Galaxian

Galaxian, released in 1979, can be considered one of the first games in the shmup genre. The only one older, too my knowledge, is Space Invaders released a year earlier. Having grown up playing early internet shmups like Alien Outbreak 2 and the Star Defender series, I was excited to discover, when my father got me the Namco Museum on the Nintendo DS, two new games like them. Those being Galaxian and Galaga. When I played it then, I didn't care much for Galaxian and I still don't today. It's difficulty curve is brutal, the sound effects are grading, and the pixels look ugly. When I was 9 years old, I saw no reason to play this old game especially when it was packaged with Galaga which is just a better game. 12 years later, and my opinion hasn't changed.

The gameplay is simple. Each level, you shoot down identical enemies who occasionally suicide dive at you. Each level, they become faster and more challenging. It's the same number and types of enemies each level and the end goal is to get as much points as possible in order to place on a leaderboard. The game, to my knowledge, doesn't end till you die. Most arcades of this era are like this.

Fans of these arcades who grew up with games like these consider them timeless classics. With Galaxian here, I don't see eye to eye with them. Though I can appreciate it in it's time, I truly believe this isn't a timeless classic. It's far too rough around the edges.

This is the first arcade game so rooted with production conventions it could be called the first modern video game: It has colourful animated sprites, it has flying sound effects and background music, and it also creates a vivid cartoony world filled with personalities, giving you an oportunity to fully immerse yourself in it. Gameplay-wise it's not a far cry from Space Invaders, but it is much more fluid and less restrictive, and you have to dodge head-on collisions with the aliens.

Galaxian on the 2600 offers something that many other attempts on the console miss: speed. The game is simple, sure, but set at a fast speed. Your speed and shots move at a decent clip, and this game plays by the 'only one shot on screen at a time.' Enemy fall speeds are equally fast, making for fun, fast, and simple game. I find it to be a lot more rewarding than many of its Atari contemporaries, it's got an addictive and aggressive nature. The graphics work well, though the black background could do with a change up now and then. The audio does the game decent service, but nothing outstanding. Here, it's the fast gameplay that makes Galaxian a game to check out for your Atari 2600.

Take the Space Invaders concept, remove the covers, and have random aliens swarm down on you and drop bombs. This made Galaxian a much more fast paced and intense game when compared to the original Space Invaders. Its not nearly as groundbreaking, but on the whole i do find it is a better game. It gets you imediatly to the action, instead of spending the first few minutes in a boring low intensity gameplay. The ship designs are a bit more detailed as well, but the sound is pretty bad still. Held up pretty well.

Well this was a revelation. The first genuine advancement of the Space Invaders concept. The sounds were exciting, and attempting to dodge the clusters of bombs fired by the aliens really got the heart racing.

I would play with my friend G.J. He would always go first because he was guaranteed to get the extra life on the first try, thus ensuring that we would have two lives each. Unfortunately I spent way too much time retreating to the corners of the screen and would get wiped out with frustrating regularity. But something kept me going back. There was a definite addictive quality to the game.