1943 - The Battle of Midway

STORY / GAMEPLAY
The game is the sequel to the arcade smash 1942 and has you once again fighting over the oceans during the Second World War. The game is set in the Pacific Theater of World War II, off the coast of the Midway Islands. The goal is to attack the Japanese Air Fleet that bombed the American Aircraft Carrier, destroy all Japanese Air and Sea forces, fly through 16 tough levels, make your way to the Japanese battleship Yamato and destroy it. The gameplay is a typical bird's-eye bottom-to-top shoot 'em up. You must shoot anything that moves and avoid being hit by enemy projectiles. Same story, same action as its predecessor actually. It is difficult to progress though, as it is hard to avoid the enemy fire and (once again) due to its somewhat loose controls.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The CPC conversion offers great visuals using a better color palette and more details compared to its counterparts C64 and ZX. Just have a look how the sea-waves are smartly drawn, the shadows of the airplanes when flying low, etc! But the sprite and screen animation does suffer (compared the other two 8bit ports) which makes the gameplay a bit sluggish. These kind of games should run smoothly at any cost and the CPC conversion does not offer that. As far as the sound, the game features a nice tune during playing and a few typical sound effects.