Galaga '88 - MAME software

NEC PC-Engine HuCARD published 35 years ago:

Galaga '88 © 1988 NAMCOT.

Galaga '88 is a vertical shooter and conversion of Namco's arcade game of the same name originally released in 1987. Shoot the descending aliens! The game closely follows the gameplay mechanics introduced by Galaga and Galaxian, although it adds its own twists to the classic formula. It introduces a myriad of new and wacky enemies - some comically inflate as they get hit, some combine into larger foes whereas others explode and release swarms of all kind of tiny creatures. Every few levels, the player enters a bonus stage where formations of dancing aliens must be destroyed for points, and some levels even switch to vertical scrolling phases interspersed with a few boss battles. Although the game only features seven large areas (all divided into 25 sub-stages), the player can travel through different dimensions and technically access new and unique levels (two blue warp-pods must be collected in each area in order to jump to a higher dimension, giving the game a total of 22 areas). Finally, as in the original Galaga, some enemies can capture the player's ship with their tractor beams, and successfully freeing the captured ship doubles the player's firepower - the operation can be performed twice for the ultimate and powerful triple-ship! Interestingly, Galaga'88 allows the player to directly start the game with a double-ship (at the cost of one life).

TECHNICAL
Game ID: NC63002

TRIVIA
Galaga '88 for PC-Engine was released on August 15, 1988 in Japan for 4,900 Yen. It was then re-released on March 17, 2011 as a PC-Engine Classics edition.

This game is known in outside Japan as "Galaga '90".

Galaga '88 was an arcade game originally released in 1987 by Namco. Galaga '88 for the PC-Engine is a fairly accurate conversion. The first obvious difference is the screen aspect ratio - the arcade game runs on a vertically oriented monitor which gives the player a better field of view. Then each area in the arcade game greets the player with a quick animation featuring a creature mumbling some random alien words, feature curiously removed from the PC-Engine port (probably due to cartridge space limitations). Finally, the arcade game is overall a bit more difficult, and the alien ships are a lot more aggressive.

PORTS

• CONSOLES:

Nintendo Wii [Virtual Console] [JP] (mar.20, 2007) "Galaga '88 [Model PAWJ]"
Nintendo Wii [Virtual Console] [US] (aug.6, 2007) "Galaga '90 [Model PAWE]"
Nintendo Wii [Virtual Console] [EU] (aug.10, 2007) "Galaga '90 [Model PAWP]"
Nintendo Wii [Virtual Console] [AU] (aug.17, 2007) "Galaga '90"

CONTRIBUTE
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