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.