In this game, you fly a P-38 Lightning and blow up the Japanese fleet one ship at a time. This does a good job of telling a story about war without all the angst and closeups of Tom Hanks sweating. The real stress comes from doing the same thing over and over. See plane on deck, text says "MISSION (X) (NAME OF ENEMY SHIP)," and "FIGHT BRAVELY." Needlessly elaborate loop-de-loop during takeoff. Fight a swarm of Zeroes. Bigger planes appear about the same time as clouds. Clouds clear, ships appear. Blow up ships, blow up main ship. Lather, rinse repeat. ENDLESSLY.

     According to the backstory, we lost a carrier off the shores of Valhalla Island. It's pretty clever the way we had ships positioned near the place where dead Vikings go, since everybody knows Hitler had Necromancers and Dwarven Priests. Even a boat full of marines or killer bees would have a hard time against a VIKING. If we had some way of mutating our soldiers into half-wasp creatures, or better yet, mutating our soldiers into half-wasp creatures with capes. But that was more along the lines of what the Nazis were doing in Wolfenstein, so Roosevelt just HAD to refuse. So now, evidentally, I am the last hope.

     Why is it in shooters, no matter how legendary your unit is, they either get killed off or you just plain never see them? It's a good thing we had women and senior citizens whittling, gluing, and painting our warplanes in the 30's, otherwise I wouldn't stand a chance. The P-38 Lightning, as any war guy will tell you, has super-powerful laser beams and can control the weather. It's arguably the most deadly of the tiny 8-bit, 2-button fighter craft. Plus it was two tails, giving it twice the tail fins, like a Cadilliac. Isn't that just COOL? And it runs on war bonds and naked ladies painted on its hull!

     In conclusion, 1943 is another death-based funfest. It shares the masochistic, self punishing tone of American-developed games where you play as a german pilot downing American planes, since is was made by a Japanese company.

 

-MANNA

BONUS! A SKY HAZZARD PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

What with all the paranoia surrounding the obvious lies the government fed us about our technological capacities (we really did build transforming, water-powered flying kittens) I thought it'd be uncharacteristically kind of me to point out some of society's other outright lies.

On the chopsticks wrapper, it clearly says "Now you can pick up anything." Let me tell you, that's a load of bull. I went right outside to try and lift the car, and ended up snapping the lousy things and getting a nasty splinter. For a couple days, that kept me from picking up my backpack. Also, being able to use chopsticks doesn't help one pick up dates. If anything, you'll be more likely to gain more weight and repulse the opposite sex as a whole. You'll die sad and alone, all because you believed in magical chopsticks from heaven. You make me sick.

And how can we talk about government conspiracies without bringing up the whole flying saucers cover-up? Here's a picture that proves without a doubt, that a guy who looks kind of like Ronald Reagan once stood next to a picture of Space Jesus. Notice his shirt says "NOW" which is an acronym for "NEVER OPEN WINDOWS," a metaphor for "Don't reveal the truth," which in layman's terms means "I'm a dumb cracker who looks like Ronald Reagan posing with Space Jesus."

This, and other pictures were taken from a book titled In Advance of the Landing: Folk Concepts of Outer Space. What that basically means is "What dumb hicks think of Saucers." Generally, when you get as far out as Texas, logic starts to dilute in the arid climate. UFO fanatics become UFO zealots. They combine religion and scifi into a gooey, hazy mess. However, as this cuts into the time they can dedicate to hate groups, I fully endorse UFO based religion.

These guys are Unarians. They think the Earth is a candidate for some intergalactic United Nations, and that following porkwhore Ruth Norman (seen here with Effeminate Man) will convince the aliens to let us in. It's the intergalactic equivalent to that one cartoon on Nickelodeon they showed when other shows ran short, where the deformed kid with glasses tried to impress the popular kids but ended up making an ass of himself over and over. I have a feeling that if I ran up and knocked her down, the aliens would be so impressed I could become a planet-ruling sociopath.

This information is all 100% reliable, by the way. I asked this guy at his UFO Research Facility, conveniently located off Route 60 in the middle of Nevada or New Mexico or Italy or something. You can tell by his paunch and the hastily added UFO, that he is a P.H.D. in parapsychology and phenomena. He also did my taxes.

Till next time, this is Sky Hazzard, superstar.