Arcade Archives: Galaga '88 (PS4|5 - Switch)

[Sturmvogel Prime]

DANGER ZONE (PART XLI)
BACK TO THE '88

The final part of "Danger Zone" and its way to merge as "Project Reviewer" is on its way.

The "Danger Zone" series of reviews so far
DANGER ZONE VOL. I

Spoiler

I: REVVIN' UP YOUR ENGINE, LISTENIN' TO HER HOWLIN' ROARING - (E.D.F.: Earth Defense Force)
II: IS THIS YOUR IDEA OF FUN, MAV? - (Binarystar Infinity)
III: PLAYING WITH THE (ARCADE ARCHIVES) BOYS - (Arcade Archives: Thunder Dragon 2)
IV: THAT'S RIGHT! ICE...MAN. I AM DANGEROUS (SEED) - (Arcade Archives: Dangerous Seed)
V: THE ELITE. BEST OF THE BEST. WE'LL MAKE YOU BETTER. - (Super E.D.F.: Earth Defense Force)
VI: GONNA TAKE YOU RIGHT INTO THE DANGER ZONE - (Star Hunter DX)
VII: IT TAKES MORE THAN JUST FANCY FLYING - (Earth Defense Force 4.1: Wing Diver The Shooter)
VIII: INSTRUMENTS OF DESTRUCTION - (Devastator by Radiangames)
IX: ¿WHO'S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD TUBES? - (Arcade Archives: Tube Panic)
X: SWIMMIN' IN THE FLOODS, DANCIN' ON THE CLOUDS BELOW. I AIN'T WORRIED 'BOUT IT - (Arcade Archives: Fighting Hawk)
XI: PULLING A RABBIT OUT OF THE HAT - (Arcade Archives: Rabio Lepus)
XII: WINGS OF SILVER, NERVES OF STEEL - (Arcade Archives: Darius)
XIII: FULL SCALE ASSAULT - (Arcade Archives: Assault)
XIV: WE'RE GONNA NEED A DIFFERENT KIND OF BUGSPRAY - (Arcade Archives: Gaplus)
XV: DOWN THE ALIEN SECTOR - (Arcade Archives: Baraduke)
XVI: WHEN YOU'RE DRAWN TO THE GROUND BY THE DRAGONS - (Arcade Archives: Dragon Spirit)
XVII: SOME RETICENT GODDESS PUT THE CHILDREN TO SLEEP - (Arcade Archives: Metal Black)
XVIII: I SHOT THE WILD LIZARDS - (Arcade Archives: Gun Frontier)
XIX: HOW WE GONNA GET THIS MUSEUM PIECE IN THE AIR? - (Arcade Archives: Galaxian)
XX: SHATTERED KAWAII SKIES - (Arcade Archives: Ordyne)
XXI: ENTER THE DRAGON (SABER) - (Arcade Archives: Dragon Saber)
XXII: SEEMS LIKE WE'RE NOT THE ONLY ONES HOLDING ON TO OLD RELICS - (Arcade Archives: Galaga)
XXIII: OLD WARBIRDS, RETRO ARCADE ACTION - (Arcade Archives: USAAF Mustang)
XXIV: ARCADE STYLED HELICOPTER BATTLEFIELD - (Arcade Archives: Metal Hawk)
XXV: CLASH OF THE GODS - (Arcade Archives: Phelios)
XXVI: BACK IN (METAL) BLACK - (Metal Black S-Tribute)
XXVII: NAMCO'S TAKE ON THE NBA - (Arcade Archives: Grobda)
XXVIII: DOUJIN SHMUPPING "GM" STYLE - (Graze Counter GM)
XXIX: MIXED AND REMIXED - (Raiden IV x Mikado Remix)
XXX: EXPLICIT DIFFICULTY - (Arcade Archives: Gradius III)

