I was a little slow in downloading the new XBOX Live Arcade game this week. Galaga was released Wednesday, July 26th, 2006 to much fanfare. I waited anxiously while the 15 meg game was delivered through the interweb to my 360. I was thinking back to the good times I had playing this game in the arcade… how many quarters I had lost… how many ships I had saved.
Those good memories translated poorly once I opened the game. I was greeted to slick opening images, decent menu system, and annoying sound effects. The game touted 720p HD resolution, which succeeded in showing in crisp detail the pixellated goodness of the original arcade game. Maybe I was wrong to expected updated graphics and sound effects.
And the gameplay… you move left and right, and press a button to fire. How could this not feel right on a controller? I am not sure how, but they succeeded in doing this as well. And it seemed more sluggish than I remember.
All in all, I was not impressed with this release. I’d save your 400 points for another Live Arcade game (like Clonin’ Clyde, Frogger, or the eagerly anticipated Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting… more on that next week, hopefully.)
Review:Â 4 of 10.
I thought it was pretty faithful to the original. I could get to level 35 or so on the arcade machine, and the demo didn’t seem to be any harder than I remember the first few levels.
Since I can already play the actual Galaga ROMs from my PC and original Xbox, I probably won’t put down the points for this, but I would otherwise.