Some research notes that I've collected for the game, which may help others:

- The arcade version is the only version which has a staff credits roll. 'Jungle Kumi' is credited for music and sound effects, and that is very likely an alias for Kumi Yamaga who worked at Capcom as a composer during that time period.

- Yoshihiro Sakaguchi is another name tied to the Arcade and NES releases. He worked at Capcom's Sound Team (and may have headed it too), and made several sound drivers for Capcom's games. He is unfortunately uncredited in the games, but his name does pop up on this Capcom release, and he even directly comments about 1943 in the soundtrack's booklet. Unfortunately, his role isn't mentioned, but it's likely he was the sound driver behind it.

- In the album release mentioned above, Yoshihiro Sakaguchi refers to 'scandals' around the game's development. This likely refers to the fact that the game had the player face off against Imperial Japanese pilots, and people were reportedly upset about this in Japan. This supposedly explains why the Japanese NES version was altered, and goes by the fantasy name '1943: Battle of Valhalla' with references to IJN and bosses changed to fantasy names. The western release kept the original subtitles.

- The NES's title screen on both JP and US releases is simply '1943' with no subtitle. That is where the game title '1943' on the internet sometimes comes from and it isn't alluding to a different game or alternative version. '1943' and '1943: The Battle of Midway/Battle of Valhalla' are the same game.

- Harumi Fujita in an interview confirms she worked on the game, but her first songs were rejected. She then mentions that all the Composers at Capcom pitched in to help meet deadlines. This could mean that there are more composers uncredited than first thought.

Source: https://shmuplations.com/harumifujita/

--- Reference Videos ---

- Arcade Version
- NES Version
- Amiga Version
- Atari ST Version
- Commodore 64 Version
- ZX Spectrum Version
- Amstrad CPC Version

I think she was talking about 1943 Kai, which has its individual track credits (Fujita + others) in this album.

Hmm, you make a good point. It’s possible - And you could argue that’s what she was referring to when she mentions a tight deadline, as 1943 Kai was developed in under a year after 1943: The Battle of Midway was released. (I have no idea for the time the original 1943: The Battle of Midway had in development).

In the line notes for that album, some of the staff also mention being brought in unexpectedly too.

Source: https://vgmdb.net/db/covers.php?do=view&cover=39112


At the very least we can add them to 1943 Kai’s staff as Uncredited. Whether the 1943: The Battle of Midway had a similar Capcom Staff hands-on approach remains unconfirmed.

It’s worth noting something markincadit mentioned on the Discord server, that a similar approach happened in Final Fight with most of the Capcom sound staff working on it, but only Sakaguchi being credited.

This is further seemingly confirmed in an interview he did, where he is directly asked about 1943: Battle of Midway and seems to confirm his involvement.
Source: https://squareenixmusic.com/features...akaguchi.shtml

There is now an official Capcom soundtrack which credits him in the liner notes (with no credited role), and this interview. I think this is enough direct evidence to link him to the release. Of note, this album was released a few months before the NES release. (Album release in April 1988, NES port released in June 1988).

-----

Separately, found an interview with a member of staff who handled some of the western ports of the game from Probe/Go! Media, and while it doesn't reveal any music or sound credits, it does shed some light on how those ports were essentially handled by outsourced/freelancers at ICE and other studios.

Source: https://codetapper.com/amiga/interviews/alan-grier/

Those are very detailed write-ups for games as obscure as 1942 and 1943! Out of curiosity: any specific reason for your interest in them?

I did a lot of research on early Capcom games a decade ago. That's why I scanned the album you linked above. Stored away, I have an HDD with an almost unhealthy amount of research into Capcom's developers and composers. Gotta dig into that again someday.

On the topic of titles: games by Capcom (and possibly other Japanese devs) from the 80s and into the early 90s often had quasi-subtitles that could be understood as more of a tagline. As far as I remember, they were used for arcade releases and mostly dropped for home console and PC ports. I'd have to look up my lists to confirm, though.

Thank you! I wanted to share my research notes for others interested in the games to go over and verify/compare my findings. As for the interest in the series, I played the Xbox 360 '1942: Joint Strike' and that's where my entry into the series started. There wasn't much documented information about the early games and their music, so I gave it a try to see what I could uncover... and it turned into a much bigger endeavour than I originally anticipated haha.

If you have some info, I'd greatly appreciate your input on any of your older researcher you did. Your scans from the album were of great help in piecing together information from the liner notes - thank you. It's definitely tricky due to the time period and difficulty tracking down information. The ASCII releases for '1942' are the most obscure so far, but from what I understand of the company at the time they seem to also hire freelancers for certain aspects of their ports such as sound drivers. Which just makes tracking them down even more difficult.

Hopefully as time goes by we'll uncover more pieces of the puzzle.

I knew I had nothing as intricate as your posts but the results of digging through my project were even more sobering. 1942, 1943 and 1943 Kai as well as the NES versions of 1942 and 1943 was as far as I got. I started from Vulgus and worked my way up to the arcade Strider chronologically. And I saw it's been 12 years since I last worked on that research. How time flies...

The 1942 and 1943 Kai arcade composers were the only I could determine and source conclusively. 1942 you already posted about. 1943 Kai was Junko Tamiya, Manami Matsumae, Tamayo Kawamoto, Harumi Fujita, Hiroshige Tonomura and Takashi Tateishi (per D28B-0011).

That's just from a casual glance at the database I built. I didn't go into the unsorted materials and interviews I collected back then.

You can definitely hear Kumi Yamaga in 1943 if you compare this unused music from the original arcade version to this piece from Section Z on NES. Stylistically, they are very similar. The real question is if other composers were involved in the original version. Unfortunately, I'm not too familiar anymore with early Capcom music to judge by the composition styles.

Again, your posts are probably as comprehensive as they can get! Unless you break into Capcom's vault. (If you do, bring me a souvenir or two.)

Thank you for the kind words. It’s a nice reassurance that both our research lead to the same conclusions. And oh man…. 1942 and 1943/Kai were some of the deepest rabbit holes in terms of finding interviews, names and staff credits ever. I don’t blame ya that it took up all your time too!

Haha if I ever find my way in those vaults I’ll send you an invite. I’m not knowledgable enough on the individual composers to be able to tell their work apart without seeing them, but I heard from someone on the Discord who knows more about Capcom from those days that it wasn’t uncommon for Composers at Capcom to work on multiple titles, but only one of them get the credit in the staff rolls.

What I was potentially thinking of doing was gathering more research on which Composers worked at the Capcom Sound Team in that era and what date they joined up, to try and create a ‘visualisation’ of a timeline of potential people who were in the picture during which years. Just to help visualise and make sense of it all.

I tried doing that with ASCII to see if I could get any ‘Suspected’ names for the ports, but I couldn’t learn anything except that ASCII contracted out a lot of the work for ports externally.