The Stack

Galaga: Destination Earth is pretty much at the opposite end of the spectrum from Robotron X when it comes to faithfulness to the source. It’s not even really in the same genre as the original Galaga. Galaga was a Space-Invaders-like, a fixed-camera shmup where you move left and right at the bottom of the screen and shoot at enemies in a grid formation above you, and G:DE is only intermittently that. It varies the perspective: at the start of a wave, you might hear a computery voice announce “ATTACK PATTERN DELTA” or whatever, followed by the camera shifting. Attack pattern gammaa is Space Invaders view, attack pattern delta is side-scrolling, and attack pattern alpha is a 3D “over-the-shoulder” view with a reticle to line up your shots. What happened to attack pattern beta? Well, there is in fact a fourth perspective: the fully first-person stationary-but-swiveling view you get in the occasional deck gun sections. So maybe that’s attack pattern beta, but if so, it’s not announced.

But attack pattern alpha is the primary view, the one where you spend the majority of the game, swooping through open space or various tunnels, canyons, and other obstacle-filled environments. Thus does the game reveal its real inspirations. It doesn’t want to be a sequel to Galaga, it wants to be a sequel to Rebel Assault.

There’s one other game I’ll cite as an influence, albeit a lesser one: Gyruss. This is a semi-obscure space shmup that’s kind of like a less-abstract Tempest: you move around the edges of a circular playfield with a rotary controller and shoot towards a distant center. Gyruss had a theme of journeying towards Earth from the outer solar system, starting at “2 warps to Neptune”, and G:DE‘s progression immediately reminded me of it. Mind you, it isn’t a strict progression from outer planets to inner ones here. You start at a shipwreck in open space, then proceed to Saturn, then Europa, Mars, then you leap to the surface of the sun (!), then the moon, and that’s as far as I’ve gotten. Apparently the next level is in Earth orbit, followed by the surface. So you may say that any Gyruss connection on that basis is tenuous. But there’s also a section in the Europa mission where you fly down some circular tunnels, hugging the edge, and it plays so much like Gyruss that it has to be deliberate imitation.

What does the game get from actual Galaga, then? First and most obviously, the insect-like aliens (or are they just aliens in insect-like spacecraft?) Apparently they’re not quite aliens this time, having a complicated and somewhat silly backstory involving fruit flies, nanomachines, and time travel that’s hinted at in the intro and spelled out more fully in the manual. Then there’s Galaga‘s one distinctive game feature. Not the aliens that break formation and dive at you — that had been previously pioneered by Galaxian. (Yes, that’s a different game, albeit by the same developers.) No, I’m talking about the boss aliens that can capture your starfighters with a tractor beam and use them against you. Skilled Galaga players would deliberately let their first ship get captured, because you could then retake it, with the result that you have two starfighters on the screen at once, doubling your firepower. G:DE keeps those mechanics, but also extends them. Sometimes destroyed bosses will drop energy cubes that, if you catch them, let you fire a tractor beam of your own, capturing alien ships to fly beside you and fire at your command. I haven’t been consistently able to make this happen, but when I do, it makes subsequent waves a great deal easier — moreso than even a second starfighter, because two ships that fire differently can cover more area. The main problem is that the captured ships are so fragile. Your own starfighter has shields that let it take multiple hits (which is another deviation from the original), but your captives do not. I feel like I could get a lot farther in the game if I could just keep them alive longer.