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| 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.
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| Enemy tractor beam taking the ship. |
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| Goodbye... |
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| 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.
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