1942

.: By: Corn Bread :: Device used: iPAQ H3630 :: November 23, 2001 :.

Another classic game invades the Pocket PC - from the same developer of the Microsoft Arcade PocketPak comes the old-school shooter, 1942.

1942 is a vertical shooter similar to the very popular Turjah, but instead of flying a high-tech space ship and shooting aliens and meteors, you’ll be piloting a vintage warplane blasting enemy warplanes to kingdom come. As the title of the game would suggest, the setting of the game is during the World War II era - you are an Allied group pilot whose mission is to fly from one aircraft carrier to another, blasting as many Axis aircrafts along the way. Your enemies include Kamikaze planes who charge you blindly, fighter planes that shoot missiles at you, a few medium sized planes and enormous end-of-level-boss battle aircrafts that are about 10 times your size and shoot you with a never-ending barrage of missiles.

To aid you in your mission, your plane is equipped with a powerful machine gun which can be upgraded via power-ups left by destroyed enemy crafts. Other power-ups include a mega bomb, which destroys all on-screen enemies and one which summons 2 wingmen to fight by your side. Your plane is also able to perform a 360 degree loop which allows you to evade all incoming enemy craft and missiles, although this evasive manoeuvre can only be performed a small number of times so use it only in the most dire of situations.

Make no mistake - this game is for the seasoned player only as it will test your shooting/evading skills to the very limit. The screen is always filled with various enemy planes bent on taking you down, so fast reflexes and an itchy trigger finger are fundamental prerequisites in order to advance in this game.

Since this is an emulation of an old arcade game, expect to see old-style graphics. Its true the graphics of this game will look very out-dated when compared side by side with the like of Turjah 2, but for nostalgic reasons, I love the look of this game. The animation is top-notch, fast, refined and smooth. The sound effects are also nicely done, and are seemingly exactly the same as the original.

I have to admit, however, that with the repetitive nature of the gameplay, and seeing the same old enemy and sea/island/forest background again and again, I did find myself getting tired of playing it. I guess that this is one of the weaknesses of bringing back an old game - it gets old really fast! Also I noticed that the game doesn’t really go full screen; as you can see from the screen shots, there is a noticeable “black” border along the bottom and sides of the screen, and there’s also sometimes a white bar present at the bottom of the screen. While these graphical glitches don’t hamper the game's playability, I found them a little annoying. The reason for their inclusion is that the resolution of the original game is smaller than that of the Pocket PC's screen, and to stretch the graphics would have made things look ugly.

If the game gets too hard for you (and believe me, it will!), you can adjust the difficulty level. There are 4 levels of difficulty: Easy, Normal, Hard and Hardest. In addition, there’s also an option to increase the number of lives you start with (maximum of five) and you can give yourself unlimited continues. With 32 stages to complete, I’m sure the extra lives and unlimited continues will be appreciated by a lot of people.

It should be noted, however, that on the iPAQ H36xx series, the continue option is not viable since continuing requires you to press 2 buttons simultaneously, so for those with an iPAQ H36xx, think twice first before buying this game. The hardware buttons are extremely customizable, and you can toggle the sound on/off within the game itself. One neat feature in this version of 1942 is that you can save or load a game anytime. Thus, you can be assured that you can always continue your game anytime and anywhere you want. As you can see, the option offered in this game is quite robust and gives the game a good amount of flexibility.

The controls is one aspect which leaves me a little frustrated for, on my iPAQ H3630, the simultaneous button pressing bug prevents me from enjoying this game to the full as I have to resort to using my stylus for directional control, and using the hardware buttons for the fire and evade command (although admittedly, I am starting to improve and becoming more proficient with this type of control method). Of course this is the fault of the hardware and not the game itself - I’m sure the people with a Jornada 56x or an iPAQ H38xx can use the hardware buttons with no problem whatsoever (lucky you!). I wish there was an auto fire option, though.

The PC desktop version (which is included) is a blast to play. The graphics look extremely sharp and the animation flows very smoothly; all of the options/features such as save/load, unlimited continues, etc. that are included in the Pocket PC version are also present in the desktop version. The desktop version also supports full screen and windowed views, includes joypad support, and offers a screen capture facility. I enjoyed playing the desktop version more than the PPC version.

There's no doubt that 1942 is a solid reproduction of the original and it's nice to be able to play the classic game on my Pocket PC, but with a lot of NES emulators and ROM images of 1942 floating around, you just have to wonder whether it worth spending $19.99 on 1942? In all honestly, I feel that the price asking price of $19.99 is a little steep to pay for this particular game, but I would still recommend this official 1942 game over the emulated version.

Why? In this official release, the game runs faster, smoother and sounds better than any of the emulated version. Plus you also get the PC version of 1942 for free! If you’re a fan of the classic game, break out your credit card and buy it now, but if your someone who’s looking for the best Pocket PC shoot-em-up that money can buy, look elsewhere as there are a couple of titles better than this one. Hopefully, the developer will provide a solution to enable those with an iPAQ H36xx to continue in the game.

1942 is available for purchase on-line and is also available in a few brick and mortar stores in the US. It requires a PPC with an ARM processor, 603KB of storage memory and 2MB of program memory in order to run. It can only be installed in main RAM only (the program would force itself into your main RAM even if you chose the storage card, although you can simply move the program onto your storage card using file explorer and then create a shortcut from there).

Pros:

• Fast and Smooth animation.

• Good sound effects.

• Lots of options for customization.

• Challenging levels.

• Includes a desktop PC version.

Cons:

• Expensive.

• No downloadable version (yet).

• Repetitive gameplay.

• Out-dated graphics.

• Not full-screen.

.: Game category: Action & Arcade Games :: Reviews Index :.

Editor's Note:

At the time of writing, the game can only be purchased if you live in one of the following regions:

Continental US, Canada, Alaska, Hawaii.