Capcom has been on a retro rival binge lately. This past week, they showed off a few retro revivals and one of them happened to be an HD remake of the classic 1942. 1942: Joint Strike has received a ton of gorgeous updates with the biggest addition being co-op.

Read on for my hands-on of the game and all of the pew pew pew action.

Fans of the original game will feel right at home here. For 1942, the team took different elements from the older titles, combined them, gave it the HD bath, and made the game in widescreen to top it all off. The game is also completely in 3D, but the gameplay remains true to the classic and plays out 2D style with with a top down view.

If you have no idea what 1942 is, then you either had the unfortunate luck of being born after the golden era of videogames, or are just plain retarded. 1942 is a classic shoot 'em up where the goal is to survive each level as you pew pew pew your way through hordes of enemies. Sounds simple, right? Well, sort of. You really have to be aware of what's going on in a level just like any shoot 'em up and it's easy to get lost in the chaos of bullets and lasers flying all across the stage.

You have three planes to pick from and you start off the game with just your simple weak gun. As you progress and destroy enemies, you'll be able to gain new weapons ranging from spread guns to powerful lasers. You also have a limited amount of missile attacks that will shoot off several missiles at either a single or multiple targets. And of course, you can do a loop de loop to avoid enemy fire.

The biggest appeal here, as with many games that actually offer it, will be the co-op mode. The game will actually get harder when there's a second player in the fray. Aside from the more pew pew pew action, the co-op mode will give players the ability to use Joint Strike attacks. The only one I got to see in action was the lightning attack as seen above. A very power lightning bolt gets attached to both planes and anything that crosses the path of the lightning bolt is decimated almost instantly. 

These Joint Strike attacks will be especially handy when it comes to the gigantic boss fights. It wouldn't be a shoot-em-up without the bosses nearly filling up the entire screen. I only got up to the first boss fight, which was against the Bodan aircraft. The plane packed tons of missiles and machinegun bays but wasn't too hard to take out.  

Like I said earlier, Capcom is on a retro binge and they seem to know what the hell they are doing. 1942 Joint Strike will support local or online co-op on the PlayStation Network and Xbox LIVE. The game should hopefully be out this Summer and will sell for $10.00/800 Microsoft Points.