Arcade Shoot 'Em Up Review: Galaga

Galaga is an influential shoot 'em up that was developed and released in arcades in Japan in 1981 by Namco and was distributed by Midway Manufacturing in North America. 

Galaga expanded upon its 1979 predecessor, Galaxian, and brought the genre forward to its second era of static screen shooters. The game features detailed alien bug creatures shot by a red and white ship below. It separates itself from its competitors by having multiple forms of enemy formations and attacks. Some travel back and forth along the playfield ala Space Invaders, some dive bomb towards the bottom of the screen, and others beam the player ship away from the fight. If destroyed, the stolen ship returns alongside the current ship.

This double fighter is quite fun while it lasts, as it allows for double gunning enemies. If you manage to keep both ships in tact, it is even possible to have a triple fighter. Once stage three is completed, and then after every four stages, the player gets to attempt a challenging stage. Forty enemies come into the screen in patterns without firing. The player gets a 10,000-point bonus if all are destroyed. A double fighter or triple fighter is often required to shoot every enemy, giving the game a bit of strategy by trying to power-up before the challenging stages start.

As far as sound goes, Galaga went hard by 1981 standards, with unique sound effects for player shots, multiple enemy movement sounds, and sounds for the capturing of the player ships, title screen music, challenging stage music, challenging stage ending music, music for perfecting the challenging stage, music for entering your name into the high score records, and more. This gives it a very pleasant experience, which, if you like chiptune sounds, is still fun to listen to today.

Galaga is a classic for a reason. The enemies are detailed and colorful, the sounds are plentiful, the music is still fun to experience even now, the multiple attack patterns shake things up in a satisfying way, and the double and triple fighter power-ups along with the challenging stages give the game a bit of strategy beyond just memorizing patterns. It's a game that is still worth playing, not just for shoot 'em up fans, but for fans of retro video games in general.

Final Verdict:
5 out of 5

Arcade Maze Game Review: Ms. Pac-Man

Ms. Pac-Man was the follow-up to one of the most influential arcade games of all time. It had unquestionably large shoes to fill, but surprisingly it not only matched the brilliance of the original, but managed to improve upon it in big ways.

The story of the development of Ms. Pac-Man is fascinating. The Japanese developer Namco developed Pac-Man and distributed it in Japan, while Midway distributed it in North America. When the 1980 maze game became a worldwide hit, Midway was anxiously waiting for Namco to develop a sequel. In the meantime, a Massachusetts company known as the General Computer Corporation created a board set to upgrade Pac-Man to a game known as Crazy Otto. Midway liked the game so much that they signed a deal with GCC to purchase the game and to give the developer a portion of the residuals. Midway then had it revamped with artwork that hewed closer to the original and distributed it to arcades as Ms. Pac-Man.

GCC's game upgraded Pac-Man in a few notable ways. The original game had static maze layouts that merely changed color as the game went on, whereas Ms. Pac-Man has maze layouts that change alongside the colors. The bonus fruit also are no longer static in the middle of the maze under the ghost gate. They now bounce into the stage, travel along the mazes, and then bounce back out through the tunnel exits at the sides. A suitably throbbing heartbeat of a sound effect also plays when the fruits are on the screen. The game also has new cutscenes that involve both Pac people, and new cutscene music to match.

The ghost pathfinding artificial intelligence has also been improved, as their movement is less predictable and more random than in Pac-Man. This, combined with the fact that the ghosts can chase Ms. Pac-Man through tunnel exits, make the game more challenging. With a game as popular as Pac-Man, this was especially important as gamers had memorized the ghost patterns in the original game.

Ms. Pac-Man is a game that improved upon a game that was already a classic, and has since become a classic in its own right. With new ghost patterns, new maze layouts, and new cutscenes with new music, it a game that should be played at least once by every video game affectionado.

Final Verdict:

4½ out of 5

Pac-Man Review

Super Pac-Man Review

For Trans Day of Visibility, Here's a Review of a Shoot 'Em Up Arcade Game By Arcade Pioneer and transwoman, Jamie Fenton: Gorf

Gorf is a shoot 'em up arcade game by Midway Manufacturing that was designed by Jamie Fenton. It is one of the first, if not the first. games developed by a transgender woman. Gorf uses a lot from previous games in the genre, yet manages to remain a unique game on its own.

It contains five distinct phases. The first, Astro Battles, is based on Space Invaders. The second phase, Laser Attack, has dive-bombing ships, a ship that fires a single laser beam, and the Gorf robot. The third phase is named Galaxians and is obviously based on Galaxian, with ships in a formation similar to Space Invaders and ships that dive bomb at the player ship. The fourth, Space Warp, takes place in a wormhole where enemies fly out from the center of the screen and attempt to destroy the player's ship. The fifth, Flag Ship, is a battle against the enemy ship where a force field has to be broken before the floor of the flagship is shot through.

The game loops the five phases through six space ranks, each with increasing speed and additional enemy patterns. The ranks include Space Cadet, Space Captain, Space Colonel, Space General, Space Warrior, and Space Avenger. Once the five phases in Space Avenger are completed, the game remains on that rank but continues the loop.

Like other games of the time, such as Q-Bert, the sound effects are minimal but are amplified by the use of a synthesized voice. Like Q-Bert's backward speech, it is used here in a humorous manner. The voice will make insults and will make it feel targeted towards the player as it will say the current space rank as part of that insult.

