According to game designer Yoshiki Okamoto, 1942 was Capcom's first game to be developed to appeal to a Western audience, especially Americans. It was for this reason that the player controls an American Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter plane at the Battle of Midway. In real life however, while a fleet of P-38's were stationed in Anchorage, Alaska as part of the US Pacific Fleet, none of them were used in the Battle of Midway. It wouldn't be until two months after the battle that a P-38 was first known to have fought and shot down Japanese aircraft. Despite this, P-38's would continue to be the designated Player 1 plane in subsequent 19XX games, some of which took place even further back before the planes saw use in the Pacific Theater.

In the arcade version of 1942, there are three unused graphics:
• Unused Bomb and Star bonus items.
• Some unused counters.
• A white colored version of the Capcom logo.