It's so simple, yet so captivating Ã¢â‚¬â€œ after you finish one swarm of aliens, another swarm comes at you, stronger and more aggressive and there is only one objective Ã¢â‚¬â€œ to survive. Unlike the Invaders, Galaxians have kamikaze Ã¢â‚¬â€œ like ships that dive at you from time to time and you have to avoid them if you want to stay alive. As in Space Invaders, the objective is to shoot and destroy all attacking alien ships that are shooting back at you.

It was a huge sucess and is considered one of the most popular games of the golden age of arcade video games. That was the time when almost nobody has ever seen a computer, and kids hung around shops and spent quarters to play this and other games all day, competing with each other who will get the highest score. Galaxian is an old school fixed shooter style arcade game published in the distant 1979 in Japan by Namco and it was designed to compete with the already legendary Space Invaders.

It retains that 'one more go' feel of all the truly great arcade games and while its sequels Galaga and Gaplus add in new features, this remains the original and perhaps the best. Although simplistic and lacking in variety, Galaxian is a tough and addictive old-school shooter that is a must play for video game historians or those curious about the industry's origins. Also daring for the time were the game's visuals, which were in colour as opposed to the black and white of Space Invaders and while this may seem unremarkable now, it was an undeniable leap forward in the 70s. Mixing things up a bit is the aliens' occasional desire to launch themselves on kamikaze-style attacks towards the player, which makes this probably the first game to feature enemies with individual personalities. Galaxian pretty much copies everything about Space Invaders, being a straightforward shooter where players control a spaceship and must destroy hordes of attacking aliens as they descend the screen. However, while its novelties made it stand out from the crowd at the time, those differences don't really mark it out as anything unusual today and yet it is an historically important game that retains its charms.

Another legendary arcade shooter from the early days of gaming, Galaxian is ostensibly similar to its main rival from the same period, Space Invaders.

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