1001 Games To Play Before You Die: #0009 Galaxian

Monday, June 9, 2014

#0009 Galaxian

So today I played Galaxian. A 1979 Shoot ‘em Up developed by former Merry go round repair company, NAMCO. ’78’s Space Invaders was such a huge phenomenon in both Japan and America, and countless clones were soon popping up around the world, all trying to cash in on this latest craze. NAMCO, not satisfied with making yet another clone, asked themselves what they could do to make Space Invaders even better. The result was Galaxian!

OMG you guys, how did I never hear about this game? This is by far the biggest step forward in Video Game history I’ve seen so far on my quest. This is the first arcade game to use RGB color! Some games were using primitive ways to give the appearance of color, and the Atari 2600 was in color… Kind of. But not only was it in color, it had a little theme song at the beginning, the FIRST game to have a theme song, it had enemies that not only moved across the screen, but would actually attack you and come after you and would behave differently depending on how many there were left. IT HAS STARS! AND THEY MOVE! Keep in mind that this game came only a year after Space Invaders. I highly recommend this game, if you can find a way to play the arcade version (there’s a lot of crappy flash versions that are NOT galaxian) and keep in mind that this came only a year after Space Invaders, and Galaga had yet to improve on everything, then you will not be disappointed.

Up Next: Lunar Lander

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Why I'm taking this challenge

So! I’ve spent nearly my entire life as a Nintendo Fanboy. A rabid fanboy to the point where when my family got a brand new Playstation 2 back in ‘02 (One of the best consoles ever). I refused to play it. I refused to have anything to do with the company that stole my beloved Nintendo’s thunder! This fanboyism ran rampant in my gaming life through high school and even when I moved out to live with the woman who would one day become my wife. I still didn’t play anything but Nintendo consoles. In fact, it wasn’t until we were gifted an Xbox 360 did I FINALLY play a game on a different console. That was Bioshock, it was also the first shooter I had ever played.It became one of my favorite games of all time. The rest is history, I’ve been playing games on any console I want now.

That’s all well and good, but this means that there is an entire other gaming WORLD that I’ve never played. Never experienced in my life. I love shooters, but with the exception of the half-life series, and System shock 2, every shooter from Doom all the way up until Bioshock, I’ve never played. Not Quake, not CoD, not battlefield.

So, since I’ve missed out on nearly 30 years of gaming, I decided to take a challenge. My lovely wife got me a book called 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die I am going to play through every game in this book. Starting with Oregon Trail (1971) and finish with Bioshock Infinite (2013) I plan to do at least one generation per year. At least. And to help me keep track of what I've done, I started doing small reviews of every game.

At first I wrote these in the starment.net forums, but eventually they became too lengthy to only be posted there, so I created this blog to not only help keep me organized, but so others can follow along as well. It won't be easy, but I think it's worth it to play games that I may otherwise never have played.