1942/Gameplay

Controls

 * Joystick: Use the joystick to direct the Super Ace in any one of eight directions. You can move throughout a majority of the visible screen.
 * Fire: Press the Fire button to shoot bullets from the Super Ace. You begin the game with a double barrel gun, but you can collect a power-up that increases it to a quad-barrel gun.  If you collect the power-up that provides twin support planes, they will fire a single bullet each whenever you fire.
 * Loop: Press the Loop button to perform a vertical 360 degree dive in the air. While executing this maneuver, the Super-Ace is completely invulnerable to enemy fire.  You can only perform so many of these, however, and the stock is indicated (in the arcade version) by the red Rs in the bottom left corner of the screen.
 * 1-2 Players: Press to start a 1 or 2 player game.

Player
You control the Super Ace Lockheed P-28 Lightning, with its distinctive twin booms with forward-mounted engines and a single, central nacelle containing the pilot and armament. It's a very maneuverable craft as you're about to discover. Though small, it contains all the fire power you need to take on the entire Japanese Air Defense fleet. It starts out each mission taking off from the deck of a U.S. aircraft carrier. It possesses a twin guns that fire upward, ahead of the plane's flight, and they can be expanded to quad guns. It also possesses a limited capability of performing vertical 360 degree loops through the air, making it impervious to enemy fire and contact while performing. For all of it's strengths, it only takes one hit from the enemy to bring the Super Ace down. For all of your offensive prowess, you must constantly shift your position in the air so as to avoid taking enemy fire, or direct collisions with their crafts.

Small enemies
The small enemy air craft make up the vast majority of the fighter planes that you will encounter. Although they have slightly different motions from one another, their general behavior is the same: Enter the scene, take a shot or two at you, and escape with their lives anyway they can. The pilots of these crafts have no fear of flying into you either. They will continue on their route whether you get in their way or not, and if you do, that's one chance less that you will get to complete your mission. In generally, gray planes appear at the top of the screen while green planes appear from the sides. Double propeller planes make more loops while they are present on the screen. Jet fighters make fast direct attacks, swooping in with wide arcs. Do your best to track the position of each aircarft on the screen, but be more concerned with the bullets that they shoot. Shoot down those that you can with safety and dodge any others that would pull you into danger.