Galaxian

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Description

Galaxian is a shoot 'em up in which the player is at the bottom of the screen, with an arrangement of aliens at the top. The player moves left and right to aim at an alien, then shoots a bullet up the screen, and the alien it hits is killed. The aliens are classed as Drones, Emissaries, Hornets and Commanders, with those higher up the screen scoring more points when destroyed. At set intervals an enemy will move down the screen towards you, escorting a bomber, which is a moment of high danger. Clear a wave and another is generated.

Screenshots

Promo Images

There are no promo images for this game

Alternate Titles

• "ギャラクシアン" -- Japanese spelling

Part of the Following Groups

• Galaxian series
• Galaxian variants
• Genre: Fixed-screen shoot 'em up

User Reviews

Much better than its PC counterpart	NES	Katakis | カタキス (39830)
Easy to pick up and play but difficult to master. Quite addicting!	NES	Ivan Obretenov (33)
An extremely faithful conversion of the original arcade game.	PC Booter	Trixter (9122)
A solid Space Invaders clone.	PC Booter	Tomer Gabel (4646)

Critic Reviews

Woodgrain Wonderland	Atari 2600	Feb 23, 2017	A-	91
Eurogamer.net (UK)	Arcade	Oct 25, 2007	9 out of 10	90
Computer Games	Atari 2600	Sep, 1983	B+	83
Your Spectrum	ZX Spectrum	Apr, 1985	11.5 out of 15	77
Game Freaks 365	Atari 2600	2002	7.1 out of 10	71
8-bit Central Retro Gaming	Atari 5200	2011		60
Electronic Fun with Computers & Games	Atari 5200	Mar, 1983	2 out of 4	50
Tilt	Atari 2600	Sep, 1983		50
ASM (Aktueller Software Markt)	MSX	Feb, 1988	5.2 out of 12	43
The Atari Times	Atari 5200	Dec 05, 2006	23 out of 100	23

Forums

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Trivia

1001 Video Games

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

Development

Atari 2600 programmer Mark Ackerman, at the time working in Atari's "think-tank" GCC, was granted a patent for his technique invented for the 2600 port of Galaxian, allowing eight sprites to be displayed in one row.

Extras

Atari's 2600 release of Galaxian came with the comic book Atari Force #5. Here is that comic at AtariAge.com

Graphics

Galaxian (and its clone, Cosmic Crusader) get away with relatively high framerates on the original 4.77MHz PC because they don't use the entire screen for a playfield; the right fifth of the screen (64 pixels) is unused. Another side-effect of shortening the playfield to a width of 256 pixels is the optimization of game calculations, stemming from the fact that horizontal coordinates fit in a single byte instead of two.

Re-release

Was later re-released under the Thunder Mountain label. What makes this trivia? Usually only Mindscape games were released under Thunder Mountain... Galaxian was originally licensed to Atari.

Awards

• Retro Gamer
  • October 2004 (Issue #9) – #49 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)

Information also contributed by Игги Друге, LepricahnsGold and FatherJack

Related Web Sites

• Galaxian - Wikipedia (Here you can find all sorts of info about the game.)
• The International Arcade Museum (Extensive information about the arcade game machine.)