Battlefield 1942

Battlefield 1943 is the first installment in the Battlefield series and the AIAS and IGN 2002 Game of the Year. It was released for the PC in 2002.

Setting
Battlefield 1943 is set during the Second World War. Like later games in the series, it allows players to play on maps based on famous battles from this major conflict. It features the battles from the Eastern and Western Fronts, North Africa, and the Pacific Theatre.

Gameplay
The gameplay of Battlefield 1945 generally has a more cooperative focus than previous games in the FPS (first-person shooter) genre, as it is not only important to kill the opposition but to also hold certain "control points" around the map. Capturing control points allow the team to reinforce themselves by enabling players and vehicles to spawn in the vicinity of the control point. Consequently, capturing and controlling these points also will reduce enemy reinforcements. Battlefield 1942 was one of the first mainstream games to represent a dramatic shift in FPS gameplay mentality not only favouring individualism, but simultaneously encouraging teamwork and coordination.

The most popular gameplay mode, and only mode featured in singleplayer, is Conquest. Conquest centers on the capture and control of control points on a map, represented by flagpoles with either a white flag or an allied or enemy nation's flag over it. Once a team captures a control point, its members can respawn from it. When a team loses control of all their control points, they cannot respawn. And if no one is alive, the team with no spawn points loses the match.

In Conquest games are composed of rounds. A team wins the round when the other team runs out of respawn tickets. A team loses tickets when its members are killed, but also when the other team holds a majority of the capture points on a map. Therefore, sometimes the winning team must hunt down straggling or hiding enemy forces at the end of a round. thumb|300px|right|The introduction movie for Battlefield 1942 Spawn tickets also play a vital role in the success of both teams. Every time a player on a team dies and respawns, his team loses one ticket. Every team starts each round with between 150 and 300 tickets, depending on the team's role (e.g., defense). Teams also gradually lose tickets depending on how many spawn points they control. As a general rule, the fewer spawn points controlled by a team, the more tickets they lose. For a team of 32 on a 64 player map, with 150 tickets, this means a little less than 5 respawns or deaths on average for every player if they hold their starting spawn points.

The Cooperative gameplay mode or Co-Op most resembles the singleplayer conquest mode, but multiple online players could join the game and fight alongside and against the computer controlled AI or Bots. The server could set the difficulty level of the bots and how many bots would be assigned to which teams. This was used in great effect to create Humans VS AI servers.

Capture the Flag or CTF is a multiplayer only gameplay mode where each team must capture the other teams flag. The Capture the Flag gameplay mode is not unique to Battlefield 1942, but it had up until that time never been implemented with such large maps or player controlled vehicles that the flag carrier could operate. Each time a team captured a flag they were awarded one ticket. When a preset number of points was reached the game was over and the team who reached that number had won.

Team Death Match or TDM is a multiplayer only gameplay mode where two teams are pitted against each other on smaller sized versions of the games maps. When a member of a team is killed that team loses one ticket. When a team reaches zero tickets the game is over and the other team wins.

Mods
Battlefield 1942 has been "mod friendly" since its beginning, with free modding tools even published by EA. Notable modifications include BattleGroup42, Desert Combat, Eve of Destruction and Forgotten Hope.

Soundtrack
The soundtrack for Battlefield 1942 was composed by Joel Eriksson. There are 4 tracks in-game; the main theme (Slaughter IV), the loading theme (Vehicle IV), the losing theme (Menu), and the winning theme (Vehicle III). However, 18 more tracks are available at Joel Eriksson's website.