Posts Tagged ‘galaga’
Movie Review: Pixels
Authors Note: The circumstances surrounding my having seen this movie early and my review having been written months ago are explained at the end of this review.
Here we go again, another video game movie. That’s all I seem to think about whenever I see anything like Pixels advertised, so needless to say I went into my initial screening with very low hopes. Couple that with the fact that the starring roles belong to Adam Sandler and Kevin James, two actors of which I despise most of their work, and you basically have a formula for what I assumed would be a disaster. Thanks to some lighthearted implementation of some of gaming’s first arcade titles (Pac-Man, Centepede, Donkey Kong, etc.) and the assistance of great supporting cast members Josh Gad and Peter Dinklage, this 80s nostalgia flick just became yet another in a sea of big dumb fun summer blockbusters. If you over think it, this movie falls apart, but if you just go in with zero expectations and want to enjoy two hours, you might be pleasantly surprised.
Swedish Airports Have Arcade Charity Machines
This is a incredibly creative way to raise money for charity that will hopefully catch on in other countries. Working with the Red Cross arcade machines of Space Invaders, Galaga, and Ms. Pac-Man have been installed to accept multiple types of currency with all the proceeds going to charity. So you can enjoy your favourite retro games while you wait for that plane ride knowing it all goes to a good cause. If this catches on maybe well see other games brought back into the fray. If I could choose I would sink plenty of money into a Bubble Bobble or Rainbow Islands cabinet.
Podcast: The Final Countdown Pt. 1
Fred Rojas from Gaming History 101 and the B-Team podcast is joined by Josh “Colm” from the T4 show and Rob “Trees” from EZ Mode Unlocked to discuss the games in G4’s recent top 100 games of all times. We start by discussing some of our issues with the games in the list and then hit the ground running talking about our personal experiences with many of the great games on the countdown. Due to time constraints this first part covers games 100-60 with more to come in future weeks. Check it out!
Galaga (Namco)
Just as America was tapering off from “Pac-Man fever” (we were obsessed with Pac-Man in the late 70s), arcade powerhouse Namco unleashed Galaga on us. While it was quite popular and generated plenty of income for Namco, Galaga has always been the counterpart to the Pac-Man series that wasn’t as lucrative – it’s often bundled together with Ms. Pac-Man in re-released cabinets. That’s not to say that Galaga doesn’t have its rightful place in American history, these days it’s more popular with my friends (and in bars, no less) than more traditional arcade staples.
Some may not know this, but Galaga is actually a sequel of Galaxian, which was released a year earlier in 1980. Galaxian was basically a clone of Space Invaders that improved on the formula by featuring full color graphics versus the two colors of Space Invaders and had the enemies drop in pattern formations from different parts of the screen. It also removed the barriers at the bottom. Galaga updated the formula even more by allowing the ship to fire more than one bullet at a time, awarding bonus points for clearing stages and had an enemy that could capture your ship. If your ship was captured you would lose a life but it would remain in possession of the thief until you destroyed it, at which point the ship would join your current one and you could fire with two ships. This becomes a tactic that those in the high score world tend to take advantage of, although I’ve met a few that prefer to keep their ships out of alien possession.
Gaming History 101 