1943: The Battle of Midway

After the unexpected enjoyment I found with 1942, I expected 1943 to be a bit of a disappointment. As I said before, I don't really care for shoot 'em ups, and I expected it to just be more of the same. Well, I was certainly surprised, and though I liked most of the changes, I'm still not very into shoot 'em ups after this.

I found 1943 to be much harder than its predecessor, but it has a lot more replay value, better graphics, much better music, and generally a lot more depth. And some weapons having an autofire option was a godsend. The ability to change your weapon up, to choose how to increase your stats, to have the lightning attack and charge laser available, the hidden items, the new bosses on every level... It all adds up to a much more enjoyable and captivating experience than 1942.

On the other hand, despite the fact that you have infinite continues, only having one life means that if you die, you're going back to the beginning of the stage. And until you get used to the game and its mechanics, you will find yourself dying very often, very quickly. And when you die, you restart the level without your special weapon active. This isn't always a problem, but on some stages, there are a lot of enemy planes before you get an opportunity to find a weapon again. Not to mention, there is no password to send you to the last stage, so if you want to take a break from the game, you'll have to replay stage 23 each time.

Of course, my primary goal was to destroy the battleship Totaku on stage 24, clearing the game. I set some personal challenges at the start of the game, as well as a few more as I began to learn more about the mechanics of the game:

• Destroy Totaku
• Collect a yashichi bonus item
• Collect a side fighter bonus item
• Complete a stage with a 100% destructive rate
• Complete a stage with a 0% destructive rate
• Complete stage 16 (the end of the easy stages) without continuing
• Reach rank 6 in all five stats
• Reach one million points

Though some of these challenges were easy to clear, others seemed impossible. It took me months to score the million points, and weeks after that before I managed to clear stage 16 without dying. Fortunately, this time I was on a roll: Not only did I clear stage 16 without a death, I cleared all the way to stage 23 (despite a few close calls). Unfortunately, the final stage of the game is incredibly difficult, and it took me 9 attempts on this stage before I could clear it. While it's possible I might be able to 1CC this game someday, I don't have any intention of trying for that in the foreseeable future.

1942

I've never really been good at shoot 'em ups. I can't really say I dislike them, but they're hardly my favorite genre of games. However, I will honestly say that I enjoyed every aggravating and frustrating minute spent playing 1942.

The lack of any kind of music aside from the Morse code-esque whistling is very annoying at first, but I found that it really didn't matter once I started to get into the game: The audio is just not really too important. On the other hand, flying over the islands isn't really any fun at all. I know that it's intentional for the green planes to blend in with the grassland, and the white planes (including your own) to blend in over the sand, but those moments when I died in these situations felt a lot cheaper to me. Especially in Okinawa, when there are so many building on the islands that it becomes incredibly tough to recognize enemy fire.

The other big block for me in this game was learning to actually use the Loop the Loop. My hand was usually too busy mashing the fire button to even acknowledge that the A button existed, but once I finally learned how to read dangerous situations and prepare to dive out of harm's way, it saved me numerous lives. Not to mention how much easier the boss planes became once I learned the strategy of diving to just behind their front wings when shots come too close.

My primary goal was obviously to complete stage 1 (the 32nd and final level) and win the game. As usual, I set a few challenges that I wanted to complete in the process.

• Complete stage 1 (The final level)
• Collect a yashichi bonus
• Have 10 or more lives at one time
• Get a 0% kill rate on a level
• Get a 100% kill on a level
• Roll the score over at 1,000,000 points
• Completing the game without using a continue

As hard as I tried to, I could not yet 1CC the game: I had to use a continue on stage 3 (i.e., the 30th level). In addition, my current record for lives in reserve is still 9.

On the other hand, collecting a yashichi was shockingly easy compared to what I expected. And it seems impossible to get a 0% kill rate because all enemies on screen are immediately destroyed when you reach the end of a level, but I did manage to complete level 1 without ever firing a bullet.

And after repeated experimentation on level 1, I was prepared to conclude that a 100% kill rate was impossible too. Because the game will despawn enemies if there are too many sprites on screen at a time, you could shoot down every target and still not get more than a 95% clear rating. But somehow on stage 10, I managed to earn a 100% clear rating after shooting down the boss plane. I couldn't for the life of me explain how that happened, but it apparently is possible on some stages at least.

I do plan to come back to this game at some point to clear the other two personal goals, but for now, I'm content with my progress.

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Update: August 31, 2017
 
After several months away from the game to focus on final exams and work, I've returned to 1942. It took a few days and almost a dozen games, but I finally did manage to get 10 lives at once (11 at one point, even), and to complete the game without using any continues. I had 4 lives left by the time I reached stage 3 (the point where I ran out of lives the last time I'd made it that far), and succeeded without any more deaths at that point. Suffice to say, no level had felt as fulfilling and rewarding as the victory lap on stage 1. I finally finished this game with a high score of 1,313,600 points.

10-Yard Fight

I've played a bit of this game before when trying to ace every original release game for the NES. I know it's based on an old arcade game, but after watching some videos on the original, the NES version actually seems to have more gameplay than the arcade original.

Suffice to say, I don't play football. I don't watch football, I don't talk about football, I don't enjoy football. I'm fairly sure that I was not the target demographic for this game. But even so, I can't possibly understand how someone would enjoy the game. It's not that this game is too complicated or too long like regular football can be, but that it's far too easy.

I understand that some sacrifices would have to made to translate a complex game like football to the NES, but this game has removed almost all the strategy from the sport. The manual mentions that football involves "as many as 183 starting positions and as many as 133,407 plays", and nothing could be further from the truth about 10-Yard Fight. You control one player at a time and simply have to either tackle the opposing team's player holding the ball (trivial, especially considering how often one of your AI-controlled teammates will do this for you), or pass the ball either laterally or forward and run it as far down the field as you can. If you move diagonally, it's almost impossible for the opposing team to tackle you.

My primary goal in this game was to beat the Super Bowl difficulty, but I played two games in total: First, one against a high school team (the easiest difficulty), and the second against the super bowl team (the hardest difficulty). I'm sure there were some differences in the AI, but the difficulty level felt essentially the same. I also set myself some other challenges, just to see if I could manage to pull them off:

• Win the Super Bowl
• Win a shutout
• Make an interception
• Score a field goal
• Score a touchdown off of a punt

Not only did I manage all of these in the high school game I played, but I did all of them in the super bowl game as well. I'm not claiming to be an expert or a natural at 10-Yard Fight, the game really is just that easy. I'm hoping the 2-player mode is more entertaining, because I feel bad for kids who got a brand new NES for Christmas and only had this game to play on it.