Galaxian, 1979 Namco/Midway (20 From The '70s Part 3)

Legendary answer to Taito's SPACE INVADERS, this introduces full color to the genre and gives life to the invaders-- they break off their formation and dive-bomb the player! The sound effects and opening tune also hooked players at the time, and the constantly moving starfield was also a nice added bonus! The gist of the game is to wipe out all the aliens, of which there are 4 kinds: the teal aliens are VERY simple to take care of (though they can be a bit tough if they come from all directions and pelt you with firepower), and are easy to "lead" into your shots; the purple enemies have wide, swooping patterns to their attack and are the most difficult enemy to face, so definitely DON'T mess with them at the edges where they can trap you with firepower; the red enemies are just slightly more dangerous than the teal enemies, so not terribly difficult; and the yellow flagships at the top are worth the most amount of points. Their value depends on how many escort ships they have with them when they attack, and in which order you shoot them. If you shoot 2 escorts first, then the flagship, he is worth the full 800 points! Yippee! (Hey, scoring is hard to come by in this game.) Now, not only do you get a better score by nailing the yellow flagships, you also get a breather (so long as there's like 5 or more enemies remaining or so): the enemies will go back to formation and stop firing for about 5 seconds! TAKE THIS TIME TO PICK AS MANY ALIENS OFF AS YOU CAN!!! When the enemies get down to a small handful or so, they will just constantly dive-bomb you.. sometimes they'll come close to you and just rotate in place (which cracked me up the first time I saw it), or they'll have some other odd pattern that might throw you off. Note that if you let a yellow flagship go off the screen too much or it's one of the last few enemies left, it might not return when it leaves the screen. However, for the next stage, it will appear as an extra flagship (where there's usually only 2)! Galaxian is the first in a series of great shooters by Namco-- followed by the immortal GALAGA, the fun GAPLUS, GALAGA '88, etc. Galaxian, as old as it is, is still very challenging and playable.. though, you might want to stick with the Midway roms over the Namco ones, since they're easier.