1943 (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
391A playthrough of Capcom's 1988 shoot 'em up for the NES, 1943.
1943 is a conversion of the 1987 arcade hit 1943: The Battle of Midway, and it is the direct sequel to 1942, which was released on the NES at the end of 1986.
I wouldn't be surprised if anyone that had played 1942 on NES turned their noses up at the mere mention of a sequel. The Micronics port of 1942 was a miserable trainwreck of a game, and its terrible framerate and music likely scarred the psyches of many early NES adopters.
But by 1988, Capcom was developing most of their games in-house, and the quality of their home games had risen dramatically as a result. 1943 clearly demonstrates this leap.
The game plays smoothly - much higher than the 12 fps that 1942 ran at! - it suffers far less from the slowdown and flicker that plagued its predecessor, and it has a soundtrack that consists of more than whistles and white noise drums. There are some good tunes to listen to this time out!
The underlying game mechanics also been adapted better to the console this time. Rather than opting for a straight conversion of the coin-op, Capcom provides a bit more depth in the form of plane upgrades. You can decide when and how you wish to improve various aspects of your P-38's performance, including the unlocking of more powerful weapons.
It's an extraordinarily difficult shooter, even by NES shooter standards, once you reach the final few stage, but the difficulty ramps up at a nice pace up until that point. Until then, it is forgiving enough that you can experiment with different ship upgrades and it is possible to recover from minor mistakes, but once it takes the gloves off, watch out! You'll work for that ending, I promise.
While I do think that Konami's Life Force (https://youtu.be/-WkwrwLn0LA ), which came out around the same time, outclasses it in pretty much every way, 1943 is a solidly built and fun NES shooter.
I also really like how it's loosely based off of real events in World War II - you get to take on the Yamato as the final boss! How cool is that?
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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