DANGER ZONE VOL. II

Spoiler

XXXI: HAVING THE EARTH IN MY SIGHTS - (Layer Section & Galactic Attack S-Tribute)
XXXII: FAST, FURIOUS AND DANGEROUS - (Arcade Archives: Turbo Force)
XXXIII: CHORUS AND CHORES - (Chorus)
XXXIV: SAVE THE SUN - (Sol Cresta)
XXXV: NAMCO WHISPERS IN OUR EARS AND SAYS THAT "YOU ARE IN NAVARONE" - (Arcade Archives: Navarone)
XXXVI: A SHORT (ASTEROID) BREAK TIME - (Space Scavengers by Xitilon)
XXXVII: GIVE ME A "REZON" TO HOLD ON TO WHAT WE'VE GOT - (Arcade Archives: Rezon)
XXXVIII: A COSMIC TROUBLESOME GANG - (Arcade Archives: Cosmo Gang The Video)
XXXIX: WHAT'S THE PLAN? SAVE THE MOON, SAVE EARTH - (Arcade Archives: Moon Cresta)
XL: A HERO FOR THE EARTH - (Arcade Archives: Terra Cresta)

We're done with the "Namco Month" of Hamster's Arcade Archives, and they've decided to close it with some nice surprises. After the release of Cosmo Gang: The Video, BNEI throws another classic shmup to the list: Galaga '88.


Starts with less lives, but saves you from sacrifying one of your ships.

Before starting the game you are given the option to select if you want to start as a single fighter or the Double Fighter. The idea here is that if you pick the Double Fighter, you'll start with less lives, but if you know Galaga pretty well, you'll realize that starting the game as the Single Fighter would require to be captured once to become a Double Fighter.



Looks like the neighborhood has changed since 1981.

At first, Galaga '88 seems to be identical to Galaga as it relies on the same traditional concept of formations and how they appear from the sides of the screen, but actually that's the first impression this game wants to give you, because once the fight begins, the game will bring a whole new cast of enemy types along with the traditional swoop and attack and capture Galagas. When the "pyramid" is being formed, you'll see large insects "escorting" the formations, which will leave the stage without incorporate the group, but if you take one of them down, it worths a good amount of score. Other surprises of the game is the hard to destroy "Small Galagas" that you'll find throughout the battle, as enemies will suddenly turn into these type of enemies or even other types like the dragonflies. Being a double fighter no longer means you're immune to capture, a Galaga can capture your double fighter and use it as an enemy that needs two hits to die, but if you rescue it when it dives by destroying the Galaga capturing it, it will become a "Triple Fighter", a ship as wide as the Double Fighter, but with a triple shot. You can also get the Triple Fighter by picking a red capsule, but this one is very rare to get and when it appears it will do it in the later or final stages.

Along with these features, the game adds stage branching mechanics to the traditional gameplay. How? By utilizing "capsules" dropped by specific enemies. In the first "Dimension", the blue capsules are dropped by these teal with brown Galagas that will occasionally merge in a two-insect fusion becoming a large insect. Killing it will drop a capsule, and you've better pick it since that's the key to go up in the Stage Branching of the game. After picking 2 blue capsules your ship will be able to go to a higher dimension. The higher the dimension you go, the better the ending will be. Although Dimension 5 is the highest dimension of the game, you can still pick blue capsules on the 5th dimension levels. While the previous games lacked continues due to their simplicity, Galaga '88 introduces a continue feature which can be toggled on or off on the operator settings. According to the Arcade Archives release, the default configuration of the game has the continue function off, pretty much like their release of Dragon Saber lacked the energy bars.




Despite the changes, there's things that remain the same.

After clearing a few levels, you'll be entering the "Galactic Dancin'" levels which are the "Challenging Stage" of the game where the objective is to eliminate all the 40 Galagas before they escape. Like in the first Galaga, the idea is to eliminate all of them in order to get the Special Bonus of 10,000 points. But you can also get 10,000 points by not moving and not shooting until the bonus level ends, awarding you the "Secret Bonus".




Just when you've thought Galaga had nothing else to offer, it throws you a boss level.

While its predecessors were fixed single-screened combats, Galaga '88 will suddenly put your ship in a long level consisting of two waves of basic vertical shmup segments followed by traditional Galaga battles and all of a sudden, a boss fight where you'll fight a giant Galaga which will throw you small Galagas as projectiles and the common popcorn/zako enemies. While in the first fight the boss will escape after taking 20 hits, in the second encounter you'll be able to blow it out of existence.

