Like Frogger before it, Galaga, the newest addition to the Xbox Live Arcade, hails from a simpler time of pizza, bowling alleys, and Spaceballs. Does it live up to its arcade heritage, or does it bring shame upon its ancestor? Or, also like Frogger, is it just a meh interpretation of a great arcade game? Read on, citizens.

Galaga is a vertical scrolling top-down space shooter. What this means is, you move up, the enemies move up, the stars move up, everything moves up. However, what this also means is that rather than a nice horizontal image, you get a nice vertical image that leaves blank space on both sides on any TV. How does Namco-Bandai get past this? Why, draw a blue-and-green 80’s picture of the enemies in the game. After seeing Galaga’s treatment of negative space, I believe no one has any room to complain about the blue/pink/green gradient in Frogger. To make this worse still, the screen resizing is nothing more than a reposition and a zoom - you can’t widen! As far as making good use of screen space, as Major Nelson has stressed, this game didn’t do so great.

It may be just me, but this isn’t the greatest title screen ever. The menus are about as easy to navigate as this is to look at.

But - it’s Galaga. On top of your standard space enemies, Galaga added in the tractor beam-wielding foes, who you can exploit to capture your ship, then save that ship and form the Dual Fighter, making stages fly by and making winning the Challenging (bonus) Stages a possibility. Getting a Dual Fighter and using it to completely wipe out your enemies - god-moding, in other words - is a thrill.

Achievements are spread out interestingly to say the least. You get an achievement for forming the Dual Fighter, an achievement for destroying the captured fighter, and three achievements for beating stages 10, 20, and 30. Then you get achievements for finding new enemies in the levels, so basically it rewards you for getting farther, which is nothing new but fine.

This game feels sloppy. It just feels like they didn’t take any effort porting a 25-year-old game to the most powerful game console currently on the market. The old arcade machines would let you take turns with a friend to see who had the highest score. This’d be fun on Xbox Live, right? Right! It’s a shame that Namco-Bandai didn’t think so, because they didn’t include any multiplayer - at all. And I had the nerve to complain about Frogger lagging.

There’s your stamp-sized screen. Upgrade to Galaga Complete to gain the power of sight!

But, and again - it’s Galaga. I love this game. I was absolutely psyched for its release and now, not so much with the clutter but with the omission of multiplayer, I feel let down. How can you port an excellent, quarter-of-a-century-old game to the Xbox 360 and end up with a lesser product? I don’t understand.

Fellow Xboxic knight Rival24 also noted that you can’t fire rapidly; you can, but I seem to remember it being faster in the arcades. I’m not so sure if this is even an issue, but it’s worth pointing out.

Conclusion

This review is going to come off as overly negative. That’s because it takes much more space to detail this game’s faults than it does to say “But, it’s Galaga.” The game is and always will be great, and you’re getting unlimited plays for the price of twenty, don’t get me wrong; but Namco-Bandai made a sloppy port, and the neglect of a multiplayer mode of any sort is a huge mistake. Get it if you like Galaga because it’s still the same game. Everyone else, download the trial.

But, it’s Galaga.

Final Score: 6 out of 10 - Average (how do we rank stuff?)

(Note: Again, Galaga is a fantastic game, and certainly deserves a higher score, but Namco-Bandai’s treatment of the port does not.)