The forgotten Galaxip

You know, I was thinking that if I were a little more organized I should have followed a chronological order when writing about the games. If that had been the case, this post would have been the second one, as the next game I’ll babble about came after Space Invaders but before Pacman. So, from now on, I’ll try to comment about the coolest arcade games (to me, that is) year by year.

Okay, following that train of thought then, here are the years of the games reviewed so far: Space Invaders (1978), Galaxian (1979), Pac-Man (1980). That’s right, Galaxian is the next arcade game being broken down today by yours truly.

Galaxian is indeed a legendary single-screen shoot-em-up that took everything that made "Space Invaders" so good, and made it even better on every level. So, my excuse for skipping Galaxian could be that it’s not that different from Space Invaders, and I just wanted to write about Pac-Man cause it was quite a “game changer” (pun intended) at that time.

If you’re thinking that this means I don’t like this classic shoot ‘em up arcade game, think again! I spent quite a long time playing this puppy during my childhood, and I still kill “Galaxians” with my “Galaxip” from time to time.

Each screen opens with a horde or wave of attacking multi-coloured aliens (Galaxians) shifting from left to right at the top of the screen. In contrast to Space Invaders tough, Galaxian adds an element of drama as the aliens quickly break away from the formation and start dive-bombing your Galaxip (or player's ship). Either in single units or in groups of 3, those bastards come down dropping multiple missiles to try and hit you. This results in a not so predictable game play that requires an element of skill on top of strategy.

Needles to say, you must steer clear of every Galaxian and their missiles or you’ll be toast. In the points department, it is important to mention that diving Galaxians are worth more points than those in formation and that the more red escorts that a flagship dives with, the more points it's worth.

The ship can only fire scarcely by default, but when an enemy is hit it rearms right away. All of the Galaxians need to be destroyed before you can advance to the next stage. Of course, this only means that once you have defeated that first swarm, the aliens will replace it with another more aggressive and challenging army in the next screen.

This article about the history of Namco and Galaxian is a very interesting read, as well as the Arcade History entry on the game. And here you have a pretty decent online version of Galaxian that will take you way back in time.

Did you know?

-Galaxian was very successful for Namco and introduced several "firsts". Although true color (as opposed to a color overlay for a game that was otherwise black and white) began appearing as early as 1975, Galaxian took graphics a step further with multi-colored animated sprites and explosions, a crude theme song, different colored fonts for the score and high score, more prominent background "music" and the scrolling starfield, and graphic icons that showed the number of ships left and how many rounds the player had completed.

-The "official" highest score in a game of Galaxian was achieved by Gary Whelan of Manchester, England on 13 August 2004 when he managed to amass a total of 399,290 points.

-Galaxian has spawned several follow-up games. The most popular of these was its immediate successor, Galaga, which largely eclipsed its predecessor in popularity, introducing aliens attacking in intricate formations, multiple guns, and bonus rounds.

Here comes the dot muncher!

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last 20 years, I’m pretty sure you have at least heard the name of the next arcade game in our list. That’s because Pac-man is one of the most popular and influential games of all time! If not THE single most recognized and widely acclaimed video game! After all, Pac-Man is universally regarded as one of the classics of the medium, virtually synonymous with video games, and an icon of 1980s popular culture.

You control a little, yellow pie-shaped dot-muncher character named Pac-Man who runs around a maze eating every pac-dot and power pellet (and the occasional fruit or item) that he can find in the board in order to advance to the next stage.

To be able to do that, you need to avoid contact with any of the four ghosts that roam the maze and chasing you wherever you go. As you will often cross paths with them, you’ll come to realize that each ghost has its own unique personality: the shy blue ghost Bashful (Inky), the trailing red ghost Shadow (Blinky), the fast pink ghost Speedy (Pinky), and the forgetful orange ghost Pokey (Clyde). One touch from any of these ghosts and a life will be lost. When all lives have been lost, the game ends.

