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Galaga - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Galaga

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Galaga
galaga.png
Developer(s) Namco
Publisher(s) Midway
Release date(s) 1981
Genre(s) Fixed shooter
Mode(s) Up to 2 players, alternating turns
Platform(s) Arcade, NES, MSX, Game Boy Color, Atari 7800, BBC Micro, PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, Windows, Game Boy Advance, Xbox 360, PlayStation Portable, Virtual Console, Mobile phone
Input 2-way Joystick; 1 button
Arcade cabinet Upright, cocktail, cabaret
Arcade system(s) Namco Galaga
Arcade CPU(s) 3x ZiLOG Z80 @ 3.072 MHz
Arcade sound system(s) 1x Namco WSG (3-channel mono) @ 3.072 MHz
1x Namco 54xx @ 1.536 MHz
Additional discrete circuitry
Arcade display RGB raster, vertical orientation (19-inch diagonal)

Galaga is a fixed shooter arcade game that was released by Namco in 1981 (and also licensed to Midway). It was one of the most popular arcade games and is still sought after by collectors.

Contents

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[edit] 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 that 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 that 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-and-yellow 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.

[edit] Differences from Galaxian

The game differs from Galaxian in several ways:

  • Two player shots can be on the screen simultaneously.
  • 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 Galagas, the green-and-yellow aliens at the top of the formation, take two hits to destroy (the first hit will turn them blue).
  • Boss Galagas occasionally stop in mid-dive and attempt to capture the player's ship with a tractor beam. See Captured Fighters below for more information.
  • Galaga was one of the first games with a bonus round (after Rally-X), here called the "Challenging Stage." In a Challenging Stage, five groups of 8 enemies (including 4 boss Galagas) enter the playfield, fly in predefined patterns, and exit again. They do not fire at the player, and they do not create a formation. The goal of the Challenging Stage is to destroy all of the enemies before they exit the playfield. If the player succeeds in destroying all 40 enemies, he earns a "Special" bonus of 10,000 points — otherwise, the bonus is 100 points per enemy destroyed. Destroying whole groups of enemies scores an additional bonus of between 1,000 and 3,000 points. Challenging Stages are considerably easier to beat with double firepower.
  • Starting on Stage 4, a single non-boss enemy flashes as it prepares to dive, and then splits into three special enemies. Two of the copies will fly off the bottom of the screen and disappear if not destroyed — the remaining enemy will continue to dive down from the top of the screen. (In some cases, this enemy may rejoin the formation and turn back into a regular enemy.) Destroying all three enemies yields a score bonus of between 1,000 and 3,000 points, depending on which special enemy appeared.
  • When the player's ship is destroyed, it is accompanied by an explosion sound effect that is considerably more realistic than the one heard in the original Galaxian.
  • The game keeps track of all of the player's shots and displays the player's "hit-miss ratio" at the end of the game. In some rare instances, it is possible to finish the game with a hit-miss ratio greater than 100%.

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. Two-player mode can be unpopular, however, as it is possible for an experienced player to play his entire game before the second player gets his first turn.

[edit] Captured fighters

Perhaps the most famous element of Galaga is the ability for the player's ship to be captured by the enemy. Boss Galagas (the green enemies at the top of the formation) will occasionally stop mid-dive and attempt to capture the player's ship with a tractor beam. If the ship is captured, the boss carries it back up into the formation. If the captured ship is the player's last ship, the game ends.

The captured player ship acts as an escort to the boss Galaga that captured it, and dives down simultaneously with the Galaga. To free the ship, the player must destroy the Galaga in mid-dive—if the Galaga is destroyed in the formation, the player ship will attack on its own and disappear off the bottom of the screen. (It returns as an escort to another boss Galaga in the next round.) The player can also destroy the captured fighter, scoring 1000 points.

If the player successfully frees the captured ship, the two ships join together side-by-side at the bottom of the playfield, and they move and shoot together (resulting in a double-shot that makes it easier to hit enemies). However, the combined double-ship is also twice as wide as a single ship, 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. Because of the obvious benefit of double firepower, a common Galaga strategy is to purposely let a boss Galaga capture a player ship early in the game, then immediately free it.

Contrary to rumor, the double ship cannot be recaptured and released to form a "triple ship". Boss Galagas will only attempt to capture when a single player ship is in play. However, the triple ship is a feature in the sequel game Galaga '88.

