NOT 1942

NOT 1942

by JDC · version 1.0

NOT 1942 is a vertically scrolling shoot-'em-up for the Commodore 64, inspired by the arcade classic 1942 and written from scratch in 6502 assembly.

Fly a twin-boom fighter across four battlegrounds and take on waves of scripted enemy squadrons:

• Fighters that dive, swoop, loop and zig-zag
• Leaders that hover and fire aimed shots
• Raiders that climb up from behind
• Dive bombers, heavy gunships and enemy aces
• Red leaders that drop gold medals worth 500 points when shot down

You have three lives, one hit kills, and a short blinking invulnerability after each respawn. A full run takes about seven minutes, if you can survive it.

Levels

Each level scrolls for about a minute and a half over its own hand-drawn landscape, then ends in a large boss fight with a health bar and two attack phases.

• Level 1: Open Ocean. Tropical islands, ending with the four-engine bomber Thunder.
• Level 2: Jungle Coast. Coastline, rivers, a village and an enemy airstrip, ending with the armoured airship Leviathan.
• Level 3: Sunset Strait. A narrow, winding strait between cliffs, past a lighthouse and wrecks, ending with the giant flying boat Albatross.
• Level 4: Enemy Fleet. A stormy sea full of destroyers, cruisers and an aircraft carrier, ending with the enemy flagship Kraken.

Beat all four and you'll see the ending.

Features

• Original 3-voice SID music: a title song, a theme for each level, a boss theme and a big explosion when a boss goes down
• Runs on a stock PAL C64 at 1 MHz, using only the 8 hardware sprites
• Loads as a single compressed 48-block file

Controls

• Joystick in port 2: move and fire
• Keyboard: W A S D to move, Space to fire

How to play

Download the disk image (.d64) and load it on a real C64 or in an emulator such as VICE:

LOAD"NOT 1942",8,1
RUN

The .prg file is the same game, for emulators that start a program file directly.