But don’t worry, you can easily turn the tide on your pursuers and become invincible to them for a given period of time by eating one of the four larger, flashing dots (super dots, “energizers” or power pellets) located near the corners of the maze. During this time, the ghosts turn deep blue, reverse direction and usually move more slowly, so Pac-Man can devour them for bonus points before their turn back to their normal color. Once eaten tough, the ghost's eyes float back to their ghost home in the center box, and regenerate in its normal color ready to chase after Pac-Man again. Blue ghosts flash white before they become dangerous again so if you think they’re about to change don’t go after them! The amount of time the ghosts remain vulnerable varies from one board to the next.

Each maze has its own unique bonus fruit or object with bonus points increasing as the game progresses. And if you are running out of lives, you’ll be pleased to know that you’ll be awarded a single bonus life at 10,000 points by default. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you can relax your concentration and start losing lives like crazy!

Follow the link to play a free pacman game in your browser and bring back old memories! You’ll find other great free arcade games too! You just need to have the latest flash player version and that’s it! Go ahead and try it out, and if you manage to survive a few rounds of gameplay, you’ll be treated to a series of humorous intermissions between Pac-Man and the ghosts after certain levels. Once you play you’ll be hooked up for good, as this is one insanely addictive and classic arcade game. You’ll have one hell of a time! I kid you not.

Here are other very interesting tidbits and details that you should check out, such as the history behind the game, or the fact that Pacman being used to test cognitive reasoning on chimpanzees.

Pacman Trivia (from Wikipedia) :

-Initially, Pac-Man's enemies were referred to as monsters on the arcade cabinet, but soon became colloquially known as ghosts.

-A perfect Pac-Man game occurs when the player achieves the maximum possible score on the first 255 levels (by eating every possible dot, energizer, fruit, and monster) without losing a single life then scoring as many points as possible in the last level. As verified by the Twin Galaxies International Scoreboard on July 3, 1999, the first person to achieve the maximum possible score (3,333,360 points) was Billy Mitchell of Hollywood, Florida, who performed the feat in about six hours.

-The game was developed primarily by Namco employee Tōru Iwatani over eighteen months. The original title was pronounced pakku-man and was inspired by the Japanese onomatopoeic phrase paku-paku taberu, where paku-paku describes (the sound of) the mouth movement when widely opened and then closed in succession (munching). Although it is often cited that the character's shape was inspired by a pizza missing a slice, he admitted in a 1986 interview that it was a half-truth and the character design also came from simplifying and rounding out the Japanese character for mouth, kuchi as well as the basic concept of eating. Iwatani's efforts to appeal to a wider audience—beyond the typical demographics of young boys and teenagers—eventually led him to add elements of a maze. The result was a game he named Puck Man.

-When first launched in Japan by Namco, the game received a lukewarm response, as Space Invaders and other similar games were more popular at the time.

-For the North American market, the name was changed from Puck Man to Pac-Man, as it was thought that vandals would be likely to change the P in "Puck" to an F, forming a common expletive.

-After being overlooked by "experts" who judged Namco's Rally-X to be the better of the two games, Pac-Man went on to unprecedented success and became an icon in Japan and in America.

-Pac-Man is often credited with being a landmark in video game history, and is among the most famous arcade games of all time.

-The character also appears in more than 30 officially licensed game spin-offs, as well as in numerous unauthorized clones and bootlegs. According to the Davie-Brown Index, Pac-Man has the highest brand awareness of any video game character among American consumers, recognized by 94 percent of them.

One game that ruled them all!

As it seems that everyone but me has a blog nowadays, I thought I could finally create one myself. But, what would I write about? Well, there’s no doubt that the subject has to be something I actually care about enough to keep the blog updated at least once a week… That’s when it hit me: it’s gotta be a classic arcade games blog! Then I started hearing voices saying “if you write it, gamers will come”. Okay, maybe not. But still, it’s a subject I really like, and hopefully you’ll enjoy my ramblings too.

