Galaga

aka: Arcade Game Series: Galaga, Galaga: Demons of Death, Galax, Sega-Galaga
Moby ID: 8402
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Description official descriptions

Galaga is a vertical arcade shooter from Namco. You control a space fighter at the bottom of the screen, scrolling left and right in order to avoid oncoming bombs and kamikaze attacks from alien invaders--and to fire your own missiles to fight back!

There are an infinite number of stages to progress through. Every third level is a "challenge stage" in which you have a free chance to shoot as many aliens as possible and rack up bonus points.

Certain aliens have tractor beams they can use to capture one of your ships. If that wasn't your last "life," you can try to shoot that alien down and recapture your ship, giving you two ships at once and doubling your firepower.

A summary screen appears when the game is over, giving you both your final score and your final "hit ratio"--the number of missiles fired, enemies destroyed, and the percentage of targets hit.

Spellings

  • ギャラガ - Japanese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Arcade version)

4 People (3 developers, 1 thanks)

Planning
Hardware
Programming
Sound

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 71% (based on 31 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 111 ratings with 1 reviews)

More fun than Galaxian or Space Invaders

The Good
In the 1980s, I was unfortunate enough not to find Galaga in the arcades, so I hadn't heard about it until the early 1990s, but until then, I was used to playing classic gems such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons, Final Fight, Rainbow Islands, and many others. This review is for Galaga: Demons of Earth for the NES. No, it's not the sequel to Galaga. It is actually the original game that sports a new subtitle.

The object of the game is to shoot all the invaders, which first fly onto the screen in five packs. The gameplay is similar to Galaxian, in which a ship will dive-bomb and shoot a bullet, but will go around into a full circle once they are off screen. Among these invaders are big green ones. If you shoot these guys, they will turn blue. Shoot them again, and they will be destroyed. It is these invaders that sometimes stop in the middle of space and emit a series of rays. Getting in the way of these rays will cause your ship to be sucked towards the invader, which results in your ship captured and a loss of a life. The captured ship will turn red to indicate that it belongs to the pack. If you shoot the ship, you will receive 1000 points. Shooting the big invaders twice while they are dive-bombing will give you extra points that vary depending on how far they've dive-bombed.

After every two or so stages, you will reach a challenging stage. The object of these stages are to shoot as many dive-bombers as you can while they make their way across the screen and fly off. Extra points will be awarded for shooting all the ships in a pack. After the challenging stage, you should be over your 10,000 point mark, and you only need to get 20,000 for an extra life, as 30,000 points is the game's default high score. To start off with, you have three lives. Once all your lives are expired, the game ends, and a results page appears which tells you how many shots were fired, the number of successful hits, and the hit-miss ratio, as well as the level you got up to. Galaxian lacked this sort of page.

As you progress through stages, the gameplay gets more difficult. From Stage 2 onwards, invaders will shoot one or two bullets as they fly onto the screen. Furthermore, after the first challenging stage, two invaders will separate from the pack and go south off the screen. The sound and graphics are also similar to Galaxian, with the scrolling star background and the dive-bombing sound. The music is way out of there, if you know what I mean. I am sure that there is more music in this game.

The Bad
Galaga: Demons of Earth lacks a score advance table, which was present in Galaxian, so I had no idea how much invaders are worth. The numbers above is only a estimation.

The Bottom Line
Galaga: Demons of Earth is worth a game if you get back from a hard day's work at the office or factory.

Rating: ***½

NES · by Katakis | カタキス (43092) · 2004

Discussion

Subject By Date
Bug of Hit Ratio / Number of Hits on MSX version 486pc (14623) Jan 18, 2013

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The Arcade version of Galaga appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Release

Galaga was one of the "Fabulous Eleven" launch games for the Atari 7800.

Xbox 360 version

Unlike other Xbox Live! Arcade titles, Galaga includes no additional features or enhancements, just the leaderboards, achievements and some art shown on the sides of the screen. That's unusual, as games like Frogger have a new two-player mode, and Namco had already developed an improved version of Galaga for Namco Museum Battle Collection.

Awards

  • Game Informer
    • August 2001 (Issue #100) - #19 in the "Top 100 Games of All Time" poll

Information also contributed by Sciere and FatherJack

Analytics

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by PCGamer77.

SEGA Master System, SG-1000 added by Andrew Fisher. Nintendo 3DS, Arcade added by GTramp. Wii U added by Michael Cassidy. Sharp X1, Sharp MZ-80K/700/800/1500, PC-98 added by Infernos. BlackBerry added by firefang9212. Atari 7800 added by RKL. Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, Xbox One added by Sciere. Roku, J2ME, BREW, Windows added by Kabushi. MSX added by Martin Smith. Wii added by gamewarrior. Antstream added by lights out party. Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Sord M5, FM-7 added by Игги Друге.

Additional contributors: Servo, Freeman, Игги Друге, Andrew Fisher, Patrick Bregger, Starbuck the Third, FatherJack, Evolyzer.

Game added February 12, 2003. Last modified March 24, 2024.