Game of the Week: Galaga

The Arcade Version of Galaga

I get more requests for Galaga on my arcade machines than most other games of that era.  It's good that people remember the classics.  My recollection of this game stems from an old laundromat in my hometown where I unfortunately had to waste my Saturday washing clothes with my mom because I was too young to stay at home by myself.  This was the early 80s, so I had no tablet or smartphone to keep me entertained.  This was back in the day that if I got out of line my mom would spank me in public in front of other parents.  That was NORMAL!  So, I had two options, sit quietly and wait for the clothes to finish, or face my mom's wrath.  Luckily there were always one or two arcade machines in any giving laundromat at any given time.  Being a kid in the 80s was awesome because there were arcade machines everywhere.  Gas stations, laundromats, barber shops, restaurants, they were all over the place.  Of all the arcade machines that were released in the early 80s I kept seeing either Pac-Man or Galaga.  Pac-Man was released in 1980 and Galaga in 1981 which were both produced by Namco.  Back at the laundromat, I would ask my mom for quarters to play this game which was always met with, "Do you want to wear dirty clothes?"  Apparently that meant that the quarters were for washing and drying clothes, not for playing video games.  So I spent my time staring at the blinking Game Over screen watching the endless loop of high scores and gameplay only to be left wondering what it was like to play this masterpiece.  Well, I have played it since then and frankly, it's pretty basic.  Your ship only moves left and right while the fire button shoots a pathetic little projectile straight up.  You can only have two of these projectiles on the screen at once so you have to be careful about mashing the fire button.  The enemies fly in and collect at the top of the screen and once they all pile in they will start to break off swooping down at your ship while shooting projectiles of their own.  The enemies at the very top will also swoop down, but they take more hits and will occasionally try to suck your ship in with a tractor beam.  If your ship gets captured you'll have the ability to take it back by destroying the ship that originally took it.

Enemy tractor beam taking the ship.

Goodbye...

Reclaimed Ship

You more or less have an option to have your ship get captured or not.  This can be a worthwhile strategy as long as you still have one ship in reserve.  If you don't have any other ships, it will be game over.  Your captured ship will then start attacking you along with the ship that did the capturing, but be careful not to destroy your own ship.  Only take out the ship that captured it.  Once you reclaim your stolen ship you will then have two of them side by side which makes shooting targets much easier, but also makes you a bigger target as well.  The whole purpose of the game is to destroy all of the ships on the screen, move on to the next stage, rinse and repeat.  There are the occasional bonus stages in which ships quickly dart in but they won't stay.  You get bonus points for those you shoot and extra bonuses if you destroy all of the ships during the bonus round.  Overall, Galaga is still really fun to play.  Most children today probably wouldn't give this game the time of day as it would be too simple and boring for their taste.  However, if you were a kid in the 80s like me, this game will bring back some of the fondest childhood memories that no child today would ever understand.  That's why I feel that Galaga will forever be among the greatest arcade games of our childhood, because being able to relive childhood experiences never gets old.

If You Can't Have it, Build it!

Many years ago I stumbled on a fantastic gaming concept called emulation.  Being able to play old consoles and arcades on my PC with just a simple piece of software was mind boggling at the time.  That's how I became obsessed with collecting as many game roms that I could.  I started my journey with a 14.4kbps dial-up connection.  That'll give you an idea of how long I've been doing this, and also give you a sense of how old I am.  To put this into perspective, it took approximately 20-30 minutes to download The Legend of Zelda NES rom which is a 129KB file.  Quick math: Your current smartphone takes pictures that are about 2-4MB in size.  One smartphone picture is 15-30 times larger than The Legend of Zelda rom.  So, back in my younger days of internet, this one picture would have taken me 6 to 10 hours to download.  I was ecstatic to have a 14.4kbps dial-up internet, so take this into consideration when you want to blast your internet provider when you can't stream Netflix on all 10 of your devices with your 60mbps connection. (4,200 times faster than my dial-up)  Spoiled brats!  Anyway, I felt that my collection of roms were missing something.  Specifically, my arcade roms were missing an actual arcade machine.  I figured it would be awesome if I could actually play an arcade rom the way it was originally created with an arcade machine.  I found a lot of great resources regarding cabinet design and hardware to get my project started.  Since my professional background centered around computer hardware and software, I didn't waste a lot of time figuring out the complexities of PC hardware requirements and emulator configuration.  My shortcoming came from the ability to follow a design, cut wood, and paint.  Regardless of my inability to drill a straight hole, I think my first attempt turned out very well.

My very first arcade build.

The design elements are pretty straight forward.  The button layout is a combination of the american Street Fighter design with the addition of the 7th button for the SNK design.  Both players have a coin button and a start button.  I finished off the design by adding a trackball in the center with its respective left and right mouse buttons.  The last element was the quit button for returning to the main menu.  In hindsight, I realized that the placement of the quit button was not ideal for eccentric Golden Tee players.  The location immediately above the trackball led some players to overshoot their swing and ultimately end their game.  This oversight forced me to remap the quit button just for Golden Tee which was much easier than telling players not to swing so stinking hard.  The final design elements include an acrylic front to protect the screen, a hinged control box that has a compartment for tools and spare parts, and finally the cup holders that can hold both standard beverages and coffee cups.  What better way to start off your morning than by finishing off a few opponents in Mortal Kombat while also finishing off your cup of coffee.  This is not my only arcade machine.  With my second arcade machine I decided to try my hand at revamping an existing arcade machine that no longer worked.  Learning from my mistakes, I designed a more streamlined control box and added games that were not specifically designed as arcades.  My next post will showcase this next arcade machine.  Stay tuned.

Remembering the Good Ol' Days

Ah, arcades, indistinguishable sound effects, horribly synthesized music, and incoherent spoken dialogue.  These are all things I remember walking into the few local arcades in town.  I remember a time when the term arcade was a destination, not a genre.  More of a noun, less of an adjective.  I would beg my mom to drop me off at my friend's house so we could stroll over to the nearby arcade and play.  I would also ask for quarters...LOTS of quarters.  When I ran out of quarters, the game over screen really meant something.  Time to call my mom to bring me back home.  I miss the arcades.  I often drive past areas of town where the arcades used to be and remember my first attempts at Final Fight, Street Fighter II, and Rampage.  Unfortunately when the arcade market dropped, my childhood entertainment destinations closed shop and never reopened.  Now we all just sit in front of out televisions with our Xbox or Playstation playing "Arcade" games.  As in the style, not the place.  I love it when games give you the option to play easy, normal, or arcade.  I feel that if I choose "Arcade" I should be given an address where I can find the actual machine.  It would also come with a warning: "Bring LOTS of quarters!"  It's not the same.  I was recently asked to speak with a group of young kids about video games for a project they were working on.  I felt like an old World War II veteran explaining the hardships I endured "back then".  "Well kids, back then I had to beg my mom to bring me to the arcade so I could play video games.  When I ran out of quarters I had my mom pick me back up and take me home."  One very perplexed young boy raised his hand.  "Let me get this straight.  You had to leave the house and be taken to a different location that had video games, put money into them over and over again, and after spending all that money you left the games there??!!  How many games where on that machine?"  "ONE!  One video game for each machine to spend your money on."  Upon seeing the look on that poor boy's face I though his head was going to explode.  Upon further explanations about how technology has progressed into our modern consoles, most of the children understood that playing video games was not that easy "back then."  Although one child asked "Why didn't you just play games on your smartphone?"  Um, yeah.  I'll just leave that topic for another post.