1942: The Pacific Air War Reviews

1942 The Pacific Air War is a very very old game, from the 90s. It has that good old pixelated graphics, weird sound effects, no tutorial, I don't even know how to look at my keybinds I figured them out by simply pressing shit and finding out what it does. Its obviously not modern at all. So why should you buy this instead of a modern flight sim? Well the answer is simple: You shouldn't. I bought like a package that came with a lot of old games and this was one of them, I thought they would be very fun. They are not, they are very hard to figure out because the essential things that we find in every game nowadays wasn't a thing back then I guess. +Quite a lot of planes with cool looking cockpits. Wildcats, Zeros, B-17s, Catalinas, P-40s... There's a lot more fighters in both the Japanese and the American side, there's like 1 flying boat for each team, a few bombers. Still very good. +I do really like the graphics and the noises in these older games. They're just so weird which makes me love em. -As usual with these old games no tutorial. Good luck figuring out what button does what. -There is honestly 0 reason to buy this over a modern flight sim. This applies to most of these very old, 90s games. Am I sad that I own it? Not really. Will I play it again? Not really. Would I recommend it? No. That applies to most of these older Microprose sim games. They're cool looking and because they're super old in my opinion that makes em even cooler but they're honestly a torture to play.

I bought this game back in the 90's running on my crapp y little 386 with 4mb raam and 120mb hard disk and (while I was only 13) I thought it was the best damn game ever. The the flight sim was challenging, the combat was interesting and the naval strategy was compelling and quite deep for the simplicity of the interface even though I didn't really know what I was doing. This game got me hooked not just on flight sims but strategy and real world history too. Now 20 years on I still remember this game and play it now and again because I STILL have not found a modern game that offers as much as this does. Everything else is either really arcadey or is a grand strategy that doesn't incoporate the sim elements. Protip: If a studio (I could see Gaijin doing well with this) picked this up and modernised it while keeping all the gameplay and sim elements they'd be on to a winner. P.S. Still the best game ever.

This can be conciderd a hidden gem(?) For the age of this simulator i am going to have to say it is actually quite realistic. You can change the difficulty from limmited ammo to your pilot getting blinded by the sun. Also the A.I are suburb. enemy pilots are quite a challenge and difficult to shoot. ships also try to avoid you when you are getting close to them! (enemy ships of course) For the flight sim fans this is a must have, get it now it is on sale! 1 thing i noticed is that the steam store tells there is no multiplayer, But according to the manual and in game options there is. But it is called Modem flight or something. Not sure how to do that. I tried to take a look but if you figure around a bit it should maybe be possible to use.

I played this game a lot in the mid-90s. Seeing this on sale I had to grab it. Sadly the SVGA graphics that I remember have been replaced by some terrible EGA quality graphics that make this game unplayable. I love to revisit old classics and primitive graphics have their charms but this one has been very poorly re-implemented. Refund requested.

This is a golden oldie game from the early 90's. I got in in a package deal so can not complain for the price I got it. Generally love a number of sims from that time, F-15 Strike Eagle, F-111 Stealth fighter and and Gunship 2000 all MicroProse titles and I spent 100 plus of hours playing and enjoying those games. The graphics were as good as they get then. I think that some of these MicroProse aviation titles re-released need a reboot graphically as the Scenarios, campaigns, and progressing in your career were great. They are not ARMA III or DCS online and basically ARMY FPS Games and then study sims when they throw Helicopters/aircraft in. If these were re-released as a download once game. Plug and Play. Then you could and get your up dates as required when you reconnect. But you did not not have to have internet connectivity to play these back in the day. These were realistic enough to jump in and play for an hour. I think we need something like that you can take on your lap top and play at the cottage or where ever with out being connected wifi or a road tip in the back of a vehicle or plane. lol I play MSFS FSX and MSFS2020 currently and the graphics here, well it kind of kills it for me. I can read the chunky graphic instruments in this sim. I could fly it. The views are forward, sides, back, using the key pad. But its not fun now. I was able to fly around in it but just not enjoyable enough to stay. I miss using a POV hat switch to look around. As someone said good to poke around for a few minutes but frustrating. AS I said before upgrade the cockpit instrument graphics slightly, tie in a joystick with a point a of view hat switch to change view and be able to program the keys strokes to the joysticks this game be still playable and enjoyable. I am not recommending the game because the basic Idea of it is good, but the current play ability is not, It needs a graphics upgrade.

