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The Total Recall
DUD OF THE MONTH
COLLECTION! GALAXIAN (Atari/Namco, 1982) |
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| Artist touch: WTF? Is this Legendary Wings or Galaxian here? Weird but still quite good in my opinion thanks to the level of detail. Cover art rating: 8/10 |
Month
it won: January 2007
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Special note: Galaxian
was one of Namco's first ever mega hits!
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| Introduction and Story: |
| Galaxian will go down in history for not only being the first ever video game to use true colour but also for having some very impressive Artificial Intelligent thanks to some tricky aliens that were tough to kill. Galaxian may be older game now but it is still a huge legend in the gaming world and it was another mega hit for Namco. So how did Galaxian do on the 5200? Not too good unfortunately. |
| Controls and Game Play: | |
| In
the game it's your mission to destroy a large swarm of aggressive alien
bugs before they destroy you. Unlike other popular shooters like Space
Invaders your enemies won't just move back and forth and wait to be shot,
instead some of the bugs will swoop away from their formation to attack
you personally. The good thing about this is the bugs will be worth more
points and you can even get special bonuses for destroying the leaders
of the group at the right time. You need precise timing to survive and
that's where this 5200 version falls apart. In the game you can only move your starship left and right so you would think the masters at Atari would be able to handle this simple concept. The problems with those 5200 non-recentering controllers has never been more apparent then in this game right here. Even with the slightest touch on the joystick it's hard not to go too fast which makes aiming your slow moving missiles nearly impossible. How are you suppose to play a game like this with controls this bad? |
| Graphics and Sounds: |
 The
graphics are one of the bright spots about this game and to be honest
they weren't even that good. On the positive side the aliens are colourful
and the stars in the background actually move. On the negative side there
is a lot of slowdown and flickers which shows tons of graphical problems
with the system itself. As bad as the graphics and controls were, nothing
compares to the future pain from listening to God awful music and sound
effects here. I don't know what happened but the annoyingly constant buzzing
sound and overly loud sound effects is just hell on the ears. Galaxian
for the Atari 5200 is easily one of the worst sounding games I ever heard! |
| The Bottomline: |
| Galaxian should have been one of those games that should have helped sell the 5200 system. Sadly, the terrible sound effects, poor controls, and repetitive game play ruin this classic shoot em up so the whole title acted as video game repellent. This game was never one of favourites to begin with but this version made it even worse because of the extremely sloppy translation here. Avoid Galaxian for the 5200 unless you need another hockey puck. |
| Conclusion: | |
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GALAXIAN
overall rating: 23/100 Find Galaxian on eBay here! For 1 or 2 players graphics: 4/10 sound: 0/10 gameplay: 2/10 replay: 1/10 -StarSoldier (Ryan Genno) 2007 See other Total Recall duds of the month |
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