I've said it before and I'll say it again: A truly great games transcends its genre. It appeals to all enthusiasts, including those who have an aversion its genre.
That's one of the most important lessons I've learned over the decades. I've learned that even genres I dislike can produce games I adore.
Take the fighting-game genre, for example: It hovers near the bottom of my list. I'm simply not a fan of fighting games. I find them boring. Yet there will never be a time in which I'm not eager to throw down and play a couple of rounds of Street Fighter II, which is incredibly accessible and super-fun to play and thus one of the most appealing games in existence.
It's the same deal with RPGs. I've had an aversion to them ever since the early 90s, when I had some miserable experiences with Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy. Though, I have nothing but the deepest adoration for Final Fantasy IV, which has an utterly absorbing world, unforgettable characters, engaging systems, and some of the most evocative, emotionally powerful music I've ever heard. It's one of my all-time-favorite games.
I'm not a big fan of first-person shooters because they're difficult to control and needlessly complex, but I'd happily spend days at a time playing Doom, whose action is simple yet supremely addictive and engaging. I can't get enough of it.
Because a truly great game transcends its genre.
I bring up this point today because it's entirely relevant to the subject of this piece: the arcade classic Galaga.
Back in those days, I didn't care much for arcade shoot-'em-ups. I felt complete apathy toward them. I considered them to be the most boring games in existence. Whenever I'd browse through an arcade, I'd make sure to avoid any game that resembled a shooter--any game whose attract mode or cabinet art conveyed to me that the game's action entailed slowly flying through space while exhaustingly firing away at endless series of neatly arranged, plodding enemy invaders. I knew that if I'd play such a game, I'd quickly lose interest; about a minute in, my mind would start to wander and consequently I'd dump all of my lives in rapid succession. And I'd have basically wasted a quarter.
The fact was that shooting games just weren't for me. They were too slow and too boring. So I made a rule that I was never going to play them.
There was, however, one arcade shooter for which I'd happily break the rule: Galaga, which, unlike others of its kind, managed to appeal to me with its excitingly hectic shooting action and make me feel as though gunning down swarms of marauding aliens was one of the most fun things you could do in arcades.
So anytime I'd come across a Galaga machine, I'd be eager to drop a few quarters into it and engage in some fast-fingered, highly enthralling shooting action! I'd have a lot of fun furiously pounding away at the Fire button and taking down strings of swirling convoys and large enemy formations!
Galaga's action was engrossing, hypnotic and extremely satisfying, and those qualities, in my mind, helped it to escape the classification of "just another derivative space shooter." It was one of the most fun and engaging arcade games in existence, and that's why I was drawn to it. That it was a space shooter didn't matter to me. It was, above all, a great video game, and that's all it needed to be to appeal to me.
At the time, I would have said that Galaga's superior "fun factor" was what successfully distanced it from its contemporaries, and that would have been an accurate assessment. But at the same time, it would also have been an overly simplistic, insufficient explanation for why Galaga was so transcendent. It would have left out a lot of important context.
Though, I can tell you now, after having achieved greater wisdom, why Galaga is actually superior to other shooters. It's supremely appealing because of how distinctly captivating its action is--because of the enrapturing sensations it causes you to experience: the visceral thrill of rapid-fire combat; the intensity of tapping the Fire button in furious fashion and mowing down enemies and resultantly building your finger speed to a point in which you can take out an incoming convoy before a single one of its members gets the chance to join the main formation; the exhilaration of averting death by narrowly dodging a storm of projectiles and dive-bombing enemies; the sense of panic that grips you when enemies begin breaking from the formation and triggering that unnerving glissando-style sound effect; and the deeply satisfying feeling of mastery that overcomes you when you score a perfect 40 in a bonus stage.
No other shooter can evoke those types of feelings and sensations. Only Galaga can.
It was those alluring qualities that made me eager to return to Galaga again and again. And they're the same qualities that draw me to the game in the current day.
In the standard Space Invaders-inspired shooter, rows of uniformly colored marauders mundanely inch their way downward and shift from left to right in a predictable manner, but in Galaga, packs of colorful aliens fly in from all directions, in spectacular fashion, and then amass into a whole, and subsequently, individual aliens begin to break off from the formation and perform hypnotic circling and waving flight maneuvers before dive-bombing you. Furthermore, some aliens break into three smaller aliens, all of which chain up and maneuver toward you in a uniquely troublesome way.
And these are the elements that make Galaga much more visually and viscerally engaging than its rivals.
