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Galaga (1981)

Namco Limited

Arcade · FM-7 · MSX · PC-9800 Series · Sharp X1 · Xbox 360

3.61 from 535 ratings

1157 members have it in their collection · 19 playing now · 91 backlogged · 49 wish listed

How long? · 100% 2h (from 1 logged playthrough)

The objective of Galaga is to score as many points as possible by destroying insect-like enemies. The player controls a starfighter that can move left and right along the bottom of the playfield. Enemies swarm in groups in a formation near the top of the screen, and then begin flying down toward the player, firing bombs at the fighter. The … Read more
The objective of Galaga is to score as many points as possible by destroying insect-like enemies. The player controls a starfighter that can move left and right along the bottom of the playfield. Enemies swarm in groups in a formation near the top of the screen, and then begin flying down toward the player, firing bombs at the fighter. The game ends when the player's last fighter is lost, either by colliding with an enemy or one of its bullets, or by being captured. Galaga introduces a number of new features over its predecessor, Galaxian. Among these is the ability to fire more than one bullet at a time, a count of the player's "hit/miss ratio" at the end of the game, and a bonus "Challenging Stage" that occurs every few levels, in which a series of enemies fly onto and out of the screen in set patterns without firing at the player's ship or trying to crash into it. These stages award a large point bonus if the player manages to destroy every enemy. Another gameplay feature new to Galaga is the ability for enemies to capture the player's fighter. While the player is in control of just one fighter, a "boss Galaga" (which takes two shots to kill) periodically attempts to capture the fighter using a tractor beam. If successful, the fighter joins the enemy formation. If the player has more lives remaining, play resumes with a new fighter. The captured fighter flies down with the enemy that captured it, firing upon the player just like normal enemies, and can be shot and destroyed. The player can free the fighter by destroying the boss Galaga while in flight, causing the captured fighter to link up with the player's current fighter, doubling his or her firepower but also making a target twice as large. Galaga has an exploitable bug that can cause the attackers to stop firing bullets at the player, due to a coding error. In addition, similar to the famous "Split-Screen bug" in Pac-Man, a bug exists in Galaga in which the game "rolls over" from Level 255 to Level 0. Depending on the difficulty setting of the machine, this can cause the game to stall, requiring that the machine be reset or power-cycled in order to start a new game. Read less
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Details

Developers
Namco Limited
Publishers
Dempa Shimbunsha, Midway, Namco Limited
Genres
Arcade, Shooter
Themes
Science fiction
Franchises
Galaxian
Series
Galaga, Galaxian
Event
Microsoft E306 Media Briefing

Release dates

  • Sep 01, 1981 (Japan) Arcade
  • 1984 (Japan) MSX, Sharp X1
  • Apr 01, 1985 (Japan) PC-9800 Series
  • 1985 (Japan) FM-7
  • Jul 26, 2006 (Worldwide) Xbox 360

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Featured in lists

Games Everyone Should Play At Least Once by Roach · 155 games · 5
BMO's memorable games: childhood by BMO · 43 games · 1

Rating distribution

5 stars
91
4 stars
185
3 stars
220
2 stars
35
1 star
3
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Community All Reviews Statuses

Chovus

Status Chovus Aug 27, 2025

Played until stage 25 before getting bored. It was just a more advanced iteration of Space Invaders. Would have enjoyed it more with something better than the lousy 2 shot gun, like spread shot or area nukes or homing. It could be tough to hit single moving targets and I found the blue enemies the most dangerous because of their …

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Played until stage 25 before getting bored. It was just a more advanced iteration of Space Invaders. Would have enjoyed it more with something better than the lousy 2 shot gun, like spread shot or area nukes or homing. It could be tough to hit single moving targets and I found the blue enemies the most dangerous because of their more erratic and loopy movements. Seemed like the stages progressed forever. Have to give it credit for being a classic but endless score based games are not my kind of fun.

6.0/10

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Floweypowey

Review Floweypowey 5/5 · Jun 10, 2022

Pest control has never been this cute

Easily one of the best games I've ever played. Building upon the Space Invaders-formula and refining some of the ideas explored in Galaxian (which I haven't played yet but aim to do in the future), Galaga is a pure, condensed rush of joyous gameplay and audiovisuals. Contrary to many later arcade games, the scoring actually feels like an integral part …

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Easily one of the best games I've ever played. Building upon the Space Invaders-formula and refining some of the ideas explored in Galaxian (which I haven't played yet but aim to do in the future), Galaga is a pure, condensed rush of joyous gameplay and audiovisuals. Contrary to many later arcade games, the scoring actually feels like an integral part of the design, since the progression is not linear, thus making it exciting to beat your high-score either by surviving more rounds, or engaging in risky situations by destroying more enemy units when they are attacking you.

The expressive enemy patterns, gradually increasing frenzy of the battlefield and small space oddities (being able to retake your captured ship and add it to your existing one, Galaga commanders sometimes surrounding themselves with infantry units for their assaults) truly makes this a seminal and spectacular early shmup.

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2 Comment
scoopings

Review scoopings 5/5 · Feb 11, 2022

A Game I've Always Heard About, But Never Played

Look: 8/10 Like the space graphics. And everything is solid, tho not remarkable.

Sound: 8/10 Nice to hear some actual music in such an early arcade action game. Also, lol some of the enemy deletion sounds reminded me of Mario/later-console games, and in general, the arcade beeps and boops were surprisingly solid.

Play: 9/10 Welp, this turned out to be …

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Look: 8/10 Like the space graphics. And everything is solid, tho not remarkable.

Sound: 8/10 Nice to hear some actual music in such an early arcade action game. Also, lol some of the enemy deletion sounds reminded me of Mario/later-console games, and in general, the arcade beeps and boops were surprisingly solid.

Play: 9/10 Welp, this turned out to be as good as people always told me it was. So addictive. The variety of enemies. The progression of challenges. just don't even know where to begin.

Feel: 8/10 Wow, I wasn't complete sold on Galaxian... And indeed, this is the true successor to Space Invaders.

Attachment: 9/10 This has joined Space Invaders and Head-On and Robby Roto among my favorite arcade games. It's ironic, because I always knew to play this game. But somehow, had never come across it at an arcade (tho I had come upon Space Invaders, Pac Man, and other classics). I am glad I finally got to play this. Tbh, if there's one arcade vertical shooter to recommend that I've come across so far, this is the one. Sorry Space Invaders (tho you will always be my preferred one for my weird self, personally).

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7 Comment
XanderCat

Review XanderCat 4/5 · Oct 10, 2019

Awesome game, got to stage 5!

Very fun and a game I will return to now and then I think just for the heck of it to see how much further I can get. I got to stage 5. Looks like pumping more quarters into this game doesn't help you continue forward? OK I looked up a YouTube video and saw someone on this crazy high …

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Very fun and a game I will return to now and then I think just for the heck of it to see how much further I can get. I got to stage 5. Looks like pumping more quarters into this game doesn't help you continue forward? OK I looked up a YouTube video and saw someone on this crazy high level stage!!!! Just how far can you go?? (I know I could look this up easily hehe, but I want to write this review while the game is fresh.)

I certainly remember playing this game in the arcades, it was an old game by that point but I definitely enjoyed it. I think I felt like I even got pretty good. This time I felt like I was doing terribly, but I just need more practice.

I'm not really sure when one can consider this game "played" so I'm cheating a bit and adding this to my played list. :)

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4 Comment