Galaga Hits 30

There seem to be a lot of anniversaries this year. Sonic turned 20, the Zelda series is turning 25 years old, and Mario is going on 30. Adding to the list is Galaga, one of favorite shooters, which turned 30 a few months ago.

If you've never played Galaga, you haven't truly lived. Aliens appear at the top of the screen and fly down in formation to attack your ship. These invaders will also open fire upon you so in addition to avoiding dive bomb attacks, you've got to avoid their shots while returning fire. It's a simple idea but it's a whole lot of fun. For a 1981 game, Galaga was way ahead of it's time. The only true power up you could get was allowing one of your extra ships to be captured. In each stage, one of the alien ships will use a tractor beam to pull the ship in, ensnaring it. If you shoot down the alien that captured you're ship, you get it back, doubling you fire power. Pretty impressive stuff for an old arcade shoot 'em up.

Galaga is the sequel to the 1979 Galaxian, another popular game that was released in arcades, though the sequel eclipsed it's predecessor. There have been numerous versions and updates of Galaga over the years, but the 1981 arcade original is still my favorite. When I first played it back in 2001, I was overcome with that "Just one more game" bug bite. I kept telling myself that each time I set a new high score that I could do even better if I just kept playing. Not a lot of games from the '80s can do that to me but such was the overwhelming power of Galaga.

These days you can play Galaga on just about anything. Namco has pimped that sucker on dozens of it's Namco's Museum collections, it's on iPhones, PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade, and then there's always MAME. There's no reason for any gamer not to have experienced Galaga. In another 30 years, it will still be hailed as an undisputed classic.