Galaga (7800)
Waves of insectoid ships swoop down in whooshing formations; one of them catches you in a tractor beam and carries your ship away. But if you free it, you gain double firepower. Galaga elevated the space shooter into an art form, and its Atari 7800 version brought this arcade gem home.
The original arcade machine was created by the Japanese studio Namco and released in 1981 as the successor to Galaxian. Galaga immediately became one of the most successful and influential shooters of the golden age of arcades. The home conversion for the Atari 7800 ProSystem arrived in the latter half of the eighties and ranks among the most faithful ports this console offered.
The mechanics are perfectly honed. Enemy ships fly onto the screen in elegant formations, settle at the top, and then attack in sharp solo runs. The stroke of genius is the capture: an enemy beam can steal your ship, but when you shoot the attacker down, you get your ship back joined into a pair with doubled fire. On top of that, between rounds come bonus "challenging stages" where you simply collect points without risk. This pacing keeps tension and reward in perfect balance.
Galaga is rightly regarded today as one of the best shooters of all time and has become a pop-culture icon, cited in films and games. Its enemy formations and capture system influenced the entire genre and it still appears in countless compilations and remasters. The 7800 version proved the console could reproduce the arcade experience surprisingly faithfully.
Thanks to emulation you can play Galaga virtually anywhere, but the Atari 7800 port is worth attention too as testimony to the ambitions of this underrated console. It's still one of the most addictive shooters ever made.
Why play: A timeless shooter classic with an ingenious ship-capture system. One of the most faithful arcade ports on the Atari 7800.
Game 37 of 37 for Atari 7800
The same title elsewhere (1)
The arcade machine ran on its own dedicated hardware, letting it keep many enemy formations on screen at once without slowdown and with sharp, vivid colors. The Atari 7800 port is generally considered one of the better home conversions of classic arcade shooters from that era – its Maria graphics chip preserved most of the enemy waves and their bright colors, so at first glance the game looks quite close to the original. Even so, the console version can show minor slowdown or sprite flicker during the busiest moments on screen, something the arcade board never suffered from.
