Galaga '88
ギャラガ'881988Galaga '88
ギャラガ'88ALSO KNOWN AS GALAGA '90
A home version of Namco's arcade shooter, with triple fighters and warps.
Galaga '88 is a fixed shooter in Namco's Galaga line. Namco made the arcade original in 1987. The PC Engine version came out in Japan on 15 July 1988 as a home conversion.
| RELEASED IN JAPAN | 15 July 1988 |
|---|---|
| ARCADE ORIGINAL | Namco, 1987 |
| NORTH AMERICAN TITLE | Galaga '90, published by NEC in November 1989 |
| ARCADE MUSIC | Hiroyuki Kawada |
| PLAYERS | One |
Your ship sits at the bottom of the screen and moves left and right. Waves of aliens dive at you, and a collision costs a life. Boss Galagas can capture your ship with a tractor beam.
Shooting a captor while it dives frees your ship and gives you a dual fighter. Rescuing a captured dual fighter makes a triple fighter with wider, faster shots.
Collect two blue warp capsules before the bonus stage to jump to the next dimension. Enemies there are harder. The PC Engine version has four dimensions, one fewer than the arcade game, because of ROM size. It keeps the Galactic Dancing bonus stages in full.
Namco made the arcade game, and Hiroyuki Kawada composed its music. The PC Engine version changed the warp cut-scenes and some enemy behaviour. Its ending medals show the dimension you reached.
Allgame's 1998 retrospective called the TurboGrafx-16 conversion a killer port. It named it the best shooter released for the system.
Famitsu's cross review gave the PC Engine version 33 out of 40 and a gold award. In the 1993 PC Engine Fan reader poll it ranked 87th of 485 titles.
It returned on the Wii Virtual Console in March 2007, and on PlayStation Network in Japan in 2011. The TurboGrafx-16 Mini included it in 2020.
It is one of the console's earliest arcade conversions. Reviewers single out its triple fighter and its warp system.
- The arcade game was shown at the JAMMA show in October 1987.
- The arcade game has four endings, depending on the dimension where you finish.
- A secret trick unlocks a second, back-side game.
GameLog on YouTube