Galaga

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Template:Infobox Arcade Game |sound = 1x Namco WSG (3-channel mono) @ 3.072 MHz
1x Namco 54xx @ 1.536 MHz
Additional discrete circuitry |resolution = 224 x 288 |monitor = Template:Raster |input = 2-way Joystick; 1 button |ports = }}

Galaga is an arcade game that was released by Namco in 1981. It was one of the most popular arcade games and is still sought after by collectors.

Contents

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Gameplay

Galaga is a sequel to Galaxian and has similar gameplay. The player controls a spaceship (which can move only right or left) and shoots at swarms of incoming insect-like aliens which fly in formation above him and occasionally swoop down to bomb him in a kamikaze-like dive. The enemies in the top row will sometimes dive with one or two escorts. Enemies which survive a dive will rejoin the formation from the top. When all enemies are destroyed, the player moves on to the next level.

The three types of enemy each have a different score value. A blue enemy is worth 50 points in formation and 100 when attacking. A red enemy is worth 80 in formation, 160 when attacking. A boss is worth 150 in formation, and its attack value depends on whether it is accompanied by red escorts: 400 points if alone, 800 with one escort, and 1600 with two. This point value is determined when the boss's attack is initiated, so shooting escorts before the boss (or missing them entirely) will still earn the higher point values.

A "rapid fire" chip is available, replacing chip 3J on the original Galaga CPU board. It allows for a continuous stream of fire, as opposed to the stuttered firing limitation of the stock 3J chip.

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Changes

The game differs from Galaxian in several ways:

  • The ship can shoot more rapidly.
  • At the beginning of each level, the enemies arrive in five groups of eight enemies each, which fly in from the sides or top of the playfield and enter formation. Later on in the game, they arrive in groups of 10 or 12, with the two or four extras breaking their flight path in mid-flight to ambush the player. The player can shoot these enemies as they arrive, and they shoot back. Enemies only drop bombs while they arrive or while they are in a dive; they do not drop bombs while in formation.
  • The boss Galaga, the green aliens at the top of the formation, take two hits to destroy (the first hit will turn it blue).
  • In perhaps the most famous element, boss Galagas are capable of stopping mid-dive and attempting to capture the player's spaceship with a tractor beam. If the ship is captured, the boss carries it up into the formation. If the player still has additional lives, he can regain his ship by destroying the boss during a dive; once freed, the captured ship connects beside to the player's current ship to form a pair which fires two shots at a time (but is also twice as wide and thus harder to defend; if one of the ships is hit, only that ship is destroyed and the player continues with the surviving one). The captured ship can also be destroyed if the player is not careful with his shots. Due to the benefit of the double firepower, a common Galaga strategy is to allow one's ship to be captured then free it. Contrary to rumor, the double ship cannot in turn be captured and released to form a "triple ship" (although the sequel game Galaga '88 included such a ship).
  • Galaga was one of the first games with a bonus round (after Rally-X), here called the "Challenging Stage." A Challenging Stage consists only of groups of enemies entering the playfield, circling, then leaving; there is no formation to clear. If the player destroys all 40 enemies before they depart, he earns a "Special" bonus of 10,000 points, otherwise he scores 100 points per enemy destroyed. Destroying entire groups of enemies is also worth a bonus of 1000-3000 points. The doubled firepower earned by freeing a captured ship on a previous level is very useful here.

In Ridge Racer, however, two of the bonus cars have the colors of the Galaga bugs. The car in that game with the red and yellow bird's colors is named "Galaga RT Prid's" while the car with the light blue and carrot orange bee's colors is named "Galaga RT Carrot". These cars were also used in Ridge Racer 2, Rave Racer, Ridge Racer Revolution and Ridge Racer 64.

Galaga can be played by a single player or by two players alternating turns (Galaxian is one-player only). The starting number of lives is set to three by default, and an extra life is awarded at 20,000 points, 70,000 points, and every 70,000 points thereafter, but these settings can be changed via DIP switches on the game's motherboard.

