Strikers 1945
Introduction
Strikers 1945 was developed and published by Psikyo, released in arcades in 1995 as the Japanese shoot ’em up studio’s tribute to Capcom’s earlier 19XX series, borrowing that franchise’s WWII fighter-plane theme while building an entirely original game around it. Players choose from a roster of real and fictional World War II-era aircraft, each with a unique weapon pattern and a limited-use special bomb attack, fighting through vertically scrolling stages against increasingly dense formations of enemy planes, tanks, and battleships on the way to boss encounters that dwarfed the player’s own aircraft in scale. Its fast, pattern-heavy bullet design leaned toward the more demanding, precision-focused style of shoot ’em up that would come to define much of Psikyo’s later output, distinguishing it from the comparatively slower-paced Capcom games it was inspired by. Strikers 1945’s commercial success in arcades established Psikyo as a serious force in the shoot ’em up genre during the mid-1990s and launched a long-running series of sequels, including Strikers 1945 II, III, and Plus, that would continue for years afterward.
