Take to the skies in 1942: Joint Strike to combat enemy forces in one of three planes with multiple different weapon power ups and special abilities such as dropping bombs or launching missiles. 1942: Joint Strike puts players in a top down view with the map constantly moving and enemies constantly coming at you from every direction, challenging players to focus not only on blasting enemy planes out of the sky but also dodging and diving away from enemy munitions.

Players can choose to have only themselves or another person playing with them on the same console and pick between several difficulties. The easiest difficulty would be Penguin the next would be Slick Sleeve then Dragon Fly and finally the hardest difficulty and offering the most challenge Wing King. 1942: Joint Strike also offers online multiplayer capability which has similar settings and options as beginning single player mode, allowing only up to two people to play at a time. A benefit to playing with another person would be instead of having your basic missile attacks each player involved in the game can choose one of three unique attack abilities which utilizes both crafts distance from each other and positioning to use the ability.

An example of these special abilities would be dropping a large bomb, its positioning and radius is determined by the two crafts distance from each other, further apart larger area. Another would be a chain of lightening from one craft to another which is useful for taking out groups of weaker enemy crafts; again the distance between the two player’s aircraft would give a longer line of lightening.

As you begin 1942: Joint Strike players will have the ability to choose one of three aircraft each with their own unique traits. Lightening is the first choice available and it has a fairly balanced set up of evened health, speed, and power with a little less missile power. Next is Mosquito which is the biggest aircraft available and has the most health and power but sacrifices speed and missile power. Last but not least is Shinden who appears to be more like a rocket than a plane and has the fastest speed among the three with a decent missile power and regular power though lacks health causing it to be a delicate aircraft.

Controls and mechanics of game play in 1942: Joint Strike are simple the left paddle allows left, right, forward, and back movement along with diagonal movement. The A button allows players to fire their main weapon, holding the A button charges a more powerful shot and releasing the A button afterwards fires it. The Y button drops bombs, which players have a set amount but may restore bombs after using them, to destroy all enemies on the screen. The X or B button is the special attack button which fires missiles or if playing with another person uses the unique attack once the special attack meter is filled.

During 1942: Joint Strike players will run into a variety of power ups ranging from weapon upgrades to score boosters. There are three different weapon upgrades available that will float around the screen on the occasion that they drop and will change from one type to the next. One of the weapon upgrades are scatter shot which acts like a shotgun blast but with missiles hitting diagonally left and right then straight ahead. The second is a machine gun like upgrade which gives an even spread of fire at a high rate. The last upgrade would end up being a laser which penetrates through multiple enemies but deals less damage as a trade off. One of the two special upgrades that are temporary is a large missile that can be dropped, most of the time destroying an enemy in a single shot, and the second is a fast rate of fire similar to the machine gun upgrade but with more power.

There’s a score system and point multiplier system in play in 1942: Joint Strike where players can judge their skill and performance along side other players to see how well they’ve done on each difficulty. Score is built by defeating enemies and picking up medals during combat but big points are accumulated when multipliers come into effect. The closer a player is to their enemy when they shoot them down the higher the multiplier is, a different approach from other games where the more things you kill without getting hit, building the multiplier.