Why no "Arcade" Galaga on Atari machines?

[VicViper]

Other than the SG-1000 port, there seems to be no real "arcade" port of Galaga on the pre systems. Why is that? I'm really surprised no one has attempted to make a homebrew of such a major gap in the Atari library. I understand that it is everywhere in arcade perfect form on all the namco museums, but so is pac man, and there are multiple hacks and homebrews of Pac-man. Is it a technical issue?

[Flojomojo]

There wasn't a port of Xevious, either. These were fast, detailed games with many sprites in motion. I doubt the VCS or 5200 could do it. It's on the 7800.

[+save2600]

There was never a VCS port of Galaga to arcadeify and yes... seems too technical to simply hack Galaxian into Galaga obviously. Ship that swoops down and captures your fighter, dual fighter firing capability, etc.

 

Can always play Galaga on the 7800 if you're dying to play Galaga on an Atari system. Just be sure to crank up the difficulty or it'll be like playing a VCS game in teddy bear mode.

[+Black_Tiger]

There wasn't a port of Xevious, either. These were fast, detailed games with many sprites in motion. I doubt the VCS or 5200 could do it. It's on the 7800.

 

The 5200 did do it bitd, it just wasn't released. Even though it's unfinished it looks great and often has more enemy sprites on-screen than many SNES shooters.

[+GoldenWheels]

Can always play Galaga on the 7800 if you're dying to play Galaga on an Atari system. Just be sure to crank up the difficulty or it'll be like playing a VCS game in teddy bear mode.

Ha! I don't remember where exactly it happens, wave 15 or so, when things actually get FAST?

[Tanooki]

Hah teddy bear mode. You got me curious as I've never had or used the atari really outside of the 2600 and store display Jaguar play. The 7800 at the time seemed interesting but it just didn't seem either go anywhere unfortunately for them.

[VicViper]

There wasn't a port of Xevious, either. These were fast, detailed games with many sprites in motion. I doubt the VCS or 5200 could do it. It's on the 7800.

I know about the 7800 version, it's just garbage. Surprised no one has "fixed" it yet.

[VicViper]

I know the 2600 probably couldn't cut it, but the 8 bits, or 7800 shouldve done a fine job.

[zzip]

Other than the SG-1000 port, there seems to be no real "arcade" port of Galaga on the pre systems. Why is that? I'm really surprised no one has attempted to make a homebrew of such a major gap in the Atari library. I understand that it is everywhere in arcade perfect form on all the namco museums, but so is pac man, and there are multiple hacks and homebrews of Pac-man. Is it a technical issue?

 

Not just a lack of home ports, but when the arcade emulator scene started, there were no projects that could emulate Galaga at the time due to encryption of the roms or some issue. But it was probably the most requested game to emulate due to people unable to get a Galaga fix anywhere.

Edited October 27, 2017 by zzip

[Cynicaster]

I know the 2600 probably couldn't cut it, but the 8 bits, or 7800 shouldve done a fine job.

 

Seems to me there was a fairly lengthy thread a few years ago discussing the idea of Galaga on the 2600, and lots of technical specifics were put forth to explain why it's just not feasible.

 

I agree about the 7800 version. I suppose it's a decent game by the basic "space shooter" standard, but to me, it fails as a port because it's not nearly accurate enough. If you're going to make the already-lame move of releasing 1981 arcade games on your console in 1987 (or whenever it was) when the competition is doing current arcade ports, your crusty old game darn well better be pretty much perfect.

Edited October 27, 2017 by Cynicaster

[VectorGamer]

I suppose it's a decent game by the basic "space shooter" standard, but to me, it fails as a port

Timing is all wrong in this game.

 

NES version sucks because they tried to squash the playfield into a horizontal screen and the bad guys are practically on top of you.

[ubersaurus]

Galaga was meant to be a launch game for the 7800 in 1984. When the system got delayed due to contract disputes with Warner (Warner owed GCC money for the system design, claimed Tramiel had to pay them, GCC wanted Warner to pay them, finally Tramiel bit the bullet and paid the bill to release the console) the game got delayed too. The 7800 hit the national market before the NES did, so it's not like there was any competition other than the handful of games dripping out for the 2600, Intellivision and Colecovision in 1985. Galaga came out in August 86 (And Nintendo's national launch was in September). So sure, it was five years late compared to the arcade game... but it's not like Galaga has ever not been popular... or that it had real competition with "current" arcade games.

 

To my knowledge it was never planned for the 5200, and no one else seems to have made an effort to get the rights to it.

Edited October 27, 2017 by ubersaurus

[Flojomojo]

This seems to be THE (unofficial) best loved version of Galaga besides the original. Amiga

 

http://deluxegalaga.monroeworld.com/main.htm