1943: The Battle of Midway

1943: The Battle of Midway is Capcom's follow-up to 1942, and it is the game that made the series' one-hit-death rule survivable. You fly a P-38 through the Pacific theatre with a health bar instead of a life per hit, which turns the game from a memory test into a real action campaign.

The health system is the structural change: taking a hit drains a bar that the power-ups refill, so the game can afford much denser enemy fire and much larger bosses. And the bosses are the reason to play - enormous capital ships, carriers and aircraft that fill the screen and take a genuine effort to sink, with destructible parts that fly off independently. The campaign is a historical route through the Battle of Midway, and the score system rewards clearing a stage with full health rather than simply surviving it. Capcom released it in 1987 between 1942 and 1941, and the NES conversion (also on this site) is a much shorter, easier version. Note the slug: this is the arcade original, distinct from the Famicom port.

• ▸A health bar that replaces the one-hit-death rule of 1942
• ▸Enormous battleship and carrier bosses with destructible parts
• ▸The Battle of Midway as a stage-by-stage historical route
• ▸Score bonuses for clearing a stage with full health