1942

The classic, I remember playing this on a dusty old arcade at a camp ground I spent a week at. Super fun. The online emulator doesn't do it justice.

There are many questions I can bring: Why by default you only have two lives, why you have to plow through a whole 32 stages with no checkpoints, why is the power-up choice so flimsy, why are you destroying the devs' own air forces, but even they do little to tarnish the sweet adrenaline in its dog-fighting sequences. You are fighting some monsturous, physically impossible airplanes in here(including kamikaze who ram at you!), but artistic license in here(and especially in the latter games) is such a sweet counterbalance to the game's cringing difficulty. The pursuit here is of an American aeroplane on a spree from Midway all the way to Okinawa island(and the subsequent Japanese surrender, with fortunately no bomb business).

1942 is also the first shoot em up to introduce a share of power-up staples. They include extra minor wingmen at your side, a quad shooter, screen-wipers, as well as an extra looping manouver that are. These power-ups are sadly clumsily shoegorned into the rare red aeroplane formations you need to fully eliminate, but are a gene in the later shoot-em-ups to come, from danmakus(bullet hell really had its start here), to the progressively crazier 19xx sequels.

Its a simple shoot em up set in ww2. Control a plane and shoot down enemy aircraft to reach the top score. What differentiated it from other similar games at the time is the power ups and how you can become pretty beastly if you manage to survive. That said, it has aged and doesnt quite hold its own against more modern games in the genre. The artstyle is very repetitive and you will be looking at a blue sea for 95% of the time. It controls pretty well, its just a bit dull to play due to all the repetitition.