My Played Video Games Review: Galaga for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)

Galaga is a fixed shooter arcade game developed and published by Namco of Japan in 1981. It was released by Midway Games in North America. A conversion for the Family Computer (Famicom) was released in Japan in 1985 for which was later released worldwide by Bandai for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), subtitled as Demons of Death.

Galaga was one of the first shooters I really liked playing.

The Story

Move your space fighters horizontally and defend against the missiles and suicide attacks of the insect-like Galaga aliens and their Galaga Commander through endless levels of play - with every 3rd level having a challenge stage! Get captured fighters from the Galaga Commander tractor-beam and maximize your firepower!

The Graphics and Sound

The old, proven adage, ''simplicity is beauty'', is the best way to explain this classic game's graphics.

The game's graphics are adequate at that time. Nothing special with it but it's pretty satisfying and does not clutter the whole screen with insane amounts of fireballs, missiles and lasers and exploding ships that makes most shooters exaggerated.

The sound effects of the game are just ordinary but not annoying. It is just plain arcadey pings, blasts, beeps, and explosions. Well, you can't expect more complex video game sounds from the early 1980s.

The Gameplay

The A and B buttons are for shooting and only you move left and right on the control pad. The controls are damn tight and responsive. The regular stages consist of enemy ships grouping in formation and then lining on the top of the screen in rows, where they will start to dive low and shoot you.

Occasionally, you will proceed to a bonus stage where alien ships quickly enter and exit the screen in formation and you have to shoot them all. More hits get you more scores. A nice trick is to let the aliens capture your ship and then you re-capture it. Therefore, you get double the firepower.

That is the whole game, basically. It is simple and there's little variation. Only the levels get harder. That is what makes this game addictive and legendary for replayability.

My Verdict

Galaga is a great classic game and this NES port is nearly arcade-perfect. You will be surprised that you will like to come back to this game over and over again when you are mightily bored of the modern games, and just want a simple shooter.

Get and play this game on the NES or play cheap using NES emulators.

Let's keep on gaming in the free world!