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Playing the arcade version of Galaga, extracted from the Steam version of Arcade Game Series: Galaga played in ancient MAME 0.119!
According to a breakdown I found, the Difficulty DIP switch setting for the game just changes what attack patterns the enemies use, up to stage 20, at which point they all become the same:
https://www.twingalaxies.com/archive/index.php/t-120444.html
"PhantomDJ
09-04-2008, 12:53 AM"
"There are 13 different attack patterns in Galaga. This does not include the 8 different challenging stages, which occur on levels 3, 7, 11, 15, 19, 23, etc. Refer to the table below to see which attack pattern occurs on which stage, depending on the dip switch difficulty setting: (note that the challenging stages are omitted)
Stage#: 01 02 04 05 06 08 09 10 12 13 14 16 17 18 20 21 22
pattern: 01 02 05 04 03 05 07 01 08 10 09 11 13 01 11 13 12 ; Easy Skill
pattern: 01 02 03 04 01 05 07 06 05 07 01 08 10 09 11 13 12 ; Medium Skill
pattern: 01 02 03 07 06 08 10 01 08 13 12 11 13 12 11 13 12 ; Hard Skill
pattern: 01 02 08 10 09 08 13 12 11 13 12 11 13 12 11 13 12 ; Hardest Skill
After stage 22, the attack patterns from stages 20,21,22 repeat.
Attack pattern 01 is the one where there are no extra enemies and the enemies do not shoot on their way into formation. We see that all skill levels start with this pattern, and it is repeated on stage 10 and 18 for "easy" skill, stage 6 and 14 for "medium" skill, stage 10 for "hard" skill and never again for "hardest" skill.
Looking closely at this table, I believe that the settings for "easy" and "medium" are backwards:
"medium" gives the easy attack pattern 01 on earlier stages (stages 6 and 14) than does the "easy" skill (stages 10 and 18). Also, the hardest attack patterns (11 and 13) occur eariler on the "easy" skill (stages 16 and 17) than the "medium" skill (stages 20 and 21).
In any case, once the player reaches stage 20, all skill levels behave the same, at least with regard to the incoming attack patterns."
I was probably mostly on Medium difficulty; I tried switching the difficulty dip setting more than that, but now I'm thinking it probably doesn't take effect until you restart the ROM; later I restarted on Hardest but didn't notice a real difference, maybe because I wasn't familiar enough with the difference in attack patterns.
I was also having difficulty with MAME 0.119's task-switch keyboard focus quirk. : PPP (Note to self: got out w/ Win key, r-click taskbar tab)
Enemy dive attacks not being randomized, unlike the Famicom version, might not be that big a deal in practice since in theory the enemies that survive your bombardment of their scripted entrance formations will tend to be different each time anyway, I suppose.
I definitely like the more subtle starfield background in the Famicom version better than the one here; there are more stars here but their blinking is harsher and they all scroll at the same speed.
And I think I prefer the way in which the enemies are closer-up and effectively larger on-screen in the Famicom version, and definitely that you seem to move side to side slightly faster in that version. I'd worried it might mean the Famicom version was too easy, but I doubled my Famicom score here in the arcade version--although probably on its Easy difficulty; I'd set the dips to Medium didn't think to reboot the ROM.
I did kind of end up getting into this version more than I thought I would! Definitely didn't hate it like I thought I might, after my youth of getting sick of it being everywhere and writing it off. (Although I think Namco didn't have their North American publishing side really set up back then; they had Midway bringing their stuff over in arcades, and Tengen publishing Pac-Man on NES, for instance; they didn't publish an NES game themselves in North America until '87, and didn't get Galaga out in the States on NES until '88, 3 years after the Famicom version--and by that time, two sequels in the series were out in arcades, and they didn't even bring those out on Famicom, much less NES! (They brought the 2nd of them to TG16. 'p'))
But it doesn't have the magnetic appeal to my simple senses that the NES version with its magnified action and gorgeous stars does, so if I stick to a Galaga, it'll probably be to that one. |
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