Galaga (ギャラガ Gyaraga?) is a fixed shooter arcade game developed and published by Namco in Japan and published by Midway in North America in 1981. It is the sequel to Galaxian, released in 1979. The gameplay of Galaga puts the player in control of a space ship which is situated at the bottom of the screen. At the beginning of each stage, the area is empty, but over time, enemy aliens will arrive in formation, and once all of the enemies arrive on screen, they will come down at the player’s ship in formations of one or more and may either shoot it or collide with it. During the entire stage, the player may fire upon the enemies, and once all enemies are vanquished, the player will proceed to the next stage.
Galaga is one of the most successful games from the Golden Age of Video Arcade Games. The arcade version of it has been ported to many consoles, and it has had several sequels.
GALAGA
Introduced in 1981 as a sequel to Galaxian, Galaga still enjoys widespread popularity today despite its age. In addition to original machines that still pull in quarters, the current “retro-gaming” phenomenon has introduced a whole new wave of fans to it, as well as its sequel, Gaplus (a.k.a Galaga 3). Another sequel, Galaga ’88, was released, as well as a 3-D sequel to Galaxian called Galaxian 3. Years later, a version of Galaga appeared in one of the Namco Arcade Classic machines.
Galaga Remakes :
Deluxe Galaga
The basic concept of the game is just like most other shootemups of the ‘Galagaish’ persuasion. You pilot your ship back and forth at the bottom of the screen, shooting down waves of descending aliens. The more waves you clear, the harder they get. There are ‘boss’ aliens and ‘sub-boss’ aliens as well as the standard fodder aliens.
WarBlade Galaga Remake
Since it’s a PC version of the Amiga game, it looks very similar to the Amiga game and the first 75 levels are almost identical to the Amiga version. But there are a lot of new features and game objects added. The graphics have been updated from the 32 colour Amiga version to 32bit, full colour versions on the PC. It uses some of the new possibilities that a powerful pc graphics card can offer. Fast blitting with rotation and scaling, alphablended gfx for flare effects. Lots of new secrets are added. New subgame and a powerful profile system that will unlock new features as you progress through the game
Right Cursor : Move to next menus screen.
Left CTRL / Command on Mac : “Start” the game and lets you fire bullets.
Keys 1 to 9 : Select a different weapon.
Space : Add random explosions around the screen.
Here are the links:
With all the chatter about the game Deluxe Galaga, this is the obligitory page to tell you a bit more about the game.
History of Deluxe Galaga 
03/09/95 … 47865 lines of Devpac v3.04 assembler code. Assembling time : 32.44 seconds on a A1200/030/33MHz with 6MB RAM.
That is the specs of the final build (V2.6) of Deluxe Galaga, one of the all-time best games for the Amiga – heck one of the best shootemups EVER. It premiered with V1.0 on 10/20/93.
The Basic Concepts and Gameplay
Read the official documentation that accompanies Deluxe Galaga, converted to HTML from the original AmigaGUIDE format.
The basic concept of the game is just like most other shootemups of the ‘Galagaish’ persuasion. You pilot your ship back and forth at the bottom of the screen, shooting down waves of descending aliens. The more waves you clear, the harder they get. There are ‘boss’ aliens and ‘sub-boss’ aliens as well as the standard fodder aliens.
This is where most ‘Galaga Clones’ leave off. Let’s just see what else Deluxe Galaga has to offer.
Worked into the basic game play are ‘powerups’. Just like on dozens of other games, powerups give your ship a little something extra – from different and more powerful firepower to speedups to even protective ‘armour’ – some even let you capture aliens and make them fight for you. Other items drop from the stars too – like extra lives and more importantly – money to upgrade your ship after 5 waves or so.
The store will allow you to purchase goods such as more powerful weapons (not everything that falls from the sky can be purchased) to extra lives (you can even buy your on-screen brother – who plays simultaneously with you – an extra life).
The last basic part of the game are the ‘in-game’ games (sub-games if you will). These sub-games are ‘breaks from the action’ where you can score points and money (in the cool ‘dodge the rocks’ Meteor Shower game) or even extra lives, points, money, rank markers, extra ‘credits’ (to continue your game), bonus multipliers, and more (in the familiar but timed ‘Concentration-style Memory Game).
In summary, this game has just about every component that a good space shootemup should – and even more so – it has secrets. Ah … the secrets.
Galaga in popular culture
In 1982, shortly after Galaga was released in the United States, MGM sent a Galaga machine to Matthew Broderick for him to practice prior to shooting the movie WarGames. He practiced for two months and the Galaga arcade unit makes two appearances in the film.
The arcade cabinet is present in the comic book store setting on the 1990s Nickelodeon sitcom My Brother and Me.
In 2007, the ABC TV series Lost included a submarine named Galaga, in honor of the arcade game. Writers of the series would often play the game between writing sessions.[15]
Galaga appeared briefly in 2012’s The Avengers. Upon entering S.H.I.E.L.D.‘s Helicarrier, Tony Stark catches an agent playing Galaga and remarks, “That man is playing Galaga. Thought we wouldn’t notice, but we did.” After the Avengers’ team meeting, the agent returns to his game.
In 2009, the Hallmark greeting card company released a Christmas tree ornament shaped like a Galaga arcade machine, complete with sound clips from the game.
In the 2013 novel University, set in the 1980s, one segment focuses on a marathon Galaga session, with wheelchair-bound freshman Dwight Manning making a run at the then-existing world record.[18]
In the 2013 song “All Me” by Drake, the Galaga sound can be heard in one part of the song.
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