   is a fixed shooter arcade game developed and published by namco in japan and published by midway in north america in 1981. it is the sequel to galaxian, released in 1979. the gameplay of galaga puts the player in control of a spacecraft which is situated at the bottom of the screen. at the beginning of each stage, the area is empty, but over time, enemy aliens will arrive in formation, and once all of the enemies arrive on screen, they will come down at the player's ship in formations of one or more and may either shoot it or collide with it. during the entire stage, the player may fire upon the enemies, and once all enemies are vanquished, the player will proceed to the next stage. galaga is one of the most successful games from the golden age of video arcade games. the arcade version of it has been ported to many consoles, and it has had several sequels. ==gameplay== thumb|250px|left|gameplay screenshot the objective of galaga is to score as many points as possible by destroying insect-like enemies. the player controls a starfighter that can move left and right along the bottom of the playfield. enemies swarm in groups in a formation near the top of the screen, and then begin flying down toward the player, firing bullets at and attempting to crash into them. in later stages, some enemies even break from an entering group to frantically try to crash into the player. the game ends when the player's last fighter is lost, either by colliding with an enemy, one of its bullets, or by being captured. galaga introduces a number of new features over its predecessor, galaxian. among these are the ability to fire more than one shot at a time, a count of the player's "hit/miss ratio" at the end of the game, and a bonus "challenging stage" that occurs every few stages, in which a series of enemies fly onto and off the screen in set patterns without firing at the player's ship or trying to crash into it. these stages award a 10,000-point bonus if the player manages to destroy every enemy, but otherwise
1981_video_games Arcade_games Atari_7800_games Famicom_Disk_System_games Fixed_shooters Galaxian Game_Boy_Color_games IOS_games MSX_games Midway_Games Mobile_games NEC_PC-9801_games Namco_arcade_games Nintendo_Entertainment_System_games Original_Xbox_Live_Arcade_games SG-1000_games Sharp_X1_games Vertically_oriented_video_games Virtual_Console_games Virtual_Console_games_for_Wii_U Xbox_360_Live_Arcade_games