1942

Back in the '80s, Capcom’s 1942 was as great an arcade experience as you could get. It was a challenging and exciting top-down shooter that was terribly addicting and fun. Now, Capcom is releasing this blast from the past for mobile phones. While all the gameplay elements seem to be there, the overall experience is severely lacking. The fast pace and sense of intensity from the original game are missing, and the game’s slowly responding controls are death when it comes to the top-down shooting genre. Especially if you loved the game back in the good old arcade days, you’d be best off letting this one be.

1942 puts you in the cockpit of a circa World War II fighter plane and requires you to take down hordes of Japanese planes in order to stay alive. The game, much like anything else from the shooter genre or arcade games for that matter, is very light on story elements as the main focus of the game is the lightning-fast gameplay.

Unfortunately, that’s just where 1942 fails to deliver. The gameplay is very jerky, and the controls take a little bit to respond to your commands. While that typically wouldn’t be a problem in any other game, the shooter genre all but requires perfectly responsive controls. Also, the game will do your shooting for you, firing off three bullet bursts in a row and then waiting for a bit. This may simplify matters for a mobile phone, but it does leave you in a very lousy position more often than not.

Graphically, 1942 does a good job of emulating the look of the arcade game. The presentation is pretty bright and colorful, and the sprites look pretty good. The sound leaves much to be desired, however, with grinding music that should’ve been left out of the game altogether.

Playing 1942 on the cell phone is like smelling a scratch-and-sniff sticker. While a part of it may feel like the real thing, it still makes for a poor substitute and would be better off left alone.

Gameplay: 4.5
Unresponsive controls can be murder to a top-down shooter, and this is the main area that 1942 fails. The automatic shooting is a real pain, too, usually leaving you in a lousy position.

Graphics: 6.0
Graphically, 1942 looks pretty good, following the look of the arcade game very nicely and looking very bright and colorful on the mobile phone format.

Sound: 4.0
The musical effects are very harsh and irritating and best kept muted.

Difficulty:  Medium
 

Concept: 4.5
While it was a noble effort to try and port this classic to the mobile phone, way too much gets lost in the translation.

Overall: 4.5
1942 was a great game, and I have very fond memories of it. Unfortunately, this mobile port doesn’t really do it any justice.