth it to learn how to play without needing the rolls so that you are able to survive when you don’t have any, which, if you’re using them, could end up being far more often than not.

Speaking of survival vs. scoring, the major use of that longstanding STG motif is found most obviously in its tracking of the percentage of enemy craft that you down. It is often easier — especially with how late these fighters often shoot at you, and the fact they dive bomb you directly and then oftentimes loop back up again — to just… not attack a given fighter, because it would be dangerous to risk your life for all of 50 points. However, it’s not worth just 50 points in the end, thanks to 1942 tracking the percent of enemies destroyed by you. At the end of each stage, bonus points are awarded for that percentage: if you down under 50 percent of the enemy fighters, you get nothing, 50-59 percent awards 1,000 points, 60-69 percent 2,000 points, 70-79 percent is 3,000, 80-84 percent 4,000, 85-89 gets you 5,000, 90-94 percent is 10,000, 95-99 percent is 20,000, and, finally, if you destroy every enemy in a stage, you get 50,000 bonus points. You get extra lives at 20,000 points, 80,000 points, and every 80,000 points after that — being able to rack up a bonus 10,000 or 20,000 points every stage goes a long way towards making that happen, never mind if you manage to pull off a clean 100 percent.

So! It becomes worth the risk to put yourself in danger to destroy as many enemies as possible, since it will mean a higher score and more lives. That goes for the percentage scoring, but also for the sneaky green bonus fighters that come up from the bottom and quickly exit, which look like any other small green fighter except for in their movements, and are purposefully difficult and dangerous to reach but reward you with 5,000 points if you can both destroy them and collect the item they leave behind, itself often put in a precarious location for you. But living long enough to get that higher score and more lives is its own challenge — avoiding enemy fighters is going to be easier for you until you’re comfortable with their movements and patterns and tendencies, to the point you can react instinctively without having to think in order to avoid both a squad divebombing you and the bullets they fire, with the two regularly not heading in the same direction — 1942’s enemy fighters don’t shoot at where you are as much as where they expect you to move, which makes dodging bullets and dodging planes, well, dodgy. Again, with the Galaga comparisons.

And that’s the major challenge of 1942, as while the game doesn't predate boss fights in STG like it does bombs, it was still released before their inclusion was a given. This is one of the huge differences between this and 1942’s first sequel, 1943: The Battle of Midway, which introduces far more weapon types and a different weapon system, in addition to having you constantly downing these massive enemy naval vessels in addition to all the fighters and bombers in the air in every stage. 1942 is a simpler game in a number of ways, but “simpler” does not mean “boring,” either. It might not be the most advanced game in the series from a design perspective, but there is plenty here to satisfy score chasers 42 years after its original release, and it all comes down to learning how to dodge fire but not miss out on the enemies whose destruction will earn you massive end-stage bonuses while doing so.

There are still bosses, too, just not a constant presence like in 1943. There are four stages with a boss plane, Ayano, and these shoot far more bullets in larger numbers and spread than other planes you fight — here, more than anywhere, is a use for your remaining rolls and a reason to not use them just because you have them elsewhere, and winning these battles awards you with more points than anything besides the largest point bonuses at the end of a stage.

It’s difficult to overstate the impact 1942 had on Capcom. It was the first major hit for the company, both in arcades and on consoles, and launched a series that ended up with eight entries, the last of them a 2008 reimagining of 1942 subtitled “Joint Strike,” for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, available digitally, and 2010’s iOS game, 1942: First Strike. While 1942 didn’t set Capcom up for life — financial trouble would follow it around in the late-80s, in the days before the likes of Final Fight, Street Fighter II and onward, and Resident Evil would insure that this was no longer a concern — it did announce its arrival on the scene, and also made the company realize more was needed. As Okamoto explained while talking about Famicom games from Capcom, in a 1986 interview concerned with what had gone wrong with the system shortly before it took off worldwide and became the console we think of today:

While 1942 sold very well, as already mentioned, more would be expected from an audience that was already familiar with the games that were out there in the future. New experiences were needed, not straight ports — and, in fact, Capcom ended up changing some ports to the Famicom and NES from their arcade originals to the point that the home version was the superior one, such as in the case of another shooter, Legendary Wings, as well as Bionic Commando.

Now, of course, Capcom doesn’t just port over arcade games — in fact, its business is primarily centered around games released for consoles and computers. That initial familiarity with the place that Capcom ended up spending most of its time came out of 1942, however, and early in the company’s life. That’s quite the legacy for one simpler shooter.

This column is “Retro spotlight,” which exists mostly so I can write about whatever game I feel like even if it doesn’t fit into one of the other topics you find in this newsletter. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

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