Capcom released it in 1990 on the same CPS-1 hardware that would carry Street Fighter II a year later, and it works as a direct continuation of 1942 and 1943: dodge waves of Japanese and American fighters, stack up power-ups, and blast entire aircraft carriers to pieces. Compared to its predecessors, it adds more elaborate bosses and a more generous spread of upgrades, backed by the bigger sprites the new board allowed.
It never had the historical impact of other titles that ran on CPS-1, but it remains a tidy, accessible shooter, ideal for understanding where the Japanese habit of turning WWII into an excuse for vertical mayhem comes from, before Toaplan and Cave took the genre to another level.
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