2600 Galaxian - near perfect arcade colors & graphics hack

[espire8]

I wanted to try my hand at sprucing up the graphics for this 2600 galaxian hack. It's my attempt to work around the flagship issue Nukey Shay described in his Galaxian-Expanded thread (which I bumped up after missing it for almost a year!). I've redrawn all the aliens including all the in-flight attacking positions and altered the player's ship to better match the arcade.

The left pic is how the graphics looked before worked on. The middle show my alterations. The right is the arcade version to compare.

 

 

This is as close as to arcade perfect the alien graphics can be as far as this goes. I've yet to see how the colors look on real hardware connected to a standard TV, so the bottom row of aliens may be too dark, in which case I'll brighten it up if need be. I want to make sure the colors are bright enough to show up clearly even thru an RF signal.

 

I don't have the binary ready to post yet. I'm presently waiting on a hack request to this game from Nukey so I can include it in the binary with the new graphics before I post it here later.

 

Update: Here's a binary with just the flagship fix and alternative alien graphic changes. Galaxian-Expanded_gfx-hack_espire8(NTSC).bin

 

The double-size ship for "A" difficulty is not in this tho. Nukey may post an update if this feature is ever added later.

Edited December 4, 2011 by espire8

[Brian O]

Nice!

 

-B

[espire8]

Nice!

 

-B

Thanks!

[+TrekMD]

Very nice! I'm always impressed to see how these games continue to be improved upon.

[NE146]

Cool man.. that definitely looks Galaxian-ish to me. There's zero doubt if I had seen that in the day I'd have said "that is friggin GALAXIAN".

[KevinMos3]

That looks great. You can also take a look at the sprites I did a while back. Nukey worked on all the coding and I worked on the sprites.

I think I like your player ship better than mine.

[espire8]

Thanks KevinMos3. That's a neat thread you put together. I didn't know you were involved with the hack, I like how you kept the eyes on the aliens as two pixels instead of a straight line as I've done. Feel free to use the player ship design in your version too. Nukey has been a tremendous help with how the game has come to be at present compared to when first initiated.

 

I also like what you did with Adventure Enchanced! Great job! Heh.. I remember that black bat I did a long while ago for 2600 Adventure 2 - or was it 3?, but never got around to even start it because there were things impossible to do back then that I alone would never have hope for. I think it's awesome other people has taken the game to new heights and I'm happy to see my bat found a place in your hack. I'll have to keep a watch in that thread.

[KevinMos3]

I like how you kept the eyes on the aliens as two pixels instead of a straight line as I've done. Feel free to use the player ship design in your version too.

Thanks! Feel free to use any sprites I've worked on as well... afterall, they aren't exactly "my" sprites since I was imitating the arcade.

 

I also like what you did with Adventure Enchanced! Great job! Heh.. I remember that black bat I did a long while ago for 2600 Adventure 2 - or was it 3?, but never got around to even start it because there were things impossible to do back then that I alone would never have hope for.

Thanks again! Your Adventure II hack was partly responsible for inspiring me to work on that. You should check out the latest source by Nukey. He added a lot of really cool features that I'm sure you'd find plenty of uses for. For example... he added multi-color playfields, or sprites, and even added teleporting.

[espire8]

I've just included a binary of the gfx hack in the first post that you may enjoy the game. Thanks!

[c_t_f]

Wow, it looks awesome!! :-) Good work!!

 

 

@[email protected]

[WildBillTX]

Very nice hack. I just wish there was a way to make the aliens more agressive. The game is too easy on the lower levels.

Edited January 7, 2012 by WildBillTX

[YANDMAN]

Id would love a cart of either version but any chance any of you can do a pal60, ive been playing Kein and Nukeys for a long time on my harmony but the colours arent correct.

[bigdcaldavis2k]

Just tried this in Stella. VERY impressive!

[BrianC]

Looks neat. Lots of impressive Galaxian hacks popping up. Out of curiousity, is it possible to hack Galaxian into this? It's a hack of the arcade Galaxian from the makers of Crazy Climber that adds an energy gauge similar to Megamania.

Edited January 9, 2015 by BrianC

[Antiriad]

This is great! I'm also interested in a cart release in PAL-60.

Any chance?

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

That is awesome!! Looks identical to the arcade.

[triverse]

Hey, great work here. I posted an article, with gameplay video, on my site. I hope it brings more attention to your work (I hear you did one for Adventure also?). http://retrogamingmagazine.com/2015/09/12/near-arcade-perfect-port-of-galaxian-released-for-atari-2600/

[+iesposta]

Hey, great work here. I posted an article, with gameplay video, on my site. I hope it brings more attention to your work (I hear you did one for Adventure also?). http://retrogamingmagazine.com/2015/09/12/near-arcade-perfect-port-of-galaxian-released-for-atari-2600/

While is is the newest hack to Galaxian, I like the one here better:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/154984-hack-project-thread-galaxian-arcade-double-dragon-xenophobe-etc/?p=1898721

The addition of the red eyes, and the redone left tilt right tilt attack along with a new Titlescreen showing enemy point values is top-notch!

The whole first post from KevinMos3 is full of updated graphics in good 2600 games.

Not to take away from the ton of graphics done by espire8 over the years for this hobby!

[AW127]

A PAL60 Version of this hack would really be great! Hope this will come.

[KevinMos3]

Hmmm... Did I never do a PAL version? I'll have to dig up that ol' source soon and see if I never got around to it, or just never uploaded it.