Level 2: Galaga (1981) - How It Beat Space Invaders at Its Own Game

<v Speaker 1>Here we are with Games of nineteen eighty one Level
<v Speaker 1>two Galaga.
<v Speaker 2>Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Shirley You Can't
<v Speaker 2>Be Serious podcast. I am here today with some porters
<v Speaker 2>jingling in my pocket, ready to shovel them into a slot.
<v Speaker 3>You get a little change in your pocket going jingle.
<v Speaker 3>Oh my gosh, Georgia satellites. Really, if we had an
<v Speaker 3>arcade anywhere around us, we would be blowing it up
<v Speaker 3>right now. It's been a lot of fun.
<v Speaker 2>I am just depressed about the fact the Top Dog
<v Speaker 2>closed down and we can't go play these games right now.
<v Speaker 2>We've got a stupid COVID that keeps us from going
<v Speaker 2>to any arcade because they're all worried about the germs
<v Speaker 2>on the joysticks or whatever.
<v Speaker 3>And yeah, germs on the joysticks. Joystick germs. Today, we're
<v Speaker 3>going to continue our discussion on Games of nineteen eighty one.
<v Speaker 2>Right the year of the most amazing cabinet video arcade
<v Speaker 2>came games ever, in my opinion.
<v Speaker 3>We're going to talk about another classic today.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so the game we're talking about the day is Galaga.
<v Speaker 3>Let's talk about Gallaga, all right.
<v Speaker 2>So Galaga, we know, is a shooter game, right, it's
<v Speaker 2>a space shooter game, just like Space Invaders. Right, absolutely so.
<v Speaker 2>But right, well, but before Galaga, there was Galaxian.
<v Speaker 3>And do you know anything about Galaxian? I remember playing Galaxian.
<v Speaker 3>If you look.
<v Speaker 2>At Space Invaders, which came out in seventy eight, and
<v Speaker 2>you look at Galaxian, which came out in seventy nine,
<v Speaker 2>you'd be like, oh, my gosh, how do they improve
<v Speaker 2>this much in one year? I'm a huge job huge
<v Speaker 2>you had. You had multi colored spaceships. They were flying
<v Speaker 2>around and smooth flying around, fantastic sound effects, and it
<v Speaker 2>was the first game that used multi colored sprites and
<v Speaker 2>RG colors. Okay, so do you know what Sprite is?
<v Speaker 2>I think it's fair to tell everybody that you and
<v Speaker 2>I are not computer guys per se, and we're not
<v Speaker 2>gamers to the strictest sense. When we were kids who
<v Speaker 2>loved these games.
<v Speaker 3>When we're kids, we're leaning on forty year old knowledge
<v Speaker 3>right here.
<v Speaker 2>Yes we are, yes, And I have you know, I've
<v Speaker 2>got a few gaming systems at my house, but I
<v Speaker 2>don't really.
<v Speaker 3>Get to play them. That's something for my kids.
<v Speaker 2>R My wife and I play a guitar hero When
<v Speaker 2>we first got married, I remember doing that, and we
<v Speaker 2>also played Halo all of this to say we're players,
<v Speaker 2>not programmers or anything like that. So sprites I had
<v Speaker 2>to look it up. Basically, sprites are the way that
<v Speaker 2>we have.
<v Speaker 3>It's not the living lime soda.
<v Speaker 2>But no, no, and we're not talking about the little
<v Speaker 2>fairies either.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, all right, good.
<v Speaker 2>So they sprites they called them stamps back then. They
<v Speaker 2>are the little characters that move around on a map.
<v Speaker 3>Right.
<v Speaker 2>So you with Space Invaders, you've got guys moving back
<v Speaker 2>and forth in a straight line on a screen. With
<v Speaker 2>Galaga and Galaxian, they're moving like space is moving by.
<v Speaker 2>And you know, you look at games like Donkey Kong,
<v Speaker 2>you've got a character like Mario who's moving along through
<v Speaker 2>a maze of stuff. That's what sprites are. They're little
<v Speaker 2>characters that move along a screen, creating a more three
<v Speaker 2>dimensional effect on a.
<v Speaker 3>Two D game. Okay, okay, yep.
<v Speaker 2>So the Namco Galaxian Arcade system board for Galaxian featured
<v Speaker 2>animated multicolored sprites, and it was the first one to
<v Speaker 2>do this. It had pre loaded sprites all over a
<v Speaker 2>scrolling background, and that became the basis for Nintendo's Radar scope,
<v Speaker 2>which is of course they became Donkey Kong, right, and
<v Speaker 2>it was a huge boost for the Nintendo because they
<v Speaker 2>had all kinds of sprites going on on their screens.
