Arcade Game Series: Galaga

This game was no where the top of my next-to-play list but being bored one Friday, and a hankering for some retro arcade games made me jump in to the backlog and clear out another one.

Galaga is actually a game I had previously completed on the 360 arcade and it was a very quick and easy completion. On the Xbox One, it’s still quick at around two and a half hours but it’s much more challenging now. More on that later.

Galaga sees you take control of a spaceship with some limited abilities. It can move left and right and also fire two bullets in quick succession. Not three though as that might make the game fair. You need to shot millions, and millions, and millions of bugs as they are presumably hell bent on attacking earth. So it’s up to one spaceship to stop them.

There is one thing you can do to improve your odds and that’s deliberately getting one of ships captured by one of the big enemies (that take two shots to kill) and then shot that enemy to release the captured ship and create a double ship that can fire, wait for it, four bullets in quick succession. Two at a time. The irritating thing about this though is that it does cost you one of your lives and when you only get five to begin with, it’s kind of a big deal.

That’s all there is to the game play. You clear waves of enemies and move through levels of increasing difficulty, also including some bonus stages where you can relax as the enemies won’t shoot you.

Looks wise, it’s a typical 80s arcade game and has stayed true to its roots. Musically it’s done the same but it’s incredibly grating even after a short amount of play time.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 20 Achievements

First things first, clearing 31 waves is the target from a progression perspective. This isn’t hard as there is a level select function which essentially gives you 5 lives for each level so even when it gets tough towards the end, it’s easy just clearing a level at a time.

There are also some miscellaneous things to do along the way like getting an accuracy score of over 70% on wave 10 or higher. This is really dumb as all you have to do is shot once, score a hit, then let the enemies kill you and you will finish the wave with 100% accuracy.

There are others for forming a dual fighter and shooting down an enemy fighter. I’ve mentioned forming a dual fighter above but to get the enemy fighter, you have to let your fighter be captured and then shoot it. In addition to mucking around with getting captured, you have to shoot a boss while it’s trying to capture you so you can escape its tractor beam. This one is all about timing. You need to shoot just before the tractor beam touches you so you fire straight and the boss dies while you are being transported. It’s either that or cross your fingers and hammer the shoot button as you spin towards the boss.

The remaining achievements are the tricky ones. You need to clear the bonus stages from 11 to 31 by getting a perfect score. One of these levels has to be done with a single ship too. The easiest of these to do with a single ship is level 27. There are no tips for these other than keep practicing and working out the enemy patterns and where best to shoot them from. It takes a bit of time but is very doable.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Arcade Game Series: Galaga is a great trip down memory lane and a challenging completion to boot. It takes around 3 hours to complete if you manage to get the patterns down for the bonus levels quickly but I can see how doing these will cause many people to tear their hair out.