![]() ![]() I've smacked into lots of aliens that I thought were farther away. Aliens get bigger (closer) and smaller (farther away), but you're not feeling any sense of depth, and it's very difficult to judge distances. I quickly came to call this the ass view, and it first struck me as among the poorest attempts at 3D-ness that I'd ever encountered. Once you finish the first two waves, with you at the bottom and the aliens at the top, then you move to a different view - the camera behind you and the aliens out in the distance ahead of you. In the first impressions column, Galaga is failing badly. As a whole, the game seemed kind of bereft of creative power ups, which is frequently one of the ways that old arcade games are modified to make them more interesting than their quarter-guzzling parents. ![]() Not like I could fly off the bottom of the screen to be closer to the aliens. The first improvement I got was thrust, but I couldn't seem to do anything with it. Finally, there are badge-like things (the game calls them merits), and if you collect enough of them, your ship gets an improvement. There are also little ship medallions that you can collect to replenish your shield. A captured alien ship adds its firepower to yours. Catching it temporarily gives you the ability to capture alien ships with a conic beam much in the same way that the aliens could capture your ship in the old arcade game. Destroying one specific type of alien craft will sometimes release a shining cube. Nothing spectacular, just a blip and they're gone - very limited sound and video effects. The aliens, most of which look like insects of some sort, are drawn kind of 3D with some shading, but they don't flap their wings or anything and are generally not animated, and there are only a couple of different alien types. You're the ship at the bottom shooting up at formations of aliens at the top. Wave 1: the game starts out looking much like the original Galaga, if with jazzed up backgrounds. Stage 1: The mission: Destroy everything in sight. The game consists of nine stages, each with multiple waves of alien attackers. It would be inaccurate to describe Galaga: Destination Earth as a remake of the arcade classic, but this later-day sequel is designed to pay due homage to the compulsive gameplay that made the original so popular. Even the single-axis, "back-and-forth" movement of the fighter may be appreciated by arcade veterans. Giant beetle-like Galaga command ships can still capture a player's fighter and stolen fighters can still be recovered with a careful shot at the captor, doubling the player's fire power. Accuracy is still rewarded by allowing a limited number of shots on the screen at once. Insectival enemies still enter the screen in familiar single- and double-file strings of ships and do not begin their waves of attack until all are in formation. At first glance, the new 3D graphics might make it hard to even recognize the game as being related to the original arcade hit, but many of the crucial aspects of gameplay that made Galaga an addiction for so many arcade-goers in the early 1980s are reproduced in this later release. Among the several classic arcade games that Hasbro Interactive has modernized for home platforms is Galaga: Destination Earth. ![]()
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