If the player has more than 1 life left, they can allow themselves to get captured so that, once the boss is destroyed, the captured ship joins the player’s formation, doubling his firepower.Įvery 3 stages, the player can participate in trials called “challenging stages”, where he must shoot 40 aliens which fly around at fast speeds to evade fire. Additionally, when boss galagas are halfway into formation, they will swoop close to the player’s ship and emit a tractor beam. Boss Aliens have several particularities specifically, these enemies require 2 shots to be destroyed. However, before we get into the specifics, let’s discuss the new elements this game offers, compared to other space shooters at the time.īeside the new enemy movements and formations, Galaga introduces new mechanics to the space shooter genre such as boss enemies and the ability to control 2 simultaneous spaceships for increased firepower. In this month’s edition of Getting Good, we’ll go over the strategies and tips you’ll need to consider in order to beat this game and shatter the high score in your local arcade. Once formed, the enemies proceed to shoot the player until they are destroyed, after which other waves of aliens take their place. Instead, aliens swoop into the screen bobbing, weaving, and shooting their way into formation. However, unlike Space Invaders, the enemies are much more mobile and swift, and they don’t appear in formation from the beginning of the game. Similar to Space Invaders, the game is played in a fixed screen where the main objective is to destroy wave after wave of aliens.

However, one title stands out to us, in particular, for its unique mechanics and engaging, fast-paced gameplay, Galaga.ĭeveloped and released by Namco in 1981 as a successor to the highly-successful Galaxian, Galaga is one of those space shooters which, like many other titles, are easy to get into, yet very difficult to master. Some of the awesome space shooter games that were spawned thanks to Space Invaders includes arcade classics like SOS, Space Fever, Galaxian, Ozma Wars, Defender, and Scramble, among many, many others. Some of these games were received with great praise, while others were just regarded as novelties, the appeal of which faded shortly and their names along with it. After the arrival of the iconic space shooter, developers took its formula and kept building on it, creating games that played wildly different than its predecessor. The arrival of Space Invaders in the late 70’s spawned a whole genre of space shooters which, to the wonder of many retro gamers out there, is still very much alive to this day. Augmented / Mixed / Virtual Reality Systems.

Galaga free life