I never played the arcade version because I was not old enough to go into the local arcade :( so I had to stick to this ST conversion.
The graphics weren't very good, the SFX weren't very good but the playability was good and of course you had the Jason Brooke music to listen to.
My brother used to play this game all the time back in 1990 in the arcades. I don't think he ever got the chance to play the Atari ST version. It's a fun game to play and it's very similar to Flying Shark. Except, it's easier than Flying Shark. 1943 can be found on Automation compact disk 22.
Hmm, a very bad conversion. I played the arcade version (both as a machine and on MAME) and it is ways better than the ST version.
Flying Shark is somewhat as like as it and much better on the ST.
Nice game and a lot of fun. The only strange thing was how to get good weapons - You could combine spread-shot with power-shots etc...
After all: the 8-bit version on the Commodore C16 (!) was far better...its name was "Reach out for the sky"...
Alex