The Game NEEDS to be remastered. The flight simulator and gameplay are excellent. However, the game must be upgraded to be compatible with all the latest and legacy Flight Controllers.

This game is considered a classic. It was made when games came with 2-inch thick manuals that were as fun to read as the game was to play. Obviously it's an old DOS-based game, so don't expect great graphics (especially since it was released during what I call the "muddy phase" of sims, where clear graphics were sacrificed for the cutting edge effect of 3-D immersion), but this is about as comprehensive a Pacific Theater sim as you can find. Why no one has re-booted this game I will never understand. It's a lot of fun.

Okay...so. I bought this one for .94 cents. Which means, I can't complain. When this game came out I was in my mid 20's. And, I loved it. For that time, it was cutting edge WWII fun. I don't know why more sims aren't covering this genre and theater of war. The Yorktown, Enterprise and Hornet...against Akagi, Kaga, Hiyru and Soryu. Sorry if I tore those spellings up Japan. But I loved this game. So, when I downloaded I thought that I would get the same buzz I did off it in 94-95. And......drum roll.....well, I didn't. Its fun to poke around in the game. But you have to realize this is a 55mb game. They did allot back then, but you have to remember we were still loading with 1.33mb floppies. Compressed this was a 5 disk load! Graphics set u back, thats the main thing, its just not fun because of it. It's like looking through a fish bowl. So buy the game for a buck and tool around for nostalgia's sake, but don't get it if your expecting IL-2 pacific wars graphics...but the campaign is better than IL2!! I still have to recommend it for a buck!

fantastic game, that shines in historical battle mode........ yet it's another bad port. the sound has always been an issue for this game in dosbox. contrary to some posts i have read here, the DIGITAL sound does NOT work in this port. (eg: machinegun sounds) to get the sound working 100% do the following: 1) go to this address and download the opensource JEMM memory manager: https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.2/repos/pkg-html/jemm.html unpack "JEMM.zip" to "steam\steamapps\common\1942 - the pacific air war\JEMM" your game folder will now look something like this: - dosbox_windows (folder, contains dosbox) - JEMM (folder, contains the memory manager) - MPS (folder, contains game) - manual.pdf 2) - Open the "dosbox_windows" folder - Open "dosbox_1942_TPAW.conf" with notepad now scroll all the way down untill you see the following lines: xms=true ems=true umb=true change all 3 values to the following: xms=false ems=false umb=false - Save & exit notepad 3) - Open the "dosbox_windows" folder - Open "dosbox_1942_TPAW_launch_windows.conf" with notepad - Edit and make sure it only contains the following: [autoexec] mount C ".." C: CD JEMM jemmex FRAME=E000 LOAD CD\ CD MPS\PACIFIC CLS 1942.EXE EXIT - Save & exit 4) Open the configuration utility by right clicking on the game from the steam library and set your digital audio to sound blaster 16. 5) Launch game & make sure the digital sounds are ticked in the in-game config screen. too bad you pay for a lousy port. hope to have resolved some headaches here, and maybe the dev's are reading as well. greetings to all

Here's what you get! * PAW: 1942, plus its Army Air expansion, running in DOSBox, and patched to its latest version. * You do not get the Gold version, which was just the DOS version packaged with a bollox Win 3.1 multimedia launcher. * For those who know their old sims and DOSBox, the digital sound works fine. Getting PAW sound to work in DOSBox could be a real bear. So, for the game itself: This is a an old classic for Microprose game collectors, old flight-sim grogs (like myself), and the like. As with all of these retro releases, there is very little here that modern gamers or folks not fond of this genre will find interesting. (Truth be told, however, I'd rather fly this old sim than, say, later efforts such as MSCFS 2 or Pacific Fighters!) But for the graphics -- which are that lovely mid-90's smear of big textured pixels -- PAW's flight model is surprisingly good (if actually a little too punishing), the enemy AI is challenging, and there are many scenarios to choose from. Highly recommended with the caveats I've mentioned above. (Note: use CTRL-F12 to increase the DOSBox cycles -- 3000 isn't nearly enough!)