What also helps Galaga to set the standard for interactive gameplay is its main enemy: the Boss Galaga, which spirals its way down to the screen's bottom portion and then projects a cone-shaped tractor beam that sucks in your fighter; thereafter, the Boss Galaga returns to its original position with your fighter in tow and causes you to have to take command of a reserve fighter (assuming you have an extra life in stock). And even though this seems like an undesirable event, it's actually beneficial to you because it affords you the opportunity to trigger the game's best, most advantageous mechanic: If you can destroy the captor during its next descent and do so without accidentally shooting the restrained fighter, you'll free the fighter and subsequently conjoin with it! And then you'll have double the firepower!
For any seasoned Galaga player, it makes perfect sense to purposely let a fighter get captured. Ordinally it would be a foolish idea to willingly sacrifice a stock (especially when you're playing an arcade game and paying money for each set of lives), yeah, but in Galaga, it's advisable to do so because it opens up the opportunity to gain dual-fighter ability, which provides you wider attack range and thus the power to more quickly thin the alien herd and consequently limit the scope of its attack. Having dual-fighter ability is an essential ingredient to success.
The gaining of dual-fighter ability is the point in which Galaga's action jumps to the next level. The action becomes so much more fun when you can speedily and furiously mow down the incoming aliens and take down large formations with ease. And with the increased attack range, you're able to absolutely dominate the "Challenging Stages," in which you can earn big points and potentially an extra stock by successfully gunning down groups of formation-flying aliens.
The downside is that is that it's difficult to keep two fighters in play for long periods of time. The pairing of two bulky ships, naturally, comes with an increase in hitbox range, and thus it becomes much more difficult to evade bullet and enemy storms. Holding on to a second fighter is a challenge all its own. Yet it's worth it to try to keep two fighters in play because of the advantages it provides you and because every second of dual-fighter action is pure gaming bliss. You won't want it to end!
And these are the reasons why Galaga trumps the vast majority of shoot-'em-ups and stands among my favorite arcade games. I'm a big fan of it, and I'm happy to say that it occupies a top spot on my list of all-time-favorite shooters--a list that includes other transcendent shooters like Space Invaders, Centipede, Gorf, Gradius, Commando and the Atari 2600 version of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. It's second only to the sterling Megamania, which I consider to be the best in its class.
So yeah--Galaga is a top-tier shoot-'em-up and a great game in general.
My only regret is that I don't have a better history with Galaga. It was, in truth, absent from my life for a very long period. In my earliest days, I was apt to abandon older arcade games as soon as the new generation of arcade hardware arrived, and that's what I did to Galaga. I left it behind. I shifted my focus to newer, more-advanced-looking games.
Somehow, shamefully, I managed to avoid Galaga for almost 20 years. And the drought probably would've lasted much longer had I not gained access to it, in surprising fashion, when I was visiting my father's new home in 2007. That year, my father had bought a Pac-Man 25th Anniversary Edition machine and placed it in his living room, which doubled as a game room (I was surprised by this because my father was the type who hadn't played a game since the days of Pong). And that machine happened to include Galaga.
And consequently Galaga became prominent in my life for the next 8 years. I played it every time I visited my father's house (in between playing pool on his convertible billiard table). Even during short hour-long visits, I'd find a way to sneak in a round or two. It was customary.
I never played for high score, since the game's high score total was already maxed out, and instead focused on seeing how long I could endure. My goal was to improve my skills and make it as far into the game as I could. And over the years, I made some serious strides. As my reflexes and button-mashing ability improved, I became capable of enduring for long periods of time. Eventually I reached a point in which I could make it to the fourth "Challenging Stage" on a single credit.
Unfortunately, my father sold the machine when he moved to a new house in 2019. So a long-lasting tradition sadly came to an end.
But the good news was that there were now plenty of other ways for me to enjoy Galaga, and by that point, I'd already gained more convenient access to it via 2017's Namco Museum for Nintendo Switch. And I've been playing it and enjoying it regularly ever since then.
And that's my story with Galaga, which I'm happy to say is one of my all-time-favorite arcade games. I'm very fond of it. I consider it to be a top-tier shoot-'em-up and a great video game in general.
Galaga has many wonderful qualities: It's highly accessible and instantly engaging. Its furious, fast-fingered action is some of the most rewarding you'll ever experience. It satisfies your action craving and keeps you coming back for more. It thrills and captivates you. And thus it provides some of the best proof that, indeed, the truly greatest games transcend their genres.
I'd play it any time.
So to Galaga, I have only one thing to say: I look forward to our next close encounter, old pal.
I'm sure that it'll be a good one.
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