Galaga

"This is Galaga?! The Horror..."

Introduction
Galaga: Destination Earth is an updated GameBoy Color version of one of the all-time great arcade games: Galaga. Galaga is all about simple game mechanics combined with steadily increasing difficulty and is a great video game. Unfortunately, Galaga: Destination Earth sullies the good name of Galaga.

Game Modes
There is only one mode in Galaga: Destination Earth and that mode is Full-on Crap. You can play 1 or 2 player. There is a password save system, but a fat lot of good that will do you. If you ever want to continue playing this game, then a password is the least of your problems.

Gameplay
There are so many reasons why this game is deplorable. The really fun bonus challenging stages from the original have been removed. The Tractor Beam/Dual Fighter sucks. It just doesn't seem right. You don't blow up when you collide with the aliens when they sweep down the screen, so it's actually kind of hard to die. If they hit you, they simply pass right through you. There is some kind of rapid fire power-up when you collide with some kind of object that resembles an asterisk that is floating through space. Rapid fire is, however, nowhere near as neat as it sounds. They also removed the trio alien attack formations.

Control
Gads. It's awful. left, right and a fire button have never been so lackluster.

Sound
The music is basically the same theme, but they somehow managed to make it sound different from the original Galaga music and the sound effects are ok. There is a new ghostly ooOO-oooOOO-OOOOH sound at the beginning of each level and it too gets old fast.

Graphics
The graphics are awful as well. There is a new fighter ship. Yeah, that's right, they removed the classic fighter ship and replaced it with something that appears to be a Buck Rogers reject that Twiki wouldn't even be caught dead in. There are new backgrounds that scroll past. Ok, I really don't mind the backgrounds that much. The asteroid field does look pretty cool. But the aliens... the aliens... they look ridiculous. Gone are the classic bright and colorful insects and in their places are abysmally boring and drab new insects.

Recommendation
Let me sum it up for you like this: The default game high score is 220 points. 220 points! If you destroy 4 aliens then you have set the new high score. It's not that it is hard to do. If you close your eyes and repeatedly hit the fire button you will destroy four aliens. In fact, I just made it to Level 2 Wave 3 without moving left or right before I lost a fighter. All I did was fire repeatedly and I passed 6 levels! It seems as if the people at Majesco Games just didn't care about this game and it shows. Stick with the Arcade or NES version and don't bother with this one. Horrible... make the hurting stop.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 01/05/06