1941: Counter Attack
Introduction
1941: Counter Attack was developed and published by Capcom, released in Japanese arcades in February 1990 and reaching North America that May as the third entry in the studio’s 19XX vertical shoot ’em up series, following 1942 and 1943: The Battle of Midway. Set in a fictionalized continuation of the earlier games’ World War II Pacific theater setting, the game once again puts players in the cockpit of a fighter plane battling waves of enemy aircraft and capital ships, this time introducing a two-player simultaneous co-op mode alongside a new special weapon system that let pilots unleash a limited-use area-clearing attack. The series’ signature Loop maneuver returned from the earlier two entries, still granting brief invincibility and clearing enemy bullets from the screen, now supplemented by additional power-up types collected from downed enemies that let players customize their plane’s weapon loadout mid-stage. Though it moved away from the strict historical grounding of the earlier 19XX games toward a more fantastical, higher-intensity style of enemy design, 1941: Counter Attack remained faithful to the core dogfighting formula that had made the series popular, closing out the original run of Capcom’s WWII-themed shooters before the franchise moved on to 19XX and 1944 years later.
