1942: The Pacific Air War
They were desperate, daring and deadly!
For the past 50 years, only the courageous veteran pilots of World War II knew the real risks of fighting the legendary Pacific air wars.
Now it’s your turn!
Strap yourself into the cockpit of 1942, The Pacific Air War and you’ll experience the ultimate simulation of daring air combat over the South Pacific. Taking on the same challenges faced by WWII aviators, you’ll tangle with the enemy in some of the most heroic battles ever fought. You’ll chase down Wildcats, Corsairs, and Zeros through relentless gunfire. You’ll pick apart enemy forces by dropping torpedoes, and you’ll perform gravity-twisting dive-bomb attacks that will leave you glued to the back of your cockpit!
The outcome of each engagement turns upon your actions. Your task force is depending on you. It’s a battle between the devil and the deep blue sea in 1942, The Pacific Air War!
- Fly for either the U.S. or Japanese Navy. Choose from ten historically-accurate aircraft, each with authentic cockpit and flight characteristics!
- Whose side are you on? Decide for yourself by taking full command of either U.S. or Japanese forces!
- Sharpen your skills with varying difficulty options!
- To be where the action is, hop into the cockpit of any one of the planes in your flight.
- Heart-stopping bomb runs will push your skills and your courage to the absolute brink!
- Experience the same field of view as the actual aircraft pilots with an innovative new virtual cockpit!
Game Discussion
Steam User 0
Alright, well, it's a DOS flight sim from a day after 1993.
I've never played it before, I just own this game for some reason (Nightdive releases quality stuff) and I decided to buy it and play it. I was kind of not disappointed.
I basically just flew a couple of missions and shot down a few F4Fs or whatever, it's hard to even tell because of the graphics, but I saw blue paint which means US Navy. I was pretty satisfied with the controls and the flight model.
Although... this game feels a lot like Super Nintendo Pilotwings. So uh yeah. It's a little more advanced, but it's still a relatively primitive simulation. It still gets a lot of stuff really right though, so it's definitely a good game.
Anyway, more important to talk about is the release. It worked for me via the Linux or Windows packages, but I noticed that the Linux package was missing sounds, and presumably the Windows package too. Which is a shame, but you can just mod in the correct sounds - someone in the Steam Guides section has figured it out, so if you really want the experience to be as authentic as possible you can just go check that out. It's a shame you have to do that, but it didn't really trouble me.
And the game does work, which is the important part to me. I'm comfortable with games requiring a little bit of tinkering if they are, nearly 32 years old. I'm comfortable with it.
Although, I did have some trouble with the controls, mostly just to figure out views and such. I could not at all find a way to get the camera to behave in first person view, and aim forward, so I just played in third person view. It still worked fine, although you don't get crosshairs, so you have to just guess where the enemy is. I think the game defaults to infinite ammo though, with limited ammo as a toggle, sooo, it's not so bad. Also, once I had sorted out the view controls, everything else is fairly intuitive - plus and minus to set engine throttle, spacebar to shoot, arrow keys to turn or go up and down. Very typical stuff. And that's all you really need to fly and blow up other planes.
Anyway, do I recommend it? Sure why not. It's a flight sim, though, so you're going to either be a person who likes flight sims or a person who does not, and this game is not going to change your mind one way or the other - this is the definitive ur-example of a flight sim. It looks, feels, plays, smells, and tastes like a flight sim. The smell is thick attic dust, and the taste is tinned rations.
If you do like flight sims, then it's probably worth picking up on sale just to give it a shot and be pleasantly surprised by the graphics (press F9 to adjust) and the surprisingly intricate plane details and loadouts. They clearly put a lot of work into this game before the internet even really existed, which means it was made by nerds who bought and read a lot of books, and I have nothing but respect for that.