<v Speaker 3>Sure, okay, yeah, makes sense.
<v Speaker 2>So Galaxian had been developed as a hey, this is
<v Speaker 2>our version of Space Invaders, and it was a million
<v Speaker 2>times better, right, and then in nineteen eighty one we
<v Speaker 2>have the creation of basically Galaxi in part two, except
<v Speaker 2>that they call it Galaga. And Galaga was to Galaxy
<v Speaker 2>and what Miss pac Man was to pac Man.
<v Speaker 3>It's a big step forward in the game. Yes, all right,
<v Speaker 3>I've got a question for you. Okay, I've ever played
<v Speaker 3>the game Gapless now Gapless otherwise known as Galagha three. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>it's the sequel to Gallagha. I did not know existed
<v Speaker 3>until today. And it wasn't Galaga two. Well, I guess
<v Speaker 3>it goes Galaxian Galaga Galaga three. That doesn't that's not well,
<v Speaker 3>you know, it's Japanese. It's about your line of thinking.
<v Speaker 2>Right, Yes, okay, maybe it's Galica Cube. Maybe because I
<v Speaker 2>think if I remember right when I saw it, when
<v Speaker 2>I read about this, like you had a whole bunch
<v Speaker 2>of ships that could shoot at the same time. Yes, okay, yes,
<v Speaker 2>this came out in nineteen eighty four. I don't know
<v Speaker 2>why this got by me.
<v Speaker 3>I was definitely in the arcade still at that time,
<v Speaker 3>but don't remember this game at all. Yeah. No, for
<v Speaker 3>whatever reason, Galaga eschedon in my memory.
<v Speaker 2>Because it's iconic. It is one of the best games
<v Speaker 2>of all time.
<v Speaker 3>It is one of the best games. It is. I
<v Speaker 3>mean it sounds like it's gapless. Was maybe the cousin etti, Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>maybe the crystal skull. That is a conversation for another day. Right, So,
<v Speaker 3>Galagha was developed by this guy called Shigeru Yokoyama. Yes,
<v Speaker 3>so he developed this game, originally developed for the Galaxian
<v Speaker 3>arcade board. Right. So, as he was developing this, he
<v Speaker 3>wanted to create another way for the enemies to attack you. Okay, so,
<v Speaker 3>other than your standard bombs or bullets or missiles. He
<v Speaker 3>threw in the idea of a tractor beam, right, which
<v Speaker 3>he learned from a movie in which a ship is
<v Speaker 3>pulled in by another ship with a tractor beam. Some
<v Speaker 3>unnamed new movie. The I could not in my studies
<v Speaker 3>to find the name of the movie. However, I do
<v Speaker 3>remember a small movie called Star Wars. Ah, yeah, where
<v Speaker 3>this ship you may have heard of called the Millennium
<v Speaker 3>Falcon is pulled in by a tractor beam. We're caught
<v Speaker 3>in the tractor beam. That's right. It's got to be
<v Speaker 3>Star Wars, right, it has it has to be, it
<v Speaker 3>has to be. He also based on what he had
<v Speaker 3>seen in pac Man and rally X. So pac Man
<v Speaker 3>had an intermission, right, yeah, where.
<v Speaker 2>You get a little bit of the storyline, you get
<v Speaker 2>you get your hand break so you don't get carble tom.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, yeah, and rally X had a bonus round, right,
<v Speaker 3>and he thought, how about we combine the intermission with
<v Speaker 3>the bonus round. And that's really what makes Kaliga really
<v Speaker 3>stand out in my opinions. Two things. You have the
<v Speaker 3>tractor beam that captures the ship yep. And when you
<v Speaker 3>shoot the alien, the Boss Galaga that's the name of
<v Speaker 3>that alien, that Boss Galagha who's captured your ship, you
<v Speaker 3>then get to retake your ship and have dual shooters. Dude.
<v Speaker 2>I can remember with Clarity being in the arcade and
<v Speaker 2>seeing Gallagher for the first time after having played Space
<v Speaker 2>Invaders and probably Galaxian and seeing that happen, seeing that
<v Speaker 2>I'm like, what's going what, what's happening right now?
<v Speaker 3>What is that blu ray? Is it gonna kill him?
<v Speaker 3>What's gonna And I'm like, oh, it turned red. Is
<v Speaker 3>he a bad guy? Now? What's gonna happen? I know? Right?
<v Speaker 2>And then when I saw the guy, I mean, you know,
<v Speaker 2>I'm just a kid watching somebody who knew what they
<v Speaker 2>were doing play.
<v Speaker 3>He shoots the Galaga.
<v Speaker 2>Ship and his ship returns to him and there's double fire.
<v Speaker 2>I'm like, oh, it's a game changer, right, It's amazing.
<v Speaker 3>It's what makes the game so much more fun. Absolutely. So.
<v Speaker 3>Two things that make Galagha stand out, in my opinion,
<v Speaker 3>way better than Galax in our Space vatags. Yeah, two
<v Speaker 3>things the dual shooting ships, yes, and the challenging stages.
<v Speaker 2>That part where they come on and then they fly
<v Speaker 2>off the screen. It actually was an accident. It was
<v Speaker 2>a bug in the system. So what he's trying to
<v Speaker 2>come up with the intermission idea is one of his
<v Speaker 2>other designers is like, hey, you've got a bug in
<v Speaker 2>the system and these guys are just flying off the screen,
<v Speaker 2>and he's like, oh, peanut, butter, chocolate, I got it.
<v Speaker 2>Our intermission is going to be. The Galaga ships come
<v Speaker 2>in for just a bit. You have to shoot them
<v Speaker 2>before they fly off the screen, and that's how you
<v Speaker 2>get the challenging sang.
<v Speaker 3>Oh, absolutely genius. It's Gala is such a great game.
<v Speaker 3>One of the things I want to mention, here's a
<v Speaker 3>little tidbit for you, Okay, for you older arcade guys. Yes,
<v Speaker 3>one of the enemies, so you have I don't know
<v Speaker 3>how to exactly describe it. If you've ever played the game,
<v Speaker 3>you'll know what I'm saying. But the one alien ship
<v Speaker 3>actually morps into three alien ships, yes, and they attack you.
<v Speaker 3>So good.
<v Speaker 2>The graphics, oh my gosh, so incredible. We talked about Galaxian,
<v Speaker 2>how the music was better and the sound effects of better,
<v Speaker 2>and Galaga took it up like five notches.
<v Speaker 3>Absolutely absolutely. One of those ships is the Galaxian flagship
<v Speaker 3>from the game Galaxy. Oh right, right, okay, yeah, it's
<v Speaker 3>kind of cool. Yes, flashback to Galaxian. Okay.
<v Speaker 2>So one of the other new features on it was
<v Speaker 2>that the ship moved faster than it did in Galaxian.
<v Speaker 2>You remember that, Yes, Glaxian had a slower ship, yes,
<v Speaker 2>and so.
<v Speaker 3>We get a faster ship.
<v Speaker 2>Then The other new feature is that instead of firing
<v Speaker 2>just one at a time, like Space Invaders and Galaxian
<v Speaker 2>had done, you could fire multiple shots at the same time,
<v Speaker 2>and not with I'm not even talking about with two ships.
<v Speaker 2>I'm talking about with one ship. You're like, oh my gosh.
<v Speaker 3>Because great Galaxian and Space Vaders sounded like this, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>and Galagha is like, yep, we're enjoying this. We are.
<v Speaker 2>So I can remember playing this as a I mean,
<v Speaker 2>I'm a little kid, right, I'm very young kid, yes,
<v Speaker 2>And so my technique was just bound hammer, just I'm
<v Speaker 2>moving back and forth trying to avoid the ships and
<v Speaker 2>just hitting that fire button on repeat, like there's no
<v Speaker 2>there's no strategy to the firing mechanism. As an adult,
<v Speaker 2>having gone back and play the game, I am a
<v Speaker 2>I'm not a rapid fire guy anymore. I'm more calculated delivered, Yes,
<v Speaker 2>calculated and delivered in my shots. Okay, except in challenging
<v Speaker 2>stage and then I have two ships and then I'm
<v Speaker 2>back to rapid fire.
<v Speaker 3>Twelve year old hammer in the machine trying to break it.
<v Speaker 3>You're hitting it so hard. So a couple of interesting
<v Speaker 3>things about this, right, So when Yoku Yama was tasked
<v Speaker 3>with creating this new sequel to Galaxian. He came up
<v Speaker 3>with another game called King and Balloon. Yes, King and Balloon,
<v Speaker 3>not really no, Okay, there you go. But the second
<v Speaker 3>game it came up with was Gallagha. Right, you're right
<v Speaker 3>for me to blow your mind. I'm gonna blow your mind. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>all right, now, if you still play Galagha and you
<v Speaker 3>enjoy the integrity of the game, you might want to
<v Speaker 3>just close your ears for just a second. Are you
<v Speaker 3>about to talk about the cheat? Yes? Do you know
<v Speaker 3>the cheat? I know the cheat? Well, hopefully you dear listener,
<v Speaker 3>I will blow your mind and I tell you this, Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I know about the cheat. Okay, this blew my mind
<v Speaker 3>because I had no idea.
<v Speaker 2>I am ready to go find a Gallagher game just
<v Speaker 2>so that I can try this out.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, yes, all right, So as I understand, I haven't
<v Speaker 3>done this yet, but I watched it.
<v Speaker 2>We'll be right back after these messages.
<v Speaker 3>No, I'm sorry, We're not gonna tease you like that.
<v Speaker 3>So in the first round, first phase, first phase phase one,
<v Speaker 3>you have these aliens who dive down and then load
<v Speaker 3>into their rows one, two, three, four. You shoot him,
<v Speaker 3>just like normal. But the fifth wave you leave them alone.
<v Speaker 3>So the blue guys that will load on the far left,
<v Speaker 3>you don't shoot them, right, You shoot everybody else but
<v Speaker 3>those two guys, yep, and you let them chase you
<v Speaker 3>around for about ten minutes. It's really a long time.
<v Speaker 3>It is a long time. It's a long time, ten
<v Speaker 3>or twelve minutes. And then actually they'll stop shooting at
<v Speaker 3>you after a while, but you still have to wait
<v Speaker 3>because they fake you out sometimes.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so you keep waiting, just kidding, we do have
<v Speaker 2>more bullets.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, exactly, So you wait until they get so bored
<v Speaker 3>they won't shoot at you anymore, right, And it takes
<v Speaker 3>a long time after that. Once they stop shooting at you,
<v Speaker 3>you shoot them, and for the rest.
<v Speaker 2>Of the game, rest of the whole game.
<v Speaker 3>The rest of the whole game, the enemies will not
<v Speaker 3>fire at you. My mind was blown when I found it.
<v Speaker 3>Believe that I was going to try to knock you
<v Speaker 3>out with it as well. Crap.
<v Speaker 2>But this is the wonderful thing about doing this podcast
<v Speaker 2>is we learn these things that we never knew. And
<v Speaker 2>the first time it came out like nobody knew it.
<v Speaker 2>Nobody knew this little trick, and nobody knows why it's there,
<v Speaker 2>whether it's a bug, or it's an Easter egg or
<v Speaker 2>what you know, if it's some sort of testing thing
<v Speaker 2>that they had in there. Nobody knows why it's there.
<v Speaker 2>But it didn't come out until I think it was
<v Speaker 2>like nineteen eighty three in a Joystick magazine that it
<v Speaker 2>became public knowledge.
<v Speaker 3>Wow, well maybe it's maybe people know about it. I'm
<v Speaker 3>late to the game on a lot of teams, but
<v Speaker 3>can you imagine the scores you would get if you
<v Speaker 3>had a dual shooter and they can't shoot at you?
<v Speaker 3>Freaking out be rocking the game? We should go play
<v Speaker 3>gallaghery go? I want to go? Okay? All right. One
<v Speaker 3>of the interesting things that I learned about Gallic when
<v Speaker 3>they developed the game, they would play it in their
<v Speaker 3>computer company, right, yes, And so the guys who had
<v Speaker 3>developed it, they of course show it to their peers
<v Speaker 3>and they're all hanging around and the game isn't really popular. Yes,
<v Speaker 3>these guys are proud of it. They like it. They
<v Speaker 3>think it's a fun game. But when they test it out,
<v Speaker 3>you know that you put it out in a restaurant
<v Speaker 3>or a bar or whatever. They tested out it did poorly, okay,
<v Speaker 3>And it's not because people didn't like it. It made
<v Speaker 3>less money because people played for a longer period of time. Yes,
<v Speaker 3>So they took it back and they learned from it,
<v Speaker 3>and they're like, Okay, this game is fun. People like it.
<v Speaker 3>It's popular. Just it's too easy, so they made the
<v Speaker 3>levels more difficult. Right. This is something that I found interesting. Okay, Okay.
<v Speaker 3>The average arcade game at the time, the average time
<v Speaker 3>spent per game, yes, was about four minutes, and Galagha
<v Speaker 3>still came in at seven minutes, which is nearly twice
<v Speaker 3>as much as the average game. Right, But that makes
<v Speaker 3>it a more enjoyable, more fulfilling experience for the players.
<v Speaker 3>To me, that's why it's standing that tests the time,
<v Speaker 3>because it's the gameplay is so much fun and it's
<v Speaker 3>reasonably easy to get good at. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So can we talk about the music for a second, sure? Okay.
<v Speaker 2>So the composer for Galaga is Nobuki. Yes, he is
<v Speaker 2>a guy who is considered the father of game musically.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, okay.
<v Speaker 2>So Anogi had grown up in Japan. Obviously, he got
<v Speaker 2>his degree in engineering, but it was kind of a
<v Speaker 2>casual thing. He was more interested in music and synthesized
<v Speaker 2>music specifically and just kind of on a dare basically
<v Speaker 2>applied at NAMCO and.
<v Speaker 3>Got the job.
<v Speaker 2>Well, this was nineteen eighty. They come out with the
<v Speaker 2>game rally X, right, and I don't know if you
<v Speaker 2>remember the screen where you entered your name, your initials
<v Speaker 2>for the high score on rally X had fantastic music.
<v Speaker 2>That was him, and so they were so impressed by that.
<v Speaker 2>They're like, hey, we would like you to do music
<v Speaker 2>for the entirety of Galaga. And if you remember Galagh's
<v Speaker 2>high score, I mean it's like magical. You feel like
<v Speaker 2>the end of Star Wars and.
<v Speaker 3>You're getting the metal put on you. It's awesome.
<v Speaker 2>And so he went on to be, like I said,
<v Speaker 2>the father of video game music. The first time they
<v Speaker 2>released a record that was a video game soundtrack record,
<v Speaker 2>it was him working with the other guy to make
<v Speaker 2>that soundtrack. I think that, like, there are ten of
<v Speaker 2>those that have come out, and he was responsible for
<v Speaker 2>five of them.
<v Speaker 3>He is done.
<v Speaker 2>You remember the game Mappy, Yeah, I love that Mappy again.
<v Speaker 2>It's fantastic music. He's the one responsible. Tragically, he passed
<v Speaker 2>away twenty nineteen, big loss. But the music from Galaica
<v Speaker 2>is one of the key features that makes it a
<v Speaker 2>fantastic game.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah, all right, well we're starting to wrap Gallagay.
<v Speaker 3>I just want to make one more comment about Galaghay. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>So obviously, of these five games that we're talking about
<v Speaker 3>this series, Yeah, the biggest pisser of all to me, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>is when you shoot your own ship. Oh my god,
<v Speaker 3>when Miss Maaguine gets eaten, ah, dang it, gush, dang it,
<v Speaker 3>I'm mad about that, or Froger gets hit by a
<v Speaker 3>car or whatever. But when you shoot your own ship,
<v Speaker 3>that to me, right, that's when the big, the big
<v Speaker 3>profanity comes out at there, kay.
<v Speaker 2>Absolutely, because you're taking a risk in the first place, right,
<v Speaker 2>deliberately sacrificing maybe one of your lives, yeah, in order
<v Speaker 2>to get the double shot ship, because you can hit him,
<v Speaker 2>and you can hit him wrong and he explodes him
<v Speaker 2>in the ear. But if if you've ever done this,
<v Speaker 2>if you've hit it, hit the ship that's got your ship,
<v Speaker 2>and your ship spins and starts floating down, and you
<v Speaker 2>just accidentally shoot at it as it's floating down, it
<v Speaker 2>will still explode. So you literally you've lost it for
<v Speaker 2>no reason at all. Nobody's shooting at you, nobody's bothering you.
<v Speaker 2>You just were stupid.
<v Speaker 3>Still makes me mad. All right, Well that about wraps Galigha. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>hope you enjoyed it. Hope you try out that funky trick.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I hope you have a game available to you
<v Speaker 2>to me too, Me too, have to track one down.
<v Speaker 3>There's one in Arlington. I know we may have to
<v Speaker 3>travel down just to try it.
<v Speaker 2>Just you know, i'p skipping a jump down.
<v Speaker 3>All right, guys, thank you for joining us for this
<v Speaker 3>coverage of Galiga.
<v Speaker 2>Be sure to hit that subscribe button in the face,
<v Speaker 2>hit us up on Facebook, up on Twitter, hit us
<v Speaker 2>up on Patreon, and we thank you.
<v Speaker 3>We'll see them, I guess