[edit] Bugs

Attract mode self-test screen on a Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga arcade unit
Attract mode self-test screen on a Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga arcade unit

There are at least four 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; rarely a switch error will freeze the game on the error screen. This was thought to be a glitch in the game, but in fact, it is a built in self-test for a stuck switch.
  • Unless the machine is set on the hardest difficulty, the game "wraps around" from Stage 255 to Stage 0, causing the game to effectively lock up (although the starfield continues to scroll). This is because the game did not know how to interpret Stage 0.
  • Player 1's score wraps around at 999,990 (and never registers internally as greater than this number), but Player 2's score has been known to display entire scores over 10,000,000.

[edit] 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, blue, and red. Blue 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 one of the ships.
  • 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
  • Simultaneous two-player action is available. The second player will appear as a blue fighter.
  • If two-player is enabled, then the intermission will display a WIN-LOSE screen for the two players before going on to the next stage.
  • In addition, after the Challenging Stages the player that shot the most Galagas will receive a 10,000 point bonus as a reward.
  • 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 Galspark" (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.

[edit] Ports

Galaga on the Atari 7800
Galaga on the Atari 7800

The original arcade version of Galaga has been ported to several systems. These include:

Galaga has also been released as part of the Namco Museum series of collections across several platforms:

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.

Namco most recently released Galaga on mobile platforms, in 2004. The game is available for play on most game-enabled cell phones, Palm devices and Pocket PCs. [1] In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the game, Sprint is also offering their wireless subscribers the chance to start the game in Dual Fighter Mode.[2].

The NES version of the game has also been released on the Wii's Virtual Console in PAL territories.

[edit] Clones

Galaxy, a Galaga clone for the Commodore 64
Galaxy, a Galaga clone for the Commodore 64

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 nineties for the Amiga called Deluxe Galaga. He also released a Windows compatble version called Warblade.

In 1998, an updated classic version was released for Windows, PlayStation, Game Boy Color called Galaga: Destination Earth.

Also, in the late nineties, Ambrosia Software released Swoop for MacOS.

The open source xgalaga ([3]) runs on systems using X Windows, such as Linux.

[edit] Legacy

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

The Complete Arcade series:

  1. Galaxian (1979)
  2. Galaga (1981)
  3. Gaplus (1984)
  4. Galaga '88 (1987)
  5. Galaga Arrangement (1995) - released as part of Namco Classics Collection Volume 1

Because of its significance and success in the video game industry, Galaga is popular among collectors.

[edit] 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.

In the movie Grandma's Boy, gameplay images from Galaga are used during the beginning and closing credits.

In the television show "LOST," the mysterious group known as The Others uses a submarine apparently named "Galaga."

Kevin Murphy makes a "riff" about the game Galaga in the Rifftrax to the movie The Grudge.

In Somtow Sucharitkul's novel V: The Alien Swordmaster (a spin-off of the television series "V"), one of the lead characters is a Galaga fan. He explains to another character how to exploit the bug that stops the game characters from dropping bombs on the player.

14 Year Old Girls did a song about the game, called "Galaga".

The cast of LoadingReadyRun has mentioned Galaga in a couple of their videos. One instance is the line "Hell's not so bad, I hear they have Galaga now."

[edit] Trivia

In Ridge Racer, 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.

According to John Sellers, (page 73, see reference below) some players, usually left handed, would form an "x" with their arms by holding the joystick with their right hand and pressing the fire button with their left hand.

Also according to Sellers, it is possible to have a 200% accuracy rating if a player can shoot two ships as they cross paths with a single shot and then intentionally lose all their lives.

Galaga is one of very few coin-operated games from the Golden Age of Arcade Games that still draws paying customers. For this reason, vintage, rebuilt and replica Galaga arcade games regularly boast resale prices well above those for most other games from the 1970s and '80s.

There is a stage in Pac-Man World Rally based on Galaga called Galactic Outpost. Three-dimensional versions of the ships and aliens from the game can be seen flying around throughout the stage.

[edit] Further reading

  • Sellers, John (2001). Arcade Fever: The Fan's Guide to the Golden Age of Video Games. Running Press, 160 pages. ISBN 0-7624-0937-1. 

[edit] External links


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