ARCADE WATCH
Keeping an eye on the coin-op gaming scene
Game P-47Aces Mk.II Manufacturer ExA-Arcadia
Nowadays it’s not uncommon to see consumer games make the transition to the arcade, but during the ’80s the traffic moved mostly in the other direction – and there was a lot of it. Such was the appetite for “bringing the arcade home”, in fact, that even low-profile coin-ops had a chance of getting the conversion treatment – Jaleco’s P-47: The Phantom Fighter being a good example. This 1988 release wasn’t a classic shoot-’em-up, and yet it found its way to numerous 8bit and 16bit computers – as P47 Thunderbolt – by 1990. A sequel, P-47 Aces, didn’t enjoy the same attention thanks to its arrival in 1995, by which time arcade-conversion fever had passed, but that hasn’t stopped the creation of a follow-up, subtitled Mk.II.