That was actually pretty terrifying if you were going for a new high score, because you hit the edge and stopped, while the enemies could go outside the boundaries and loop around to the other side. Get beyond the first few levels, and you may end up finding yourself backed into the corner of the screen. Here though, each new stage sees more enemies flying at once, and as you advance, they’ll try to bomb you more often too. Like many games of the era, each level is pretty much the same thing at its core. What amazed me with this port was that the rise in difficulty as levels progressed was enough to keep it interesting. It’s a simple thing, but believe me, when you’ve never experienced anything like that before, it really does make you feel like the most awesome intergalactic space fighter in the galaxy! Then, you’d hit fire twice, firing off one shot that explodes your foe, and a second immediately after that hits another as it either descends or moves to the side. The trick therefore required you to let an enemy descend so close that it was almost touching you. You could only fire one shot at a time, and until your bullet disappeared, no second shot could be launched. If you get the hang of this, you could take out swarms of high valued enemies before they even got to launch a single attack at you. The simplest of these in concept was achieved when you timed a shot so that a parked enemy in the top row slid into your bullet as they moved left and right in preparation for attack. The reason for this is that there were some pseudo trick shots that you could pull off with the right timing. Galaxian was also the first game to make me feel like I could play in a stylish manner. Throw in the different colour enemies having different point values, and you have a nice little added layer for the game. It was colourful, it was speedy, and the sweeping arcs of the enemy flight paths were a lot more interesting than the left to right sliding of the better-known Space Invaders. Galaxian, even in its stripped down 8-Bit console version, offered a lot more. It was slow, jerky, and just looked bad to me. I didn’t enjoy the console port of Space Invaders when I first played it, and still don’t now. Now, why is this game so worthy of praise in my eyes? Okay, confession time. These enemies park at the top of the screen and move left and right, then take it in turns to swoop down towards you, dropping bombs and trying to crash into your ship. To this end, the game sees you control a spaceship by moving left and right at the bottom of the screen and shooting at hordes of enemies. The game was designed to be a fixed-shooter title that could rival Taito’s smash hit Space Invaders. The game was developed by Namco in 1979 and ported to the West by Midway the same year. This time around, I’m going to be looking at one of my favourite games from yesteryear, the Atari 2600 port of Galaxian. Welcome, one and all, to the first In Desperate Need Of Love of the year! For those unfamiliar with this feature, it’s where I feature a video game that I believe has either been overlooked or suffered what I would call unfair criticisms.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |