Title Screen

When I first heard about Galaga Legions I grew concerned. Galaga, being my favorite arcade game, is not something to be trifled with. Yes, there were other games in the franchise like Galaga ’88 which introduced the triple-capture, but really only Galaga stands out in the popular memory. And for good reason! Galaga is a great game. It’s gameplay is well crafted (rate of fire and player movement is balanced with enemy patterns), its sound effects and music are minimal but appropriate, it is colorful, and its mechanics are among the best of the genre. While not the first top-down shooter, few of its contemporaries have stood the test of time quite like Galaga.

Galaga Legions isn’t the first Galaga to hit the Xbox Live Marketplace. In fact, the XBLA release of Galaga from July of 2006 is probably the most competent port of the arcade game. But to take a simple game like Galaga and introduce a whole new set of mechanics and fill up the screen with hundreds of neon enemies overwhelming the playing field? I was turned off at just the thought.

But, like with any game experience, you shouldn’t judge it until you play it. So I downloaded the demo and instantly fell in love. It’s the intensity of Ikaruga mixed with the tactice experience of the original game. So, then, how did they make a game that felt like Galaga even if it looked nothing like it? By focusing on evolving the core gameplay one mechanic at a time.

Waves of Enemies

Ship and Enemy Movement
In the arcade Galaga, the movement of the players ship was restricted to a horizontal axis across the bottom of the screen. Enemies would fly in from the sides and top, but would not touch the bottom of the screen unless attacking outside their formation. The player needed to be able to actively destroy waves of Galaga ships as they formed, avoid missiles, avoid kamikaze enemies dive-bombing the player, and defend against ships that have broken formation to attack. Looking at these stages, we see that gameplay is comprised of active firing, defensive firing, and dodging.

Galaga Legions uses the same three stages, though it has varied their order and introduced new ways to attack (which I will elaborate on below). Legions is divided into areas, sets, and waves. The five areas of the game use different enemies and patterns to increase the level of difficulty. Within an area, a set is comprised of series of waves of approaching enemies. Sets let the game reset the difficulty, so that instead of always building toward a culminating moment, the action can peak and subside.

The appearance of enemies on screen is actually traced with neon blue lines before they approach from offscreen or orange squares to signify they will spawn directly in the playing field. This solves the problem of having to memorize exact patterns in sequence, which was the crux of a skilled Galaga player, but would be too much for the fast-paced action and large number of enemies in Galaga Legions. However, in both instances it is crucial to learn where to be at a given moment and where to be firing. Just because a Galaga Legions player knows where the enemies will be doesn’t mean they don’t have to learn the most tactical position for a wave. The same can be said for the original Galaga.

Captured Galaga Ships

Weapons
Perhaps the defining feature of Galaga Legions is its firing system. In the original Galaga the player could only fire a couple of shots from a single ship at one time. This necessitated the capturing mechanism where the player could purposely have their fighter captured by the enemy, free it by destroying the captor, and then double up their cannon (though increasing the surface area of potential damage). In Galaga ’88 a third fighter could be captured.

Galaga Legions starts the player off with a normal cannon firing from the ship and two additional turrets which can be placed anywhere on the screen using the right analog stick. They do not take damage so they can be placed in harms way, they can face any of the cardinal directions, and they can be recalled to the main ship by the push of a button or by flying over them. Multi-directional fire is what allows for the waves of enemies to come from all different directions and the tactical deployment and recall of the satellite turrets depending on the situation. This takes a fundamental Galaga mechanic and evolves it to be used with the new enemy formations.

The ‘captured fighter‘ appears quite different in Galaga Legions, but the similarities under the surface are surprising. Having your fighter captured in the arcade Galaga is defined by three things: risk, payoff, and detriments. You risk losing a life/ship when having your fighter captured, your firepower is doubled to make play faster and stronger, and you have an increased surface area that is more susceptible to being destroyed. In Galaga Legions you capture enemy ships by firing upon a black hole and attaching enemies to your satellite turrets. The risk in capturing the Galaga ships is the difficulty in firing on the blackhole while navigating the enemies already on screen. Each turret can hold up to 8 enemy ships, drastically increasing the player’s firepower, but can be destroyed if touched by another enemy’s ship. With the sheer number of enemies on the screen the strategy turns to protecting your satellites so as to sustain the increased firepower for as long as possible. Doing so requires careful planning and moving in ways that might put the main ship in more danger than if it was just moving on its own.

The Vintage Skin in Galaga Legions

Appearance and Visual Style
Galaga Legions employs multiple visual styles depending on the skin the player chooses at the beginning. There’s new original style, there’s the “vintage” style which uses a Galaga skin, the “ancient” style which uses a Galaxian skin, and “hardcore” and “super hardcore” styles. Much like the arcade game, the art is colorful (even more so than Geometry Wars). If the player wants the most immediate connection, the original Galaga skin looks amazing. It’s not all nostalgia, though, as the updated design is built to work the same as the new design.

The color and design choices are made to be visually apparent because some enemies are more important to focus on than others. A player can take out an entire chain of Galaga ships by destroying only the commanding ship, which is a different color, shape, and size. Through these visual clues the player learns that this mechanic is important to their success and the overload of 200 minions on the screen can be ignored in favor or more tactical decisions.

Galaga Legions is a Great Evolution in the Series
The designers at Namco-Bandai did a fantastic job of looking at the core mechanics that made the original arcade game timeless and applying them in contemporary ways. Will Galaga Legions stand the test of time like the brother 27-years its elder? That’s hard to tell. While not as original as Ikaruga, I have enjoyed my time spent with it nearly as much. And, at 800 Microsoft Points ($10) it’s a bargain of its genre. It is built solidly from the ground up and proves that it’s possible to update classic games without ruining them.