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Playing Hi Score Mode in Arcade Archives Galaga'88 on PS4!
Hamster both in the game and on their web site write the game title with no space before the "'88."
'88 reverses from Gaplus' hardcore shooter direction, effectively going back to Galaga as a base on which to build, then moving in a mildly cute-em-up direction, with blazingly charming sound effects in particular.
The bitmap backgrounds make some enemy bullets hard see in certain stages, though, and then, around the time you get past the first boss in stage 10--who has bright hit-flash, gargh--it's starting to get into Gaplus mania territory, with streams of enemies pinwheeling onto the screen faster than the game can animate them, and asteroids hovering there just to block your shots and obscure things further--and it's just getting not-so-fun anymore.
Expanding your ship to triple-shot capacity through capture by enemy Galaga tractor beams is neat at first, but once things get busy it's really tough to pull off and I'm more likely to shoot my own ship, or shoot the Galaga too early, and just lose everything; but you feel compelled to try because stuff is feeling like it's moving too fast or taking too many hits to enable you to survive with just 1x or 2x shot power--and the whole thing is just getting stressful, unlike blissful Galaga, which they just keep trying too hard to one-up.
Although, enemy dives ARE randomized, unlike arcade Galaga and both NES (2020) and arcade Gaplus--but LIKE Famicom Galaga! So maybe more specifically they kind of used Famicom Galaga as their basis for this. Strange to think that they would have developed the randomization of dive attacks specifically for Famicom Galaga, or so it seems; like, were they exploring new mechanics when they made that port?? Hm and they did make its background stars scroll at different speeds, vs the single speed of arcade Galaga's background, and that multi-speed scrolling starfield style was carried forward in Gaplus and '88. Now I'm going to be thinking of 1985's Famicom Galaga port as "Galaga '85." ^ _^ (Although that is unfair to even earlier Galaga ports like the Sord M5, SG-1000, and MSX versions which had already had multi-speed background starfields (but NOT the Atari 7800 version!).) |
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