1942 ARCADE
About 1942
1942 is Capcom’s 1984 vertical-scrolling shoot-’em-up, one of the studio’s earliest arcade releases and the first entry in what became its long-running “19XX” series of WWII-themed shooters. You fly a P-38 Lightning fighter through 32 stages of enemy aircraft formations over the Pacific, with a limited-use loop maneuver that briefly clears the screen of enemy fire.
Its straightforward, score-driven wave-shooter design and WWII aerial-combat theme became a template Capcom returned to repeatedly across sequels released through the 1990s, making it an early, foundational entry in a subgenre of vertically-scrolling military shooters that stayed popular in Japanese arcades for well over a decade after this game’s release.
