Battlefield 1942 is a 2002 first-person shooter video game developed by Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.

In-game, players assume the role of one of five classes of infantry: Scout, Assault, Anti-Tank, Medic, and Engineer.

Players also have the ability to fly various World War II fighter aircraft and bombers, navigate capital ships, submarines, and aircraft carriers, man coastal artillery defenses, drive tanks, APCs and jeeps, and take control of anti-aircraft guns and mounted machine guns.

Upon release, Battlefield 1942 received generally favorable reviews, with particular praise directed towards the innovative gameplay, multiplayer, and World War II theme.

The gameplay of Battlefield 1942 generally has a more co-operative focus than previous games of this nature, as it is not only important to kill the opposition but to also hold certain "control points" around the map.

Capturing control points allows the team to reinforce itself by enabling players and vehicles to spawn in a given area.

Battlefield 1942 was one of the first mainstream FPS games to actively encourage teamwork and coordination over individual "lone wolf" style gameplay.

For example, the scout role has long-range surveillance, high stopping power and the ability to provide spotting for artillery shelling by another player.

Assault is the primary anti-infantry role, focused on directly engaging other players at short and medium range.

The Anti-tank role specializes in attacking tanks and other vehicles, but their main weapon is inaccurate against moving enemy infantry.

The Medic role has the ability to heal players including themselves, but their sub-machine gun has less stopping power than the Assault class's rifle.

In 2000, DICE acquired Refraction Games (developers of Codename Eagle) and inherited the in-development Battlefield 1942.

[9] Battlefield 1942 was built on the formula of the less well-known and successful Codename Eagle video game, set in an alternate history World War I.

An Xbox version of the game was also announced in early 2001 but was cancelled almost two years later so Electronic Arts could more closely work on an expansion pack for the PC.

At the time, this led Edge to rank it as the country's 18th best-selling computer game released since January 2000.