Kimball - Galaga

Galaga (1981) was Alec Baldwins favorite arcade game and it might have saved his life. Apparently, in the 1980s Mr. Baldwin would play the game as a way to come down from his long nights of drinking and doing coke. In the morning, he would show up at a warehouse arcade in Los Angeles and wait for the owner of the place to open up for the day. He would play arcade games while other people were eating breakfast and going to work. According to Mr. Baldwin, playing video games was the only way I could go beta and go into that state I needed to be, where I could calm down and take my mind off everything. The rush of playing video games became a substitute for the rush of drugs and alcohol. Playing Galaga and other arcade games for a couple of hours allowed him to wind down enough that he could go home and go to sleep.

Galaga is a coin-op arcade video game and a sequel to Galaxian (1979), itself an unofficial update of Space Invaders (1978). Galaga is a shooter, a fixed shooter, a spacy, a space shooter, a bug shooter, or a single-screen shmup (a.k.a. shoot-em-up). Galaga is also sometimes called a bug war, an exterminator, and a kind of insecticide.

Galaga was released in December of 1981 when I was fourteen years old, but it probably didnt reach Aladdins Castle arcade in the Lansing Mall until early 1982 when I was fifteen years old. It was a difficult time in my life and going to the arcade any chance I got was a good excuse to get out of an abusive household. Galaga was my longest quarter and I could almost always set the daily high score in any arcade. Playing that video game gave me a way to space out and let me forget about the rest of my life. Galaga was my game and it might have saved my life too.

Many consider Galaga the first arcade game sequel. Ms. Pac-Man (1981) preceded Galaga , but it was originally a Pac-Man (1980) hack called Crazy Otto that Midway bought out while waiting for Namco to deliver Super Pac-Man (1982).

Side note: Ive never actually seen or heard of Galaga being referred to as an exterminator, but I thought it was funny.

There are lots of playing tips later in this book, but here is a cheat sheet:

1. Get double fighters.
2. Dont do anything stupid that destroys one of the double fighters.
3. Stay out of the corners.
4. Learn the entrance patterns for each stage.
5. Clear out at least one side of the formation before the Galagans begin attacking.
6. Focus on clearing stages rather than maxing out points.
7. Max out the Challenging Stages.

Back in the 1980s, Galaga wasnt the most popular arcade game or the one that made the most money, but it has endured for more than 30 years and continues to be played on many platforms. Galaga is an incredibly successful sequel. In my adopted hometown of Baltimore, Galaga can still be played in a pool hall, a pizzeria, a Laundromat, a hipster bar, and a crab shack. Those are just the places I know. I like to imagine secret Galaga machines tucked into strange establishments all over the city.

The blue, yellow, and red alien insects are bees. The white, orange, and blue ones are butterflies. Sometimes, the bees are referred to as hornets or wasps. In Japanese, the bees are zako and the butterflies are goei. Sometimes, the butterflies are referred to as moths. But one of the mysteries of Galaga is what the Boss Galagas are supposed to be. It has been suggested that they are birds and cicadas, but neither of these suggestions seems quite right. I checked with a cicada expert who said the Boss Galagas are definitely not cicadas. She didnt think they were birds either. Another possibility is that the Boss Galagas are giant flies. An entomologist didnt rule out that possibility.

There is a definition on Urban Dictionary that makes Galaga an adjective and defines it as to do something really cool. Here is a representative usage: I rode my mountain bike over the continental divide and it was so Galaga.

Galaga starts with some upbeat 1980s techno music and a single fighter travelling through deep space that is flecked with red, green, blue, yellow, purple, and orange stars that twinkle and scroll off the bottom of the screen. Player 1 is the single fighter at the bottom of the screen. The joystick stands between the first finger and thumb of the players left hand and the fire button rests under the first two fingers of the players right hand. Soon, swarms of alien insects swoop down in long looping columns from the top and the sides of the screen. At first, its unsettling the way the alien insects seem so ready to kamikaze the fighter, but they pull up before crashing into it and then curl back up into troop lines at the top of the screen. The alien insects settle into their attack formation: two rows of ten alien bees, two rows of eight alien butterflies, one row of four Boss Galagas. There is a brief pause and then the alien invaders start dive-bombing the fighter. Its up to Player 1 to save this world.

When I started doing Galaga research, I was surprised by the extent of the games legacy. There are Galaga clothes, jewelry, and collectibles. There are Galaga tattoos, Galaga ringtones, and Galaga baked goods. There is Galaga art. Galaga continues to show up in songs, books, TV shows, and movies. Galaga is one of the most bootlegged video games in the history of video games and there are also a bunch of Galaga hacks, clones, and updates. I love Galaga , but I didnt know that so many other people love Galaga too.

In a full formation, the first alien insect to attack is one of the bees, which jumps off the left side of the formation, curls around, and dive-bombs the fighter. Almost immediately after that, an alien butterfly jumps off the right side of the formation, fluttering and bobbing at the fighter from the opposite direction. Then one of the Boss Galagas backflips from the top row and somersaults down the screen. This is just the first of wave after wave of attacks.

Rule 34 states: If it exists, there is porn of it. After googling Galaga and porn, I found a drawing of a naked Terezi, the blind troll from a comic called Homestuck , feeling up the Galaga fighter. I found a series of photos of porn star Jordan Capri getting naked in front of a Galaga machine. I found out that some people see the futuristic art on the side of a Galaga machine as two huge orange breasts with big red nipples. And I found a photo of a naked gamer girl with her knees up and her legs spread, while a Game Boy defends her vagina from three Galaga fighters that are photoshopped into the shot.