This game is a new favourite of mine, recently found when I felt the urge to look into some old arcade games that I remember playing as a child, and their possible mobile adaptations. As far as games that can be ported and adapted to mobile, I find these old arcade games to be among the most successful and enjoyable. 1942 in particular has a very simple gameplay concept, requiring you to do no more than move your fighter plane around the scrolling battlefield, avoiding bullets, kamikaze planes, monstrous ships and bombers and stationary platforms loaded with mounted guns. The most you have to do with your fingers besides that is occasionally tap a special skill button to unleash a mighty barrage from an allied bomber.

Thanks to the nature of modern mobile gaming, where all actions are performed on a touch screen, gliding your plane around is extremely smooth and reactive. There’s no aggravating extra steps to the controls (like floating joysticks or a button to shoot), you simply drag your finger around the screen. And I cannot emphasise enough how fantastic this system is. 1942 Classic Arcade is able to get an extraordinary amount of mileage out of this intuitive and easy to understand, but challenging to master gameplay concept.

So for sheer entertainment value this hectic little game earns top ratings from me. I never found myself wanting for enjoyment when I sat down and started playing, and each level lasts only a minute or two, so it’s great for losing some spare time while using the bathroom or waiting for public transport. The incredible ease with which you can understand the gameplay makes it very easy to pick up, and there’s minimal hassle to get through between the moment you open the game and the moment you start playing.

I have to admit I’m a sucker for decent progression mechanics. I love leveling things up and unlocking new items and abilities. This is something that 1942 Classic Arcade does fairly well. I won’t call the game’s progression system perfect, because it, like many other games, suffers from the curse of freemium mobile game monetisation. The temptation to purchase a new plane or buy the needed crystals to upgrade your current plane is strong at times, but I’ve found that with patience you can acquire the necessary in-game currency at a reasonable pace, especially if you’re willing to sit through regular 30 second ads to gain bonus currencies. Since the gameplay is so strong and doesn’t require you to make purchases just to play and have fun, I found I was able to avoid giving in and making purchases without ever feeling frustrated or annoyed. As a result, while the game does pressure you to an extent to spend your hard earned dollars, it’s far from the worst or most invasive monetisation system I’ve seen in a game, and gets a mild monetisation rating from me.

The central gameplay is single player and pits you against a long wave of enemies for each of the 50 campaign missions. Each mission has three difficulty tiers and is replayable for a certain number of medals (in-game currency required to start a mission), but I never at any point ran out of medals, and I played for hours at a time during some sessions. I would estimate at least 15-20 hours of gameplay for the average person, spread across a few days or weeks, and many more for those who engage in the multiplayer modes and regular events, and try to acquire the fancier ships through gameplay. Beyond that there are daily challenges, alternative gameplay modes that refresh daily and a multiplayer mode where you fight the same battle as another player trying to earn more points and survive longer than them. All of this helps keep 1942 Classic Arcade fairly fresh and content rich every time I open it up to play.

Overall I found 1942 Classic Arcade to be a positive experience that, while suffering from slightly unpleasant monetisation systems, scratched an itch for me, challenged me and kept me happily coming back for more.