1942 has been an arcade favourite of mine since I was a wee nipper going to the beach and spending my 10p’s on as many goes as possible, never getting very far but always really enjoying the experience. With the announcement of Joint Strike it brought back loads of fun memories of days gone by, but is playing a game from your past a good thing?

1942 thankfully is a faithful updating of the classic arcade cabinet game. You control one of three planes to take out swarm after swarm of enemy planes, tanks, helicopters and huge bosses. Vertically scrolling action games hit their peak with Ikaruga so this revamp has some major challenges to overcome. 1942 goes old school and really shows all of the wanna-bees how it is done.  

Weapons are easy to use, mash the A button to rapid fire or hold the A to charge a shot,  just fly over an icon and you will pick up a new weapon, rapid fire 3-way bullets and high power laser like beams. You also have the life saving smart bomb, which clears the screen of all smaller enemies as well as the Joint Strike weapon, the effect of which the name implies. In single player weapons really only produce just a small barrage of missiles, however when in co-op you have a selection of three powerful moves, my favourite being a line of lightning that joins the two planes and destroys everything that is stupid enough to fly into it. 

When I played 1942 all those years ago the difficulty was rock solid, thankfully you have a few difficulty selections to choose from at the start of the level, making sure you can get to the end and work on those all important score combo’s.

Graphically the game looks great with some cool 3D effects on the backdrops and loads of on screen enemies and bullets. The level bosses are as huge as ever with gun placements and attack patterns to test the best of you, whilst others need you to just hammer away at the fire button and dodge incoming attacks until you wear them down.

Online mode is surprisingly well made, you each choose your plane and one Joint Strike special, the action is a little faster and more furious, there is also lots of tussling on the screen for the best power-up. Teaming up and using the Joint Strike weapons is cool and adds a little more strategy to the action. I am also pleased to say that there was absolutely no lag, which is vital for a twitch-fest of a game like this.

This is another must have Capcom game for your Live Arcade collection.