About

Galaga is a 1981 arcade shooter that refined Space Invaders' formula with a brilliant new mechanic: enemies capture your ship in a tractor beam and hold it. If you shoot the capturing Galaga boss, your ship is freed and joins you as a wingman — doubling your firepower for the rest of the game. This risk/reward decision defines Galaga's depth.

The enemy formations are more dynamic than Space Invaders — Galaga enemies swoop in attack patterns, diving at your position in carefully timed formations. Reading and anticipating these swoops while maintaining accurate fire is the core skill.

Galaga's sessions are short (lives last 30–120 seconds) and deeply satisfying when the double-ship strategy pays off with a full-formation kill.

How to Play

• Move your ship left and right at the bottom of the screen.
• Fire upward to destroy enemies in formation or during attack swoops.
• When a Galaga boss fires a tractor beam, let it capture you — then shoot the boss to reclaim your ship and gain a dual-fighter.
• Complete each stage by destroying all enemy ships.
• Bonus challenge stages periodically appear — destroy all enemies for maximum score.

Tips

• Deliberately let your ship be captured once to earn the dual-fighter for higher firepower.
• Don't sacrifice the dual-fighter carelessly — it takes another capture to restore it.
• In challenge stages, let one enemy live until it makes its pattern clear, then destroy all in sequence.

History

Galaga was developed by Namco and released in arcades in 1981. It became one of the best-selling arcade games of all time, with an estimated $2.8 billion in quarters collected. The dual-fighter capture mechanic was a design breakthrough. A famous bug at the start of stage 1 — standing in a specific position so the first enemies pass without shooting — allows playing indefinitely without being hit, and was a well-known competitive strategy.