1943: The Battle of Midway (Arcade)

1943: The Battle of Midway is the true story of two American fighter pilots who destroyed the entire Japanese naval fleet with lasers while collecting cows.

Unused Graphics#

	This power-down item—the unfortunately named "WOP"—is in several other Capcom games. There are graphics for it in the object graphics ROM of 1943, but it never appears in the game.
	An unused projectile that could be fired in many directions.
	An older version of the Mobichan bonus item that walks across the screen. This was ripped from Side Arms Hyper Dyne, and its design and palette were never updated.
	An alternate animation of Mobichan spinning around like a fool.

Used	Full

Mobichan's bowing animation has three frames in the ROM, but the game only uses two in the ending.

Debug Functions#

There are a few debugging functions left in the game. All functions require that the Test Mode dip switch be turned on after the copyright screen appears.

Stage Select#

Set the Slot A / Slot B credit settings to the appropriate values to start on a different stage.

Gameplay Debugging#

If dip switch A3 (the display dip switch) is set, players will be invulnerable to enemies and enemy projectiles.

Unused Music#

Track 2C is a short celebratory track. It sounds similar to the track played after failing to get at least 70% of the ships destroyed, so it might have been used after successfully completing those sections.

Unused Text#

Starting at 0x02AD1 in memory is a snippet of text that might have been displayed at the start of each ship section.

      SHOOT DOWN
ATTACK AND SINK A SHIP

Firefly Secret#

Insert 9 credits and start the game. A Firefly worth 10,000 points will fly by near the middle of the stage.

Regional Differences#

Japan	U.S.A.	Europe

The Japanese version uses a unique graphic for the subtitle, whereas it's simply rendered in the game's regular font overseas. All of the default high scores in the Japanese game are ten times larger than their North American / European counterparts.

The European version swaps the palettes of the © and 1987 CAPCOM.

Revisional Differences#

There are two US versions in MAME: an earlier version (1943ua) and a later one marked as Rev C (1943u). The European version seems to be based on the latter.

Pre-Mission Message#

Earlier US version	Later US and European versions

The pre-mission message was slightly beefed up in the later US and European versions, probably to sound more heroic.

Curiously, the NES port uses the message from the earlier US version.