History of the game

Space battles of all kinds played a major role during the golden age of video games. With the introduction of Galaxian in 1979, players were transported to the most colorful and challenging space battle yet.

A place in video game history

"Galaxian captivated the minds of quite a few arcade enthusiasts," said Chris Lindsey, director of the National Video Game and Coin-Op Museum
 in St. Louis. "It was a relatively early entry in the golden age of video games, and it capitalized on the enthusiasm created by the earlier video game classic, Space Invaders, while providing a more colorful, enjoyable, and demanding gaming experience. Galaxian had smarter bad guys than Space Invaders, and it demanded that the player really pay attention to what was going on. And there were no shields, like many games have today. You really had to stay on the ball. Galaxian also had great sound and used elements that have since become standard -- such as flags and other symbols to mark the player's progression through different levels of game play."

The great 25-cent escape

"Galaxian definitely gets an enthusiastic response," Lindsey said. "In fact, I deliberately position the game near the entrance of the museum. Often it's the first game people go to."
Lindsey often sees parents trying to convey to their child the excitement of these great games.
"It is funny for me when I see a father trying to explain a game to his kid. Junior really just wants to get on the game and figure it out, and Dad wants to do a demo. Dad starts instructing Junior while Junior is sort of looking around, wondering how he can get away. But Dad continues, busily explaining the nuances of the game, which he knows Junior can't get on the first play. This all shows the enthusiasm that a certain generation still has for these terrific games."

With or without a parent's help, Lindsey sees a younger generation embracing the classic arcade games.
"Kids by themselves will actually do quite well on these games," Lindsey said. "I'm somewhat surprised when I see how good kids are at picking up games. I sort of think that because I'm older, I should be able to play better, and that's not always the case with video games. That's a lesson an entire generation has had to learn."

Namco notes

Galaxian was one of Namco's first video games, and engineers throughout the company were gathered into a special team. As the game neared completion, the engineers suspected they had created a good game because other Namco employees were extremely "excited and crazy about the game." Once Galaxian was released, they knew they had a winner because, as one Namco engineer reported, "People [at the arcades] piled their coins onto the game cabinets to keep playing, and those who were waiting were very irritated because their turn never came. There were huge lines of people around each machine."