1943 Gameplay Tips & Walkthru
by GJ (
[email protected])
version 1.2
2/8/00
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WHAT'S 1943?!
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1943 - n - 1. A year in the past.
2. A scrollin' shoot-em-up on the NES.
1943 is an action-packed shooter on the original NES system. You must fly a P-38
airplane into enemy territory to destroy critical targets. This document will
have some general game tips.
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HOW TO PLAY
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Start button - Pause, menu selections
A button - Lightning attack
B button - Regular weapon, menu selections, powerup selections; note that if you
hold it, you'll hear a charge up sound. Release it to shoot a laser burst.
Select button - move cursor
Control pad - Move your fighter
When you start you will be given a mission objective and take off from your
aircraft carrier. In the top left corner is your score. The bottom right
indicator is marked with an "E". If this hits zero you do NOT die; rather, one
hit by anything and you die. Three things lower this meter:
1. Time gradually reduces your energy.
2. Firing the lightning attack reduces your energy by a lump sum.
3. Getting hit by enemies reduces your energy by a small amount.
There are two ways to increase your energy: grab a powerup or complete a mission
for an energy bonus. It starts at forty points and increases as you defeat more
difficult stages.
Sometimes after you destroy an enemy you'll see a "Pow" icon on the screen. Grab
it outright for plan energy. Shoot it a couple of times and another icon will
appear. This is for a special weapon. Shoot it again and you get another "Pow"
then a different weapon. The best overall weapon is the small cat (the last
item) which has a powerful double laser.
After you pick up a weapon a W and a number appear in the bottom left corner of
your screen. This represents your remaining weapon energy. As you fly, you lose
weapon energy. When it hits zero you revert to your regular machine gun. Prevent
this from happening by picking up weapons of the same type as the one you're
currently carrying.
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GENERAL TIPS
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Now for the heart of the document: the tips
1. THE NUMBER ONE RULE OF THUMB: *DODGE FIRST, SHOOT LATER*. You lose too much
energy from getting hit to think about blowing everything up at first sight.
Trust me on this one.
2. Use your lightning attack very sparingly. You will often get hit it's hard to
afford use of this. However if you have a very high energy total (e >100) then
use it to clear out huge numbers of enemies.
3. Once you pick up a special weapon, always recharge its power as long as
you're okay on energy level. If a bad rendition of "Jaws" plays then you are not
OK energy-wise.
4. If you are running low on energy and weapon power then be sure to take energy
until you're better off. I hope you see a recurring theme here - energy is the
MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD! Okay?
5. When you are fighting a boss enemy with lots of guns be extra careful. If you
can, try to pick up a weapon before the fight that will let you attack the boss
whilst remaining out of the line of fire.
6. Stay at the bottom of the screen. It gives you lots of time to react. In some
cases you can't do this because planes come up behind you; stay as far toward
the back as possible.
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POWERING UP
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You'll notice that, in addition to green fighters, there are red aircraft that
come in groups of six or seven and fly in formation for a while. These are
powerup formations. If you shoot every red plane before they get off the screen,
the last one will contain a powerup. The list of powerups is as follows:
POW - Increases Energy. If you continue to shoot at it it will become these
weapons:
First weapon - Short spreadfire weapon. Bad range, not a lot of power. I'm told
that if you collect two of these the range will greatly improve.
Second weapon - Long spreadfire weapon. Decent range, more power.
Third weapon - Vulcan weapon. Shoots a rapid stream of lead. Quite good at
taking down enemy formations, but somewhat weak...
Fourth weapon - Missile launcher. Quite powerful, decent reload rate.
Fifth weapon - Energy booster. Provides more of an increase to your energy than
the POW does.
Sixth weapon - Double laser. Super-powerful, and it cuts through anything like a
knife through hot butter. GET ONE BEFORE BOSSES and you will find them easy.
You may have noticed that sometimes your gun will hit empty space and there will
be a red flash. This indicates that there is a hidden item there. Shoot at that
spot until it appears. Usually it gives you more energy, but sometimes you'll
get a weapon powerup that jacks it up over 110 weapon energy.
Mantis Knight writes: "The power ups come in either 1 pt. flavor, or
2 pt. flavor. The power up system makes it more
unique in that you can only get certain abilities with
the more power you put into it."
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LEVEL SYNOPSES
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Here's a list of the levels and a synopsis (for those of you with slightly
smaller vocabularies, summary) of each one.
LEVEL 1
RIKAKU
The Rikaku is a large destroyer that has an arrangement of guns with two in the
front, four on the sides, and three in the rear. At the beginning of the level
you'll just see fighters, but they won't shoot at you. Midway through they'll
begin gunfire, and you can expect some more vicious attacks from the ships on
the surface. Be ready by charging up your Energy.
LEVEL 2
KAKU
This level has more green fighters and less red ones. Expect to see gunfire and
formations of about 5 or 6 small fighters coming at you at an angle. There will
also be medium green planes that duck out of the way of your fire and come up to
shoot at you. Surface contact provides some larger ships and waves of fighters.
