Galaxian (Arcade)

A Galaxian is like a more proactive Invader; they won't think twice about charging right at y-- wait, the Galaxians are the humans?

Version Differences#

There are five Galaxian sets in MAME. They seem to follow the chronology below:

Namco	Taito	Midway

Of course, each publisher has a different logo on the title screen. This is the only difference between the Taito set and Namco set 2.

Bonus Life Setting#

• In the oldest sets, there are three extra life settings, and one setting that disables the extra life feature entirely.
• In Midway Set 2 only, the extra life settings are lower.
• In newer sets, there are four extra life settings, and all of the scores are higher than in previous sets.

Older Sets	Midway Set 1	Namco Set 1

• The higher score values meant that the "BONUS GALAXIP" string had to be readjusted.
• In Midway Set 1, the score value and the "PTS" graphic were shifted to the right 8 pixels, potentially putting the "PTS" graphic in the overscan area of the monitor.
• In Namco Set 1, the "BONUS GALAXIP FOR" text was shifted to the left 8 pixels, and the string is now properly centered.

Extra Lives#

Only the older Namco set and the Taito set let the player start with 5 lives.

Bullet Limit#

In older sets, the game only handles up to seven enemy bullets. If seven bullets are already on screen, enemies can't shoot.

In newer sets, the game can handle up to fourteen enemy bullets. To support the new bullet limit, code was added to the bullet drawing routine to flicker the bullets. The game alternates between drawing even ID bullets and odd ID bullets each frame.

Bullet Trajectories#

In newer sets, the bullet drawing routine only updates the horizontal position of bullets that are drawn this frame, halving the effective horizontal speed of every bullet. On older sets, bullet trajectories are more diagonal.

Starting Rank#

The game uses an internal rank variable to control difficulty. It increases by one every wave, and caps at 7.

On older sets, this variable starts at 0. This is why in those sets each alien initially only shoots two bullets at a time. Difficulty maxes out on wave 8.

On newer sets, this variable starts at 2. Difficulty maxes out on wave 6.

References#