Galaga
01 Sep 1981
All releases
01 Sep 1981 - Arcade
31 Dec 1984 - MSX
01 Apr 1985 - PC-9800 Series
31 Dec 1984 - Sharp X1
31 Dec 1985 - FM-7
26 Jul 2006 - Xbox 360
Tags
The objective of Galaga is to score as many points as possible by destroying insect-like enemies. The player controls a starfighter that can move left and right along the bottom of the playfield. Enemies swarm in groups in a formation near the top of the screen, and then begin flying down toward the player, firing bombs at the fighter. The game ends when the player's last fighter is lost, either by colliding with an enemy or one of its bullets, or by being captured. Galaga introduces a number of new features over its predecessor, Galaxian. Among these is the ability to fire more than one bullet at a time, a count of the player's "hit/miss ratio" at the end of the game, and a bonus "Challenging Stage" that occurs every few levels, in which a series of enemies fly onto and out of the screen in set patterns without firing at the player's ship or trying to crash into it. These stages award a large point bonus if the player manages to destroy every enemy. Another gameplay feature new to Galaga is the ability for enemies to capture the player's fighter. While the player is in control of just one fighter, a "boss Galaga" (which takes two shots to kill) periodically attempts to capture the fighter using a tractor beam. If successful, the fighter joins the enemy formation. If the player has more lives remaining, play resumes with a new fighter. The captured fighter flies down with the enemy that captured it, firing upon the player just like normal enemies, and can be shot and destroyed. The player can free the fighter by destroying the boss Galaga while in flight, causing the captured fighter to link up with the player's current fighter, doubling his or her firepower but also making a target twice as large. Galaga has an exploitable bug that can cause the attackers to stop firing bullets at the player, due to a coding error. In addition, similar to the famous "Split-Screen bug" in Pac-Man, a bug exists in Galaga in which the game "rolls over" from Level 255 to Level 0. Depending on the difficulty setting of the machine, this can cause the game to stall, requiring that the machine be reset or power-cycled in order to start a new game.
| Audio | Subtitles | Interface | |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | ✓ |
De los mejores juego de disparos de la época, es bastante dificil y adictivo. Este juego es un clásico que todos deben jugar en su vida.
Ese es el que me gusta, no el de Arcade xD
Like, unlike space invaders, enemies aren't just slowly but gradually making their way towards you, they dive, and make attacks of their own, which adds to the difficulty and the action packed nature of it.
And the best of these are the capture bosses. I dunno what they are called, but at points these ships will show up with magnetic beams that will try to capture you and if they does, it will take you all the way up and results in you losing a life.
But if you kill it before it captures you, then voila, you get another ship, and you gain one of the best power ups in video game history, the two-ship mode. Blast away my bretherens!
The sound effects are the part that have definitely aged. They are not bad, but i did felt like they were shrill at points, but this was made what...like 4 MHZ chip, so i am not complaining, as it still sounds amazing for what it is, and its not the first time an arcade game from 80s sfx has made my ears shrill a little.
The artstyle is fine. For what it is, the ships looks cool for their sprite size, the beam sprites also look cool and does their job of telling you when its coming and even though the attack projectiles from enemy ships can sometimes be hard to see, they still does their job in indicating what they are, i.e. an attack, and while the black background done to death, cannot be faultered because of the hardware of the time, since this came out in like 81. That was 42 years ago if anyone is keeping track. It is pretty impressive that we grew from barely rendering background with 2d sprites to full on particles effects and what not in not even half a decade. That's some gourmet shit.
All in all, galaga is a fun mindless shooter that you can play endlessly if you are listening to a podcast but need something to keep your fingers busy. You don't even have to get any emulators, as it is so old, you could play it on browser with no sweat.
So, enjoy your time with it. And have fun space cadet! (before playing it, i forgot that galaxian came out first, so will have to play that on a lonely day someday ＼(￣▽￣;)／ )