Galaga

Galaga Destination Earth

The opening sequence recaps the occurrences of the first game in a lengthy cut scene. After the events of the original Galaga, humans won the war against the aliens and everything was good, that is until humans decided that they wanted to colonize space. Guess where they wanted to colonize? In the area where the aliens were coming from. Oh yeah, fantastic idea! Let’s piss off and attempt to take over the territory of our enemies after years of peace for no particularly good reason. Who feels like another war?! YEEHAW! Needless to say, the aliens aren’t happy and you’re sent in to uh, save people or something. It’s kind of ass backwards story-wise.

Arcade Games

ausretrogamer

There is one particular Galaga enemy ship that is special – these enemy spaceships take multiple hits before they are destroyed. If you do not destroy them, they can fly down the screen towards you and release a tractor beam to capture your ship. To free the captured ship, you must destroy the captor Galaga while it is attacking you, if you fail, your captured ship will be destroyed. When you free your captured ship, it will dock alongside your current ship, and you are thus rewarded with a dual firing weapon of mass destruction.

Editorials

Patrick Scott Patterson

Arcade Classics: What happened to them all?

Several arcade conversions have appeared on these popular treasure-hunting television programs in recent years, often without the people on the show seemingly aware of it. An episode of Pawn Stars saw someone bring three “Japanese Arcade Games” into the Las Vegas shop, two of which were conversions from Defender machines. The Ms. Pac-Man machine that appeared on an episode of Auction Hunters was actually a conversion of an original Pac-Man machine, a cabinet that is similar but quite different in many ways as well.

Blog

Patrick Scott Patterson

Mythbusting six common video game trivia mistakes

Another very common error, despite being easy to disprove with a quick Google search. I’ve heard people tell me that “Jumpman” was the name for Mario in the original Donkey Kong arcade game, with some going so far as to tell me he wasn’t even named Mario until Donkey Kong Junior or even the original Mario Bros. None of this is quite correct. While it is true that Mario’s working name was Jumpman, and that the instructions on the original arcade version do call him that, the name of Mario came along before Nintendo was even pushing Donkey Kongmachines out the door. The original advertising flyer, released at the time the game was released, refers to the character as Mario numerous times

Company Representatives Gamer Profiles

J.A. Laraque

Derek James: Polyclef Software

I’ll actually pick two. For classic arcade action, my favorite was probably Gyruss. Why? Because I thought tube shooters were cool…it was like Galaga, but in a circle! And I also really thought the electronica-style Bach music was cool. For the PC, the games I remember the most fondly were the Zork and Enchanter trilogies from Infocom. Text-based adventure and puzzle-solving games are obsolete now, but I really thought the blend of storytelling, puzzle-solving, and interactivity was very immersive and compelling. Myst was a great continuation of this style of game in graphical form, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for Infocom’s games.

Arcade Games

J.A. Laraque

Satan’s Hollow

At first, I thought this was some hack game or Halloween mod, but Satan’s Hollow is a real shoot em up game made by Bally Midway in 1982. As you can obviously tell, this game is pretty much like Galaga, but you fight weird demonic creatures instead and you have a shield to protect you for a very limited time when things get crazy.

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J.A. Laraque

99: The Last War

The game plays like a mix between Galaga and Space invaders and features a shield button as well as a fire button. You can activate the shield before the vessel’s energy meter depletes to protect yourself against incoming missiles. Backgrounds depict a variety of locales, from futuristic cityscapes to moon surfaces, but it was 1985 so all the backgrounds are just static images.

Computer Games

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Namco Museum: 50th Anniversary Arcade Collection

Anyway. Namco’s Museum is an almost decent (budget) collection of some classic, some not so classic and a few pointless games, hoping to please retro gamers, to teach new gamers some old tricks, to teach young dogs strange tricks or to please the average casual gamer. There are 16 games on offer, two of which (PacMania and Galaga `88) are unlockable by attaining (pretty low) highscores in PacMan, Ms. PacMan or the original Galaga, which are actually three of the best titles available in this compilation, and are decently emulated.

Editorials

Simon Lethbridge

My Favourite Games – Part 4

Even more favorite game picks by Simon 😀

Blog

J.A. Laraque

World Record for Galaga Arcade Changes hands

On New Year’s Eve Twin Galaxies announced that Laidlaw scored an incredible 4,525,150 point on the classic arcade game in a tournament setting where he only had five total lives on the hardest difficulty setting.

Editorials

Catherine Welch

A Gamer Girls Experience

I loved Dark Stalkers and Marvel vs. Capcom. I still play WoW when I have the time (and a functional computer) and the most expensive purchase that I’ve made in the past 2 years was a PS3 for which I’ve bought and played a number of games with it (mostly RPG, but whatever-at least it’s not a Wii). Even though I have moved on from the world of dating gamers, I still have a love for gaming and appreciate the medium.

Movies & T.V.

Honorabili

King of Kong Movie Review

A modern day video game version of the story David and Goliath.

Company Representatives Gamer Profiles

J.A. Laraque

Jonathan Cooperson: Legacy Interactive

“A game is a series of interesting choices.” –Sid Meier

Company Representatives Gamer Profiles

J.A. Laraque

Brooks Piggott: Barcode Games

PFS allows players to own, operate, and coach a football team by simulating a single season or dozens of seasons. Players are in complete control of many team functions, including player drafting, free agency, roster moves, lineup setting, and play calling.

Editorials

J.A. Laraque

What is the best classic space shooter and why?

I can’t help but to re-iterate how significant the first accomplishment was. This was in the days before DirectX, before any abstraction layers, back when Men were Men & Women were Women & game programmers had to write universal binaries for what hardware MIGHT be running their code. That feat is the equivalent of walking into the UN Building and trying each language until you’re talking to everyone.

Company Representatives

J.A. Laraque

Jeff Evans: Antic Entertainment

I love the pure simplicity of Galaga. It takes you right back to roots of gaming with its ruthless nature. Your goal: Make it on the highscore table by any means necessary and all you need to worry about is moving left and right and pressing the fire button. I’m far from being considered a ‘master’ of it, but it never fails at reeling me in for a good round or two every now and then. I actually have the arcade machine sitting a few feet away.