I want to start off with a personal favourite and what is considered one of the most successful arcade shooting games. Another good reason to get started with this particular game is that it was released in the same year I was born: 1978 (awesome coincidence). That game is none other than Taito’s timeless Space Invaders.

In case you’ve never heard of this game (shame on you) the premise is basically that our planet is being attacked by bizarrely neat-arranged waves of bomb dropping aliens, and your job is to stop them -with your always handy laser cannon, while you earn as many points as humanly possible!

Gameplay

The game is actually quite straightforward, but the action can end up being distinctly captivating, and in particular you’ll find yourself entranced by (and dreading) the magnetic deep bass pounding sound that the invaders generate. No one can deny that those fright-inducing sound effects were a substantial part of the game's signature tension. I remember getting the jitters every time I played, as I was certain those damn aliens were coming for me at an increasingly faster rate!

The rows of aliens start off at the top of the screen, and to help you defend our beloved Earth, you take control of a laser cannon at the bottom of the screen. You can move it bypressing the left and right buttons and the fire button in order to shoot upwards. The aliens march down-screen in lockstep, and each time the end of the screen is reached they will drop one row closer to the bottom. This never-ending offensive will undoubtedly make you feel claustrophobic whenever you fail to keep them at bay by ducking out from behind your shields to return fire. Your goal is then to earn points by shooting the aliens before they can land. If you succeed in destroying them all, you’ll move on to the next (tougher) level, but should even one of them land, it’ll be game over. Now and then, a flying saucer will pass by along the top of the screen, and it would be a good idea to shoot it down, as you’ll earn extra points.

Here’s a video of the game that will give you a better idea of what I’m babbling about.

Yes, I’m aware that to the newest generations of gamers this may be look and feel like a pretty archaic and old-fashioned game. Sure, Space Invaders is anything but a game with the most outstanding graphics and music you’ve ever heard, but you need to keep in mind that this baby was one of the first shooters created for a commercial video game! It was so widespread at the time that the lack of quarters was customary, and it unleashed a real pop culture phenomenon. It was also the probable cause of kids skipping school, and the assertion that video games were the latest manifestation of the devil. Matter of fact, this great game keeps on going to this day, not only as a nostalgia side-effect, but because gamers still crave for blowing aliens back to wherever they came from. That’s why Taito's Space Invaders has been ported to dozens of platforms, from coin-op to the Nintendo DS, and it has even "invaded" mobiles. There are also free flash versions of the game that you can play on the Net, and you can even play the original thanks to the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) which is an emulator application designed to recreate the hardware of arcade game systems in software.

In summary, Space Invaders is a tough nut to crack, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll have a blast. It’s the kind of game that is always worth your time. So, whenever you feel like blasting aliens don’t hesitate to play this fantastic and classic arcade game! Here's a link to a Space Invaders online version so you can get your daily fix and improve your high score in no time.

Interesting facts you probably didn’t know about Space Invaders

-In designing the game, Tomohiro Nishikado drew inspiration from popular media: Breakout, The War of the Worlds, and Star Wars. To complete it, he had to design custom hardware and development tools.

-The highest-ever Space Invaders score was 55,160 points, achieved by Donald Hayes on June 7, 2003.

-A shortage of 100-yen coins in Japan was attributed to the game, and this led to an increase in production of these coins.

-By 2007, it had generated almost US$500 million in revenue.

-Space Invaders was the first video game to have an intermission between gameplay, and to popularize the concept of achieving a high score.

-Game Informer considers it, along with Pac-Man, one of the most popular arcade games that tapped into popular culture and generated excitement during the golden age of arcades. In 2007, Guinness World Records listed it as the top-rated arcade game, and IGN listed it as one of the "Top 10 Most Influential Games".

You can check this and more on that wonderful free encyclopedia known as Wikipedia. There’s also a Strategy Wiki that teaches you how to play and gives a nice trick to get 300 every time you hit the mystery saucer: I’ve never tried that trick myself, but will certainly do now!