If you have the energy, a lightning attack might come in handy here. The Kaku is
an aircraft carrier with more powerful guns. Small green fighters will also come
up and shoot at you. You may want to destroy the launch platforms to deal with
the fighters, then take out the cannons.
LEVEL 3
AYAKO I
This is much like level 1, except you'll see fire from the start. The green
ships are more abundant and they're much faster. (They're also better shots, and
they happen to be more agile. In short, they are now deadlier.) The small
fighters tend to be flanked by larger ones that will fire more powerful missiles
at you. Staying at the back of the screen and shooting everything down won't
work anymore. You'll have to do some fancy flying to evade enemy fire and keep
your energy level high. After a while you will come up against a rather sizable
plane. Just keep shooting at it, and I hope you upgraded your weapons. The plane
will shoot spreads of fire, with five shots each. Keep moving back and forth, up
and down, trying to dodge the bullets. Aim for the engines to take it down
rather aptly.
LEVEL 4
KAKUSHI
You'll notice even MORE green fighters. They shoot more now, and their movements
are quick and precise. They also fly in distinct formations. Usually these
formations prevent you from getting at them all at once. You can usually down
four or five, but there'll still be a couple left to shoot at you. Dodge his
weapon and he'll fly offscreen. The double laser is a quite powerful tool to
have here. The Kakushi is just a large ship with lots of green fighters and nice
big guns to blow you up with. If you have a weapon like the double laser you'll
be able to cut right through the pitiful attempt by the Japanese to defeat the
U.S. of A.
LEVEL 5
KYOSHU
Actually, the level itself isn't so bad this time around. You'll see more
concentrated gunfire than in previous levels, but there are less powerful planes
and more powerups. The Kyoshu ship is a powerful aircraft carrier with quite
advanced weapons technology. It'll blast you out of the sky rather quickly if
you're not careful. Get the machine spreadfire weapon to take it down at a
distance. I had some trouble with this boss for a while, and then I realized
that you should increase your focus on dodging and decrease your focus on
shooting. If you have the spreadfire weapon like I suggested then you'll do just
fine with this strategy. If your weapon is a regular one or one with a low
radius then you'll need to try something else.
LEVEL 6
GANRYO
Look, it might just be me, but I found this level to be EXTREMELY easy. The
Ganryo is not a ship or plane in itself; rather it is a unit of bombers. At the
beginning, don't worry about getting a lot of energy up. Instead get a double
laser. Then a fleet of red ships with different wings will come along; shoot
them down for a 140-energy powerup. Then you'll see ENEMY BOMBERS SIGHTED across
your screen. Take them down one by one with the double laser and you should be
fine. There, now wasn't that simple?
LEVEL 7
CHOKO
Come to think of it, this level isn't all that bad either. It's quite short, and
it has a lot of powerups. All you have to do is cut through basic fighters. The
boss is the worst yet, however. TWO aircraft carriers will launch powered-up
green fighters at you. This makes you deal with fighters and powerful sea
weapons at the same time. I barely made it out of this level alive. Get a
reliable weapon before you take the Choko carriers on.
LEVEL 8
ROKUSHU
Heh heh heh... this level is PAINFUL. You will have encounters with homing
planes that not only shoot at you but try to follow you (at least they're slow)
and hyperactive planes that come in rather quickly and have a tendency to run
into you (at least they don't shoot.) Then there's the ground attack where three
destroyers and an aircraft carrier or two shoot high-powered concussion bullets
that hurt you pretty darn bad (read: kill you) if you touch one. Have fun, kids.
Note that there are 24 levels, but I have yet to get to a lot of them. This
should be enough to get you off to a great start, however. Good luck!
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GAME GENIE CODES
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ZESNLLLE 10 power points
GOSNLLLA 20 power points
TOSNLLLE 30 power points
AEVYZLAE Start on mission 5
ZOVYZLAA Start on mission 10
GOVYZLAE Start on mission 15
TXVYZLAA Start on mission 20
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DOCUMENT INFORMATION
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This document is copyright 2000 by GJ. It may not be sold for profit or printed
out for distribution. It can only appear on
http://gjsgameshouse.cjb.net/ and
http://www.gamefaqs.com/. If you are reading it from anywhere else that site's
author is a total SOB and I'd appreciate it if you would inform me immediately
so I can flame his sorry butt off.
REVISION HISTORY:
Version 1.2 - Corrected a couple of mistakes and added a couple of tips. Started
the Credits.
Version 1.1 - Added level synopses and generally rounded out the FAQ.
Version 1.0 - No one ever saw this version because it wasn't posted. It was a
shrunken 1.1.
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CREDITS
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MantisKnight [
[email protected]] for information on powerups and levels
GJ, for writing this entire FAQ.
Thanks for reading,
GJ
[email protected]
