Pacific Skies
action
Pacific Skies is a tribute to the 1984 arcade vertical scroller genre — inspired by Capcom's 1942, though not affiliated with or endorsed by Capcom. You fly the P-38-style twin-boom fighter "Super Ace" north across the Pacific theatre, stage by stage, counting down from STAGE 32 to STAGE 1, dodging formations of enemy fighters and bombers, looping out of the plane of play to dodge incoming fire, and collecting POW power-ups on the way to Tokyo.
This version flies as online two-player co-op, 1943-style: both planes share the screen and the scrolling, with separate scores and lives. It has accounts, achievements, and a player dashboard, an attract-mode title screen that plays a demo flight, and a synthesized soundtrack — all without a single image asset, since every sprite is an 8x8 or 16x16 pixel pattern drawn in code, arcade-style.
You move in eight directions and fire with an autofiring gun, but the signature move is the loop-the-loop: flip the plane out of the plane of play for about 1.2 seconds, invulnerable and unable to shoot, to dodge fire you can't outrun. You get three loops per life, replenished on death or by picking up the POW loop item. On phones and tablets a touch layer takes over — a virtual joystick, a hold-to-autofire button, and a tap-to-loop button — or you can just drag your finger anywhere on the sky and the plane follows.
Rules
Enter a callsign (or stay a guest), then Quick Play into a public room still in its lobby, Create your own room, or Join via a shared link. Either way you land in a pre-game room screen first — roster, ready state, an invite link, and chat — and the host starts once everyone is ready, or the room auto-starts on a cancellable five-second countdown.
Enemies come in scripted formations: small fighters flying a straight dive, a sine weave, or a V that sweeps in from the side, plus a red formation of five planes flying a tight loop — destroy all five and it drops a POW item. Medium twin-engine bombers fire aimed shots back at you, a mid-boss bomber shows up partway through most stages, and a large multi-turret boss bomber appears on stage 32, 28, 24, and every fourth stage after. Touching an enemy bullet or plane costs a life, unless you're looping or briefly invulnerable after respawning.
POW power-ups cycle in a fixed order as you collect them, arcade-style: side-fighter escorts, then a four-way spread shot, then a screen-clearing bomb, then plus-one loop, then bonus points, then an extra life, and the cycle repeats. There are 32 stages counting down from 32 to 1, each around 60–90 seconds of scripted waves, with difficulty ramping as you go deeper; landing on the carrier deck at a stage's end shows a tally of shots fired, hits, accuracy, and whether you cleared it untouched. Reaching stage 1 ends the run with a victory screen. On game over you get an arcade-style "CONTINUE?" countdown; inserting a coin (up to three per room) puts the whole room back on the same stage with fresh lives and a reset score.
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