Talking NES and History: Capcom 1942 — War as Entertainment and Erasure?

This is our second video and written analysis that looks specifically at video games that feature historical themes. While we firmly believe that all video games are historical and can be read as historical sources, in this series we focus specifically on the narratives of history based games and where those narratives fit within the culture that created them. We’re starting this series looking at games developed for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), and we’re working through the games in chronological order over the next few weeks. If there is a game you think we missed, please comment and let us know. As with our first video, it is admittedly a bit rough and we have some technical aspects to work out, but we’re happy with the conversation and are looking forward to improving our process. Below the video is a companion blog post to go along with the conversation in the video.

1942 Capcom

Released in 1984 to the Arcades as stand up coin-operated game.

Ported in November 11, 1986 to the NES – The version we’re playing

1942 came to market during what could be called the second wave of games to the NES after the initial game releases in October 1985. It was released during the same month as Commando (reviewed 2 weeks ago), but presents an entirely different set of war scenarios. In that sense it is the second war game released if we are to discount Wild Gunman.

Game Play

Top down scrolling shooter set during World War II in the Pacific Theater for 1 or 2 players. 1942 and the other 19xx games that followed, especially 1943, put the player in charge of an American P-38 plane attempting to destroy a variety of Japanese warplanes in completion of all 33 stages. As with most games of this genre, each stage becomes progressively more difficult as enemy planes increase in number, speed, and ability.

While there are 33 stages in 1942, it is broken down into 4 stage sections. Each section coincides with specific World War II battles such as Okinawa (Stages 1-4) and  Iwojima (5-8). As the name implies, 1943: The Battle of Midway focuses on that end game. 1943, published 2 years later in 1988, includes smoother gameplay and the inclusion of battleship engagement.

1942 is a very faithful port of the Arcade game, and it was Capcom’s beak out hit for the NES and inspired quite a few like it. Both games are quite fun to play even when unable to complete all of the stages.

Game Footage

Game footage in 1942 is reasonable and mostly consists of the gameplayers P-38 taking off from the Air Craft Carrier – only signified by the number 88 – and engaging the variety of Japanese enemy planes. You fly mostly over water with some occasionally land appearing in various stages. Except for the greater variety, speed, and strength of airplanes, along with the wingmen and more powerful guns you may acquire, the graphics and appearance of the game change little throughout gameplay. 1943 shows greater graphics variability and looks cleaner and less pixalated.

War as Entertainment and Erasure?

The end of World War II forced Japan into unconditional surrender and the terms dictated that they would “be completely disarmed and demilitarized.” This is hardly news; however, it does lead to questions and possible revelations as to why games like 1942, which were developed in Japan and played in arcades and consoles in Japan, put the player in the role of defeating a Japanese force. From an American perspective, particularly a young individual playing a top down scroller in the mid-1980s, defeating an Axis power from World War II would make sense and fulfill a grander American narrative and teleological purpose. 1942 and 1943 provide a window into the consumption of Japanese technology and games that grew in the United States through the 1970s and 80s and demonstrate the effect of post-World War II growth and change for Japan in a demilitarized world.

In the aftermath of the war there was an effort to rebuild the Japanese economy, but there was also concern how war and the military should be represented or even showcased. In one example, Americans confiscated a significant proportion of Japanese propaganda war art (senso-ga) to mitigate any use the art may have in re-kindling nationalist sentiment. This raises fundamental issues about art and propaganda, but it also demonstrates the extent of the ‘de-militarization’ of Japan.

This de-militarization also expanded to toymakers. As James Altice points out, “the Occupation allowed Japanese toymakers to build machines of war at a miniature scale, so long as they represented the Allied forces and bore an inscription of their defeat.” War games would be focused away from Japan, and denuded from any Japanese offensive threat. Game development in Japan advanced and changed throughout the 1960s and 70s just as Japan became a technological power.

Prior to the development of the Famicon or the NES, Japanese companies had been importing dozens of American games (e.g. Life, Battleship, New Mystery Date), and these games often replicated the original artwork, scenes, and meeples. This meant that the domestic scene in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s was also imported. The scenes depicted in games such as Life, which was a big hit in Japan, or Battleship, where the original box art has a white, staid father and son playing at the dinette table while the mother and daughter do dishes in the background, meshed well with a family oriented environment with clear gender roles. Perhaps more importantly was the importation of “whiteness” into games.

The growth of manga and anime in Japan in the 1950s followed a similar discourse surrounding imagery. As Koichi Iwabuch stated “anime, like much of Japanese popular culture, is ‘culturally oderless.’” That is, the art or production of anime includes characters are distinctively not Japanese. The ethnicity is drawn out of the distinctive Japanese art from, allowing for, in the end, possible greater transmission.

Where does this leave 1942 and 1943? While the games include only aircraft and other objects of the Pacific Theater during World War II, the games also export the imported: they allow for purely consumptive games that players can enjoy. In America, the games provided simple Galaga-like enjoyment in an approved war like setting: unambiguously World War II, aka a war that was good. In Japan, even as the 1980s and 1990s saw increased Japanese nationalism (textbooks, etc.), the games code in possible messages. For example in 1943, the goal is to get to stage 16 and defeat the Japanese battleship Yamato. This is based on a real battleship that was sent to Okinawa in 1945 to fight until it was destroyed, which it did until sunk on April 7, 1945. As Andrew McKevitt states, “to many Japanese living in the postwar era, the name Yamato was reminiscent of the sacrifices of World War II and a racial self-referent.”