1944

• Release Date: 1988
• Genre: Shooter
• Style: Vertical Scrolling Shooter
• Similar Games: 1942 (Commodore 64/128), 1943: The Battle of Midway (Commodore 64/128)

Game Description

It's been five long, bloody years since World War II began but the end is finally in sight. In Europe, Nazi Germany is collapsing against the weight of the combined Allied land, sea and air onslaught. In the Pacific theater, though, sea battles between the United States and Japanese still rage.

1944 is similar in gameplay to Capcom's arcade vertical scrolling shooter series. Not endorsed by Capcom, the game nonetheless tries to capture the spirit and format of previously released shooters in the genre. In 1944, both solo and multiplayer (two) action is supported. Two player action involves both players flying side by side to meet the challenge of the enemy airforce.

Players control fighter planes armed with a forward mounted machine gun. In order to advance in the game, at least one plane must reach the end of a level. Each player starts with three available planes (lives) and loses one if struck by an enemy plane or bullet.

Defensive action is actually a product of offensive prowess as well as avoidance -- you defend your plane by shooting enemy aircraft down. However, some of the larger enemy planes take more than one hit to kill as they are composed of multiple parts that fall off piecemeal when shot. The surviving parts continue to fly and shoot at you.

As the game progresses, you encounter POW icons throughout the levels that can be picked up for increased firepower. As an adjunct to the battleships that dominated previous naval wars, the prowess of naval aviation is emerging in full force. Do you have the skills to be an Allied naval aviator, flying against the best Japan has to offer? Journey back to 1944 and find out!

Roots & Influences

1944 is similar in structure to games released by Capcom in the 194x series.

Review: Overall

1944, at its best, is a good example of poor game design when compared to similar games in the genre. Specifically, the intent is there but not the content. In terms of gameplay, graphics and music, this combat airplane shooter fails to provide any meaningful comparisons to the Capcom games after which it is patterned.

Immediately noticeable are the fairly significant problems connected with gameplay, chief among them the absurdly poor collision detection for your bullets. Enemies don't have a problem killing you but, if you shoot five times directly at an enemy plane and actually see the ammunition pass through the sprite, it's still a toss-up as to whether the game registers a hit or not. To make matters worse, the levels are poorly designed with bad placement of unevenly paced enemy planes, including some that continuously fire at you with no respite.

Gameplay aside, the most evident and crippling problem concerns the graphics. Rather than pinpoint the multitude of specific flaws, suffice it to say that the overall combined effect of the graphics is quite distasteful. For starters, the graphical elements are just plain ugly. Planes are poorly drawn and sometimes don't look like actual planes at all.

Backgrounds consist of a bad display of white dots sprinkled over the greens and blues that depict land and water. These white dots have a very negative effect on the graphics and look very much like the snow effect common on televisions with poor reception. Also, the white dots detract significantly from actual gameplay since both your bullets and those fired from enemy planes are white pixels! It's not hard to imagine how easy it is to lose a few white pixel shots in a sea of meaningless white background dots.

To exacerbate the situation, the effect is particularly bad with planes that shoot many bullets at once -- you simply can't track them all through the sea of white dots. Because of this aspect, survival against a bullet swarm is more a matter of luck than skill. The worst aspect of the graphics, though, is the constant screen flickering. If the snow effect makes it difficult to determine the location of bullets, the flickering makes it nearly impossible.

Many times, disappointing sound components in games can be attributed simply to poor sound effects or music. While this is certainly the case with 1944's generic and unimpressive bullet sound effects, the major problem lies in the fact that bullet sounds don't match up correctly with the graphics. Often, you won't even hear a bullet before it's halfway across the screen.

Two player action can actually become confusing as both players control their planes on the same screen simultaneously Crisscrossing paths coupled with the zigzag effect of enemy targets can easily lead to cross purposes in eliminating enemy planes. 1944 is definitely a game to avoid if you're interested in decent gameplay, music and graphics in a flight combat, vertical scrolling, shooter. Most other games of the genre far surpass the lackluster effort put into the design of this clone.

Review: Enjoyment

1944 has poor collision detection, bad level designs and dull gameplay.

Review: Graphics

The game has poor, flickering graphics besieged by white dots all over the background that makes items difficult to distinguish. The effect is akin to watching a television channel with bad reception.

Review: Sound

The game's generic sound effects are out of synch with events and often play half a second or more after they occur.

Review: Replay Value

There's no good reason to replay the game

Review: Documentation

None observed.

Production Credits