| Posted By
Gaia
on 2023-03-09
03:01:27
|  Galaxian - The classic arcade game by Atari that could have been but wasn't
 Atarisoft was a brand name used by Atari, Inc. in 1983 and 1984 to publish video games for non-Atari home computers and consoles. It used a distinctive colour for each platform. Atarisoft worked solely with contractors and had no developers on its payroll. Although only existed for about two years and stopped operations when Warner sold its consumer division to Jack Tramiel, it had several dozens of popular titles in its catalogue. Unfortunately, going out of business coincided with the launch of the TED series so these Atari ports never made it to our platform.
During the haydays of the Home Computer era, the ports of popular arcade games was a big business, so it was no wonder that Atarisoft also jumped into the bandwagon by publishing Galaxian for the Commodore 64. Galaxian is a classic arcade game released originally in 1979. It was Namco's answer to the immensely popular classic, Space Invaders by Taito, but it could only reach a decent second place in popularity behind that.
Galaxian spawned many ports and conversions, the Commodore 64 version was written by Bill Bogenreif (of Designer Software). Interestingly, his company is still around today but it's no longer publishing video games. The game was originally released as a cartridge.
Although the title screen suggests 1983 as release year, the hidden text around the memory address $9DF0 tells a different story: the game was apparently finished and released in 1984 only, during the final days of Atarisoft. Despite the very capable hardware and some unused code chunks, the Commodore 64 port does not use any HW sprites at all, everything runs in multicolor bitmap mode, which made a plus/4 port quite straightforward. Admittedly, the game is quite rough around the edges, has a meager 6.1 score at Lemon64, but it has some of that genuine old-school touch that newer games don't and some folks do appreciate to this day.
The player assumes control of the Galaxip starfighter to protect Earth from several, increasingly difficult waves of alien ships. Gameplay involves destroying each formation of aliens, who are - as opposed to Space Invaders - are continuously launching descending attacks towards the player's ship in an attempt to smash it.
To remain as authentic as possible, the Plus/4 conversion is released as a cartridge dump as well. Enjoy!
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Posted By
Chronos
on 2023-03-10
03:01:27
 | Re: Galaxian - The classic arcade game by Atari that could have been but wasn't
Thank you bro', i love it!
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Posted By
Luca
on 2023-03-10
04:26:05
 | Re: Galaxian - The classic arcade game by Atari that could have been but wasn't
This is a lovely conversion, driven by the pure passion for the semantics of retrogaming, and released few hours before Bil Herd's birthday! Let me reach home after work, and this bad guy will be hot-run into the real machine for a score hunting session!
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2023-03-10
08:09:36
| Re: Galaxian - The classic arcade game by Atari that could have been but wasn't
The best thing about this game is that I'm the #1 player. No-one's ever going to knock me off! Nope.
Ain't gonna happen. Just checked - still at the top, yeah, baby!
#1 forever!
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Posted By
Luca
on 2023-03-10
08:58:28
| Re: Galaxian - The classic arcade game by Atari that could have been but wasn't
@Csabo I feel a sort of fizzling in the air, like someone's gonna play Galaxian Plus4 live tonight at 18:00 GMT/19:00 CET, exactly during TWO important birthdays: one is cited by me before, the second... 
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2023-03-10
10:11:15
| Re: Galaxian - The classic arcade game by Atari that could have been but wasn't
Oh. My. Gosh.
You guys are not going to believe this. I'm serious!
Someone knocked me off the #1 spot!... Like... How?!?! Could this be true? I'm not the best gamer on Plus/4? Who on earth could have foreseen such an absolutely incredible turn of events? If I'm not the big winner here... then who am I?
Welp. I guess I have to curl up in a corner and re-evaluate my life.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2023-03-10
17:57:23
 | Re: Galaxian - The classic arcade game by Atari that could have been but wasn't
Top tip Csabo, always take a photo or screen grab when your in 1st place! That way you have evidence and can be proud all over again knowing the glory was all yours. 
Nice one Gaia for porting a C64 cart to Plus/4!!
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Posted By
Lavina
on 2023-03-11
10:39:24
 | Re: Galaxian - The classic arcade game by Atari that could have been but wasn't
Did my hall of fame addition.  Nice conversion. I did a quick run with all SpaceInvaders clones and I think that besides Galaxions being the definitive "original" we probably all grew up with, I mostly enjoyed Pulsar/Galaxy. I actually had it as Pulsar. Oh, and Invaders is also very good!! I played a lot with that one. This latter one has some problems with fire, I feel it like lagging, or firing at every 5-6 th keystroke under YAPE. Anyone else?
EDIT: After some practice, unsurprisingly I was able to get to a much higher score. What was really frustrating in the beginning, the dive attacks actually became quite an adrenaline rush in the end... Once you figure it out it's easier. My strategy is to kill one side fast and then you have a place to retreat to. What is really important is that you should not get stuck in the middle when a new level starts because it's nearly impossible to survive the lots of dive attacks that comes almost instantly then. When you are at one side, you need to look for the diagonally aproaching divers from the other side and get beneath them to neutralize them before they collide in you. It's more about watching your ship instead of watching what you shoot above... I really like this clone.
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Posted By
George
on 2023-03-12
17:49:01
 | Re: Galaxian - The classic arcade game by Atari that could have been but wasn't
Gaia Great work. Especially that you made a cartridge of it.
I dedicated a gameplay video to it on my YT channel
PS: New Record 20010 points.
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