1942 (Arcade) - Full Run ALL Clear 11,771,960 Pts
29My first (and last...) clear of the Capcom "classic" arcade game 1942, played using ShmupMAME 4.2, ROM rev B (final version).
Stage Listing:
00:00 - Stage 1 (Last 32) - Midway
02:04 - Stage 2 (Last 31)
04:04 - Stage 3 (Last 30)
06:02 - Stage 4 (Last 29)
08:04 - Stage 5 (Last 28) - Marshall
10:24 - Stage 6 (Last 27)
12:22 - Stage 7 (Last 26) - Boss 1
14:48 - Stage 8 (Last 25)
16:47 - Stage 9 (Last 24) - Attu
18:47 - Stage 10 (Last 23)
20:47 - Stage 11 (Last 22)
22:46 - Stage 12 (Last 21)
24:45 - Stage 13 (Last 20) - Rabaul
26:52 - Stage 14 (Last 19)
28:53 - Stage 15 (Last 18) - Boss 2
31:23 - Stage 16 (Last 17)
33:25 - Stage 17 (Last 16) - Leyte
35:22 - Stage 18 (Last 15)
37:23 - Stage 19 (Last 14)
39:22 - Stage 20 (Last 13)
41:21 - Stage 21 (Last 12) - Saipan
43:20 - Stage 22 (Last 11)
45:20 - Stage 23 (Last 10) - Boss 3
47:52 - Stage 24 (Last 09)
49:53 - Stage 25 (Last 08) - Iwojima
51:50 - Stage 26 (Last 07)
53:51 - Stage 27 (Last 06)
55:49 - Stage 28 (Last 05)
57:49 - Stage 29 (Last 04) - Okinawa
59:55 - Stage 30 (Last 03)
1:01:56 - Stage 31 (Last 02)
1:05:33 - Final Boss
1:06:12 - Stage 32 - Last Stage
1:08:07 - Ending
I'm not going to say I hate 1942, but this is definitely one of those games that I continued playing not because I was enjoying it, but because I couldn't let it beat me. This game is just way, way too long, clocking it at a ridiculous 32 stages and over an hour of playtime. And it feels every single minute of that length, as you listen to perhaps the worst video game music of all time for each of its 32 levels.
With a game this long, where all the stages basically blend together, you pretty much have to throw any sort of routing out the window and just rely of sheer dodging ability. It would be insane to memorize all of these enemy waves if that is even possible as some of it seems random but I'm not 100% sure on that. Instead, your best bet it to recognize and understand the different enemy ship types and how they move and attack, such that you can kill and avoid them efficiently.
There are no bombs in this game however you do have a loop around maneuver that renders you immune to enemies and bullets for a brief time. However, you can only move side to side during the lopp and it has this terrible forward motion when it ends that can easily get you killed if not accounted for. The enemies will also continue to swarm you the entire time so it will often take multiple loop moves in order to get away from them. The loop move also comes in very handy against the 4 large boss ships you will encounter.
You do get several different powerups including a upgraded shot, helper ships that also have additional firepower, extra loop maneuvers, and extra lives/extends (both item based and score based).
Did I mention that it makes no sense with how it rewards extends? For a while you just get them every 80K points, and if you get more than 9, it replaces the ships with a "sigma" character on the bottom of screen. At some point I simply just stopped getting extends, and I have no idea why. I've seen other videos where they seem to continue getting extends all throughout the game, perhaps that only works on the earlier ROM versions? WTF is going on with this game! Edit: you stop getting extends after 1 million points!
Thankfully I had a really good run with minimal deaths down the stretch and into the final few levels. I did die a brunch of times on the checkpoint with the final boss, but eventually broke through and took that thing out.
I'm glad I cleared this game, but I never want to play it again.
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At present, PEG has 4,797 views spread across 2 videos for 1942, and about 2 hours worth of 1942 videos were uploaded to his channel. This makes up 1.71% of the content that PEG has uploaded to YouTube.