"Best time-waster I've played in the arcade."

Galaga is probably better known as the game in the back of the party store where you dump a quarter into the dusty, dirty machine while sipping a pop. The machine is probably in ruins, the cabinet scuffed and scarred while the main panel has cigarette burns and gunk in the cracks. However, Galaga is also one of those games that offers you just a little bit of challenge coupled with simplicity that is well worth dumping a couple of bucks into. A time waster that is worth wasting time with, Galaga is one of those games that is well worth playing if you’re fed up with the more flashy shooting games with little substance and too much presentation!

-The Game Play-

The game play works a little like this in which you have to shoot down a stream of several incoming enemies that come across the screen in different patterns. Once you’ve gotten them to a point at which they reside at the top of the screen, you merely have to follow back and forth when they swoop down and fire on them again to destroy them! You can score better points if you hit them on the first entry in which they all move in a streaming pattern before they get to the top of the screen. Something that you need to be on the look out for is a specific looking enemy that will capture your ship if you let it.

Once you’ve let it capture your ship, you can destroy it on its way down and regain your ship, gaining a double shot that will last with you until either it or you are destroyed by incoming fire. This only adds to the challenge and the ability to gain extra points through successful attacks! The two player option that is available is also fun, but only allows you to play one at a time in a competitive manner through all of the stages. Extra lives are gained through point markers and the game goes on for several stages, with the difficulty increasing after each one.

The control is simple enough that anyone of any skill level and age can pick up. All you have to do is avoid the different enemies as they come down screen and hit the firing button to shoot up at them! The game hasn’t gained any sort of special moves or anything else that would be considered advanced, so there isn’t anything that needs to be learned other than how to move and avoid the incoming fire. With the dual ships, you have twice the fire power, but still nothing changes in the basic controls and all you have to do is learn to fire when it is needed and when to avoid as necessary!

-The Visuals-

From the top-down perspective, you take on several waves of enemies that all have their own path along the screen. The enemies have plenty of detail to them, though the key visual point of the game is the flowing starfield that rolls around you as you play. The different special effects revolve around shooting different enemies and watching them ‘explode’ in different ways. Other than that and the tractor beam that you run into if you’re captured by an enemy ship, you won’t find anything that is exceptionally impressive, staying with the original theme of simple is better.

-The Audio-

Audio wise, there wasn’t any music that I could remember having heard, with the game revolving around the sound effects only and not keeping any sort of pace to the game. More than likely, the porting of the game brought forward the cases that the arcade version didn’t need music as the surroundings were noisy enough! The sound effects of the game pretty much takes precedence over everything else in the game and because the game isn’t sound intensive and you’ll have the opportunity to play music out of something outside source. The sound effects though allow you to really get into the arcade feel of the game and offer plenty of ‘noise’ in order to get through the stages. A noticeable sound effect that comes out is when you reach a bonus stage and you complete it with a victory song that is rather uplifting and gets you geared up for the next stage!

-The Verdict-

Galaga spawned several sequels that remained with the same game play and audio features that the original did, though the visuals got progressively better. As a game that offers some pattern shooting and plenty of challenge in the later waves of enemies, you’ll find that Galaga is worth taking a look at if you happen to find one of the machines. Though this game is extremely dated, and there are much better looking, sounding and playing games out there, beginners to this type of genre will probably find that this is the machine that is well worth wasting their money, as well as their time in!

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/09/02, Updated 08/09/02