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Bugs

There are at least three well-known bugs in Galaga:

  • One bug causes enemies to cease dropping bombs for the rest of the game. To trigger it, destroy all enemies but the two bees in the bottom two rows of the left-most column, then wait, dodging their shots for fifteen minutes or so until they stop dropping any bombs. From that point onward until the end of the game, all enemies will effectively be disarmed (but can still be dangerous kamikazes). This bug was fixed in a later revision of the game. The bug is not present in Namco Museum 50th Anniversary because the later revision of the game was used.
  • It is possible to control the game during its attract mode. During the game demonstration, at the moment that a boss Galaga begins emitting its tractor beam, the game for some reason pays attention to the joystick and fire button. A player can shoot the boss and continue to play the game for a short while. Sometimes the player's ship will move oddly or be invulnerable until the game demonstration ends; sometimes the game will crash and reset itself harmlessly.
  • Unless the machine is set on the hardest difficulty, the game will lock up after stage 255, although the starfield will continue to scroll.
  • For some reason, Player 1's score wraps around at 999,990, but Player 2's score has been known to display entire scores over 10,000,000.
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Galaga Arrangement

In 1995, Namco rereleased this game and a game titled Galaga Arrangement, a remake of sorts. The game featured a number of changes from the original:

  • Music and sound effects have been altered.
  • Rounds have been named; one is called the Asteroid Field, and the background varies (such as asteroid belt, nebulas, etc.).
  • When a boss Galaga captures a fighter, a player can shoot and retrieve the fighter while the boss Galaga is still in formation. Also, the game does not stop while the fighter comes back; game play still goes on.
  • Boss Galagas have been split into three different types: yellow, green, and red. Green has a stronger, bigger shot; yellow gives rapid-fire; and red gives reflecting shots.
  • Boss Galagas still use tractor beams even if the player has a double-ship; the boss Galaga simply steals the ship.
  • In Challenging Stage, there are more varied formations, and the screen tilts around, making it tougher to secure a lock on the Galagas.
  • There are more varied formations; Galagas come in different ways now, and there may be 2-3 formations before completing a stage.
  • A screen (intermission) after beating a stage will pop up, stating destroyed-to-miss ratio and percent of defeated Galagas.
  • Shooting rules have been considerably relaxed, with the player able to shoot more rounds faster than in Galaga
  • It appears that simultaneous two-player action may be available.
  • By inputting Left-Right-Left-Right-Up-Down-Up-Down, the game displays a clock at the bottom of the screen, showing total time played in the game. The clock does not run in the Challenging Stage nor between the intermissions.
  • 30 stages of gameplay, with a final boss at the end of stage 30 named "King Galaspark" (a huge purple and red bug in the "Enemy-Comb Zone").

The game has seen arcade and home console releases. The home version has been released on the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Gamecube releases of Namco Museum.

This game was released alongside Galaga in the 128-bit version of Namco Museum in 2001.

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Ports

Image:A7800 Galaga.png The original arcade version of Galaga has been ported to several systems. Most notably:

In 2001 Namco released a "20 Year Reunion / Class of 1981" arcade unit which contained the original Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga games. The bugs described above are still present in this version.

Image:Galaxy Game Screen.gif Although Galaga was never officially released for the Commodore 64, a game called Galaxy, released by Kingsoft, was an almost exact clone. Gameplay was somewhat slower, but the tractor beam and tandem fire features were included.

A popular remake of the game was created by Edgar Vigdal in the early ninties:

In 1998, an updated classic version was released for consumer systems:

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Legacy

Galaga was so successful that it spawned several follow-up games, though none were as popular as the original.

The Complete Arcade series:

Because of its significance and success in the video game industry, Galaga is popular among collectors. It is ranked as one of the "Top 100 Videogames" by the Killer List of Videogames (KLOV). The KLOV readers rank it second as the most popular arcade game of all time, behind only Pac-Man.

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Popular culture

In the movie WarGames (1983), Matthew Broderick plays a young hacker who nearly starts World War III because the computer that controls U.S. nuclear weapons cannot understand the difference between a game and an atomic war. Broderick's character is shown playing Galaga at least twice (one game "ends" even though there are still two ships showing in the lower-left corner of the screen). The studio had a Galaga and a Galaxian machine delivered to Broderick's home, where he practiced for two months to prepare for the arcade scene. One of the game's musical motifs is played during a scene in the NORAD command center.

In the Doctor Who serial episode "Terror of the Vervoids", two aliens are seen playing a holographic version of Galaga in the rec room of an interstellar cruise ship.

The music video "Love's Gonna Get Ya" by the rap group Boogie Down Productions featured a Galaga console when KRS-One starts rapping.

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External links

Template:Galaxian Seriesde:Galaga fr:Galaga ko:갈라가 it:Galaga ja:ギャラガ sv:Galaga

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