Since Midway was completely out of the question by Namco, the task of distributing the game outside of Japan was given to Atari Games. Unlike their previous releases like Pole Position and Dig Dug where the Namco copyright and logo was replaced with those of Atari's (formerly Atari Inc.), the ROM was identical to the Japanese release, leaving the Atari references on the cabinet.
Homeporting this game was a whole different story. While its first predecessors Galaxian and Galaga were ported "to death" on other consoles, Galaga '88 didn't had the same luck and got very few ports. The first "Home" port was on the PC Engine, followed by the Sharp X68000 computer, and the Sega Game Gear. Being the Sharp X68000 the most arcade faithful of the ports back then. It wasn't too much homeporting in the 80-90's, but at least it wasn't like Gaplus which didn't had any ports. The first "Arcade Perfect" ports appeared on Namco Museum 50th Anniversary on the PlayStation 2, XBOX and Gamecube (2005), followed by the XBOX 360 Namco Museum Virtual Arcade (2008) and finally the Switch port of Namco Museum in 2017. It was until April 27th of 2023 when Galaga '88 got one more port through Hamster's Arcade Archives series. This release is based on the Japanese ROM since the green insect that makes the flyby on the title screen puts the katakana below the logo, rather than the simple flyover like in the Atari Games release.

In terms of graphics, we can see how the Namco System I hardware really improved the visual department of the game by breaking the common black, starry dotted space by adding way more detail and life to the scenery from using space station with moving lights, spinning asteroids and more colorful Galagas with more smooth and fluid animation rather than the basic "8 sprites" (verticals, horizontals and diagonals) used on previous game. In the case of the asteroids, their irregular forms add more realism to their rolling animation making them look three dimensional. It was nice to see how the game broke the traditional visual aspects of the game by adding a long stage with "base" backgrounds rather than empty space or space stations. Ironically, the Galagas are depicted in a "kawaii" style which contrasts with the serious menacing looking insects from the promotional flyer (both Namco and Atari). The sound department got also its dose of improvements by adding voiced samples from the "Wuoyo-wuoyo" and "Nyo-hoho" from the Galagas and even a sampled dialogue from the female characters in the final stages). While most of the stages are musicless, the "Boss areas" have this calm, yet sinister-like hum that adds mystery to the overall stage and not to mention the different music styles of the bonus stages, from "Salsa" styled and "Circus" like themes that add variety to the level, along with how elaborated were the movements of the Galaga formations that match the rhythm of the music used on the level.


TRIVIALAGA '2023



Unlike the Ms. Pac-Man/Pac-Mom edit in Pac-Land, Namco didn't edited America to resemble Osea due to the UGSF.

- Last Galaga game and 5th Namco title released by the restructured Atari Games.
- Galaga '88 is the fourth and last title in the Galaga League.
- The enemy bases from Bosconian make a cameo on Dimension 4.
- In the United Galaxy Space Force continuity, Galaga '88's events take place in the year 2288.
- Galaga '88's place within the UGSF clashes even before starting, as the title screen shows our Earth with the American continent since there's no America on Strangereal.
- The best explanation for that is the game was originally conceived as a sci-fi shmup placed in our universe (just like Dig Dug and Dig Dug II). Something that Namco forgot when they created the UGSF multiverse.




Looks like we're done with the Galagas by now.

It was great to see how Namco and Hamster added another entry to the Galaxian/Galaga series leaving Galaga Arrangement as the last arcade title left to be released in Arcade Archives, and as we make these random steps in Namco arcade history, it is more than clear than the gap between the 80's and 90's is reducing on each release, but closing that breach is up to Hamster and Namco, although I think Hamster should consider to give them a break and resume the release of other companies (Arcade Archives: Raiden II and Arcade Archives: GunForce please).




Will he see this video? If you do meet him, give him a message for me.
Yo, Buddy. Still alive?
And thanks friend. See you again.

With all said and done ¿How about picking the game and bring it to your console right now?, It deserves a place among your collection of games.
Since May 11th's release will be Mazinger Z and the "Namco-Suprise-Namco-Taito" pattern broken with Tecmo's Wild Fang (Tecmo Knight) on May 2nd, it's now up to Hamster to figure out what will be next on May 18 and 25.



Good vintage shooting that gets brilliant results on any scale.