Galaga

Moving along the bottom of the screen, you shoot at the enemies either in formation or as they fly about. Most enemies are destroyed by one hit, but the Galagas take two hits they turn blue when hit once. You must avoid being hit by enemies and their fire. You must also be aware of the Galaga's tractor beam, which can capture your ship a captured ship turns red. To free the captured ship, you must destroy the captor Galaga while it is attacking you, otherwise the captured ship will be destroyed. When you free a captured ship, it will dock alongside your current ship, thus creating a dual ship.

Ships are lost when you are hit by enemies. Dual ships are destroyed individually.

TRICK: If a Galaga's tractor beam starts pulling you in, you will spin about, but you will still be able to shoot at enemies. If you happen to end up shooting upward and destroy the Galaga before you are captured, you will just drop back into play.

TRICK: If you happen to lose a ship to a Galaga and then shoot the Galaga while it is still in formation, the captive ship will remain under enemy control. However, it will only make one attack at you before disappearing. If you allow it to escape, it will return in the next stage unless it's a Challenge Stage with another Galaga, giving you another shot at freeing the ship.

CHEAT: There is a well-known cheat that causes enemy units to stop firing. It works on most, but not all, machines.

• On the first stage, kill everything but the two bees in the bottom left corner. Then just wait, dodging the bees' shots, until the bee no longer drops any shots towards you.
• After the bees stop firing, let it pass for five more trips or so and then kill them.
• For the rest of the game, the enemies will not drop shots. It will take approximately 15 minutes for the bees to quit shooting at you, so this trick requires a lot of patience.

Some people have reported that this trick also works with two bees from the RIGHT side of the screen. Note that in a two-player game, only one person has to do the cheat for both players to benefit.

TRICK: The "Player 1" score counter in Galaga is six digits, but the "Player 2" counter is seven digits. Therefore, most good players start a two-player game and play exclusively on the Player 2 side so their score will not "roll over" at 999990. Challenging stages are easier if the high score numbers are used to refine your aim.

TRICKS: These tips assume a six-digit high score:

• On the first two challenging stages, aim your ships so that your left set of bullets falls between the second and third numbers in the high score list. On subsequent challenging stages, aim one set of bullets between the first and second numbers in the high score list if the units come from the left or between the last and next-to-last numbers if the units come from the right. This will allow you to hit descending enemies at the highest possible point value.
• If you have more than seven extra men, the marker for the screen will only show 7 1/2 men remaining. Additional extra men will still be credited, even though they will not show on the screen.
• Galaga "rolls over" after stage 255. After finishing the 255th level, the screen says "Stage 0" and the machine locks up. I have heard unconfirmed reports in the past that the "Stage 0" problem can be circumvented if the last two numbers in your score at the end of level 255 are ?? 80 is what I remember, but it may be something else.
• After the 1000000 mark, new ships are no longer awarded.

BUG: A bug exists in Galaga and Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga Namco Galaga, some Midway Galaga, Gallag bootleg and Nebulous Bee bootleg - Class of '81 that allows a player to play during the Galaga demo screen and even reset the game. The demos are the same for both Galaga and Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga - Class of '81, and the bug works the same way, but the result is a little different between the two Galagas.

During the Galaga demo, the Galaga character comes down and tries to tractor-beam up the player's ship. As soon as that tractor-beam starts, the player can take control of the ship in the demo. The player has two choices here and this will effect how the game handles this bug:

• If the player allows himself to be captured, the demo will continue as normal and he has the option of controlling the player ship or not. The player can choose whether to save the captured ship, try to complete the level, etc. The demo mode will complete after 30 seconds and the high-score screen will appear.
• If the player takes control of the ship and destroys the Galaga with the tractor beam, he will be able to continue playing until the "normal" demo would have completed. At this point the game will do one of two things depending on whether the person is playing an original Galaga or Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga - Class of '81:
  • Galaga: Some of the characters on the screen will freeze while others are still moving and doing what they are suppose to be doing. This will last 15-20 seconds, then the game will go to the high score screen.
  • Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga - The game will make a loud buzz sound, blank the screen and then show a diagnostics screen with the version number of the games, a RAM and ROM test, etc. This screen will stay for approximately ten seconds before returning to the high score screen. If someone needs to know the version of software on their boardset, this can be a handy way of finding out without opening the cabinet.

• Beer-Aga - Changes the characters into beer bottles.
• Buglaxian users Galaga graphics in a Galaxian game.
• Galaga '99 - Changes the graphics to make them look better.
• Galaga X - Uses Galaga graphics in the game 1942
• Galagalaxian - Changes the graphics to make them look more like Galaxian.
• Galapede - Changes the graphics to make them more like those of Centipede.
• Swarm - Adds a time limit to make the game harder.

One of the first games with a bonus stage.

Along with Pac-Man and Pong, this game shares the curse of being one of the most bootlegged games of all time.

This game can be seen being played in several scenes of the movie War Games by the character David Lightman (Matthew Broderick).

Namco also produced very small versions of these games, about the size of a 17-inch monitor, for buses and airplanes.

BOOTLEG: Gallag
BOOTLEG: Nebulous Bee

This game was licensed to Bally Midway for US manufacture and distribution.

The game uses three Z80 microprocessors and a Namco 3-channel PSG for sounds.