Gorf is a game that is important to video game history for who made it, as Jamie Fenton was one of the first transgender female game designers. It was popular in its time, but it hasn't remained at the forefront of gaming history as the games that inspired it. This is a shame, as it is a fantastic game that has very different gameplay styles in each of the five phases. If you get a chance to play it, make sure to give this fantastic piece of arcade game history a try.

Final Verdict:
4½ out of 5

Arcade Fixed-Screen Shoot 'em up Review: Space Invaders

In 1978, Taito released Space Invaders, the hit video game that established the shoot 'em up genre as a heavy hitter within the video game industry.

I first played Space Invaders in 2000 while working on my arcade emulator, LASER. Unlike Lupin III, I had actually heard of this game before because it was a big-name game. It was and still is being ported to, and getting remakes and clones for, just about every platform imaginable.

Like all games on Taito 8080 hardware, it is a relatively simple game. It is a black and white game, although some arcades placed a color plastic overlay over the monitor to give the allusion that there are red and green colors on certain parts of the screen. There are score and life counters, invading aliens, a ship, and bunkers that can be shot through by the player and enemies alike.

The object is simply to pilot a ship at the bottom of the screen, which can only move left and right, and to shoot the invading forces before they shoot you. When all the aliens are shot, the screen refreshes and another fleet of aliens need to be dealt with. With each new fleet, the game gets progressively faster. To paraphrase a quote from Lrrr in the animated television series Futurama, instead of shooting where the ships are you should shoot where they are going to be.

There is also very little sound. There is the whirring sound when a bonus ship floats by the top of the screen that can award extra points, the zap sound that occurs when you shoot, and a simple four-note progression that acts as the music. These simple sounds work very well, however, and even the four simple notes that are played throughout gameplay surprisingly work well and don't become annoying with extended play.

The whole game is incredibly simple, but it is far from being tedious. Like Pac-Man, it is one of the early arcade games that truly stands the test of time. I was not born when the game came out and I didn't get a chance to play this game until decades after its release. However, even decades after my first time playing, I will still play it whenever I get the chance. Anyone interested in video games should try it at least once. It is a true classic.

Final verdict:

4 out of 5

Arcade Maze Game Review: Pac-Man

This review was adapted from the original that was posted at Jupiter Beagle on September 28, 2008.

Pac-Man is a true classic. Pac-Man’s pizza-bodied visage is often used as an icon for gaming itself. Everyone has probably played Pac-Man at some point in their life, or if they haven't they at least know about it.

The premise is simple. You control a round yellow dot with no eyes and a mouth that is constantly opening and closing. You have to navigate a maze and eat all of the round pellets on the board while avoiding the four ghosts who are constantly roaming the board looking for a Pac snack to eat. You can turn the tables on the ghosts by eating one of the four large power pellets. This causes the ghosts to temporarily turn blue. Now, the ghosts run away from you and you are able to eat them before the large dot’s effects wear off. 

In the original Pac-Man, many of the enhancements that Ms. Pac-Man brought to the table are not present. The layout of the mazes never changes and the food items that you can eat in each stage after collecting a certain amount of points always remain at the center of the maze. The emulated versions from the Xbox 360 onward are my favorite way to play the game. 

All of the addictiveness of Pac-Man is there as most emulated versions use the true arcade version of Pac-Man. Thus, all of the tricks that can be pulled off in the arcade version can be pulled off in these versions. For anyone who loves Pac-Man but isn’t too good at it, there are tricks in the emulated versions that are not present in the originals. In some emulated versions, you can start from any stage in the game after you complete it once, and in other emulated versions you can rewind a mistake to try it again. 

Arcade purists may not like the fact that these emulated versions often have unlimited continues, but there were versions of Pac-Man in the arcades that had unlimited continues as well. In the Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga Class of 1981 arcade game, Pac-Man can be unlocked by entering up, up ,up, down, down, down, left, right, left, right, left at the game selection screen and then choosing Ms. Pac-Man after hearing a series of dings letting the player know the code was inserted correctly. This version allows unlimited continues as well. The only difference is you have to enter a quarter every time you wish to continue. 

On the subject of achievements in the latest console versions, Pac-Man typically has plenty. In the Xbox 360 version, each fruit or item in the mazes gives you another achievement. If you go for all of them, you will be able to see each of the game’s cutscenes, which were one of the main draws of the game in the arcades when it first came out. The cutscene music is so catchy that it’s sure to stay in your head for quite some time. There are only three cutscenes in the original Pac-Man, and they all show the comeuppance of the ghosts in various humorous ways. 

There are three achievements in the Xbox 360 version, in particular, that are a little more challenging. One requires you to eat all four ghosts in the stage, while the other, harder, achievement requires you to eat all four ghosts all four times in one stage. The latter is quite hard, and all but the most diehard Pac-Man fan should find this one a challenge. 

The other difficult challenge in the Xbox 360 version requires you to get to level 21. After you get to a certain point in the game, the large dots no longer turn the ghosts blue, and the ghosts merely turn around when you eat it. Thankfully the feature offering unlimited continues is there for those of us without super Pac-prowess, so it’s not an impossible task. 

In the end, the decision of whether to play Pac-Man rests on how much you like arcade maze games. Though, if you do, I’d say it’s worth the play even if you are a casual fan of the genre. 

Final Verdict: 

4 out of 5

Ms. Pac-Man Review