Galaga was an arcade game released by Midway in 1981 and was the sequel to Galaxian. I always thought it was a little strange that there seemed to be so few home ports of this game. Despite being one of the most popular arcade games of all time, the first home port was not released in the U.S. until the Atari 7800 version came along six years later in 1987 (though to be fair, it was originally scheduled to be released in 1984).
Galaga could be described as a more sophisticated version of Space Invaders. Like Space Invaders, you control a ship that can move along the bottom of the screen and shoot at aliens firing at you from above. However, there are several types of aliens in Galaga and they attack by swooping down at you in formation. In addition to destroying your ship, they can also capture it. In this case, you have the chance to shoot that alien with a remaining ship (if you have any) and then your ship will return and connect to your current ship for double the firepower.
Much later on, starting in 1995 and continuing today, it has been re-released on a wide variety of systems as online downloads and as part of various compilations but there were not many choices back in the day. It seems like good conversions could have been done on the Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit and Atari 5200.
I did play black and white knock-off called Galagar (I think) on my Commodore 64. It played pretty well but was also pretty ugly.
Read more: https://www.megalextoria.com/wordpress/index.php/2017/07/29/galaga-atari-7800/
I love Galaga so much that I've got the actual arcade machine in my game room -- my "Retro Room" ;)
Easily one of the top 10 most important arcade games of all time.
My retro room is full of computers and video game systems. Not much room for arcade machines but I'm sure I could squeeze one in if the opportunity came along. If I could pick only one, Galaga would certainly be high on the list. I would like to just build a nice MAME cabinet but my woodworking skills are not strong and I don't have the tools anyway...
"Galaga could be described as a more sophisticated version of Space Invaders." Spot on. I play it every few weeks on my Xbox 360. Never seen that Galagar game. Will look that up.
Here's what I played on the Commodore 64
It just says Galaga but I think the file name (at least on the disk I had) was GALAGAR.
Maybe it was programmed in BASIC. A port on C64 should look a lot better and sound better. Really surprised, but it's not like it from the original developers, so... I shouldn't be surprised :)
Yeah, I don't think this was a commercial release at all, much less by the original developers. It actually plays pretty well despite the lousy graphics and the sound is a fair approximation of the arcade.
In general you were either Apple, Atari, or Commodore 64 back then...
I like Galagar was a proof of concept game... I wouldn't be surprised if someone like Jim Butterfield wrote it.
I see a colorized version emerged:
...but what you had on your home computer was always better at the arcade.
...until IBM computers showed up and took the computer industry by storm. :)
The IBM PC came along in 1981 and it couldn't come anywhere near arcade perfect :). It took a lot of years before it got to that point. I wouldn't expect the Commodore 64 to be able to handle an arcade perfect port of Galaga but I think it could handle a good port. I'm certain you could get something with much better graphics than above. Regardless, I was just always surprised there wasn't an official one.
But that does seem to be the exact same game I played but with some color.
This looks like a pretty good clone but seems a bit fast
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STOPGalaga was my favorite game, came out my senior year in high school, alot of play for a quarter if you got good at it
I've met some discussions about Galaga and before this, I haven't heard much of it. When I was younger, I enjoyed Space Invaders a bit but it wasn't that good in the end..
Maybe I should give Galaga a try to see if it could impress me in a good way.