How good are you guys at Galaga?

[Stewhain33]

Curious how good some of you are at galaga. My HS is only 41k. Any tips of how to get better?

[Flojomojo]

There's a dood in the "budget arcade cabinet" thread called "negative 1" that eats these old games for breakfast, can get kill screens in PAC-MAN etc. I'll bet he has some tips.

 

Also

 

git gud

[DragonGrafx-16]

I think I've gotten as far as stage 35 but I don't play it that often.

[amiman99]

I can do 12 levels, or whenever it loops to the 1st level, but it's faster. More levels then that my starts hand / finger to hurts. So I stop. Still fun for 1 or 2 quarters.

[Austin]

I believe my high is somewhere a little over 150k. Getting that consistently is tough for me because things heat up quite a bit in the game well before that. Enemy chains get longer, more enemies fly down at you in the formation portions of each stage, and more and more bullets begin appearing making it hard to dodge, especially if you've got two ships linked.

 

For survival, tip #1 is to get the dual-ship setup as fast as possible and blast everything as fast as possible. Rinse and repeat until you're on your last life. Tip #2 is getting better at aiming. Taper your shots and don't mash unless enemies are close--you can only have two shots on screen at a time. Wasted/missed shots means you're not killing anything, so you want to fire with intent.

 

For score, tip #1 is to make sure to let the green and red enemies form into place completely. They will then fly down together, making the green guys worth significantly more points (the values are shown on the attract mode). The general rule is to do this as much as possible, but for me I have to focus on it in the earlier parts of the game. When things kick up a few notches it's harder to focus on scoring well when survival is difficult enough as is. Tip #2 is learning the bonus round patterns. These can add up to a lot of points over the course of a game. Tip #3 is letting some blue guys fall into place on each stage. Some of them will turn into special enemies that are worth more points, with the types and score values going up over the course of the game.

Edited February 20, 2019 by Austin

[Tanooki]

Best I've done is around the 200K mark, usually I'm happy if I can hit half that. -1 here, he can kill the machine, can't get much better than that.

[+adamchevy]

Pretty damn good on the 7800.

[NE146]

I'm pretty good.. not Negative-1 good, but I've been playing it solid since 1981 or so. I have no idea what my true high score is because when I was a kid I would just play it until my game ended and that would be that. However a number of years ago I played it on Xbox live in friendly competition with my online friends list and THAT saves scores thankfully for at least a clue.

 

I took a look and I remember I stopped at 250k on the dot to keep it sporting/close.. but no one ever passed it so I stopped playing.

 

 

[Gamemoose]

The best I did was get in the 80K range on the Namco Museum (or whatever it's called) on DS. I average around the 60K mark on it typically.

 

I found I get my butt trounced past stage 5 with double ships. At that point I stick to a single ship and can last a while.

[Tanooki]

I'll say this much that 200K range I can push at best, I don't follow the rules of high scoring and never have. I try and clean out the waves as they enter the screen so I don't get the cluster bonuses outside the capture ship, and I don't let that thing capture me either as 2 ships to me is a liability for getting hit. I would think if I did let them fly in and did the double ship I obviously would score noticeably higher most likely.

[mbd30]

You can try this in the arcade version. But it sounds tedious.

 

http://triosdevelopers.com/jason.eckert/blog/Entries/2012/10/31_The_Galaga_no_fire_cheat_mystery.html

[derFunkenstein]

Y'all put me to shame here. Yikes.

[Stewhain33]

I just hit 77k, I think Im in love with this game. Stage 13.

[negative1]

hi guys,

 

thanks for the reference to this thread.

------------

if you can practice it for a few weeks, you should be able to get to a 100k at some point.

 

as many have mentioned here:

-----------------------------

1 get the dual ship

2 practice getting perfect on the first 2 bonus stages for 10k bonus

 

-----------------------------

 

if you have access to MAME, get a ROM version that allows the no-shoot bug to practice:

 

you leave the 2 bugs on the left only, and let them fly until they stop shooting 10-15 minutes.

 

this REALLY helps a lot, since you only have to worry about them running into you.

 

================================

 

once you feel confident, play with them shooting.

 

if you can get to levels 10-16, then you are 90% of the way done.

once you can get to 20-24 consistently, that's it, the game maxes out, and its just the same 4 boards over and over

forever.... if you can loop to 30, it will start over for the bonus levels.

 

the best tutorial to watch all the way through:

seriously, pay attention to the details for each stage, you don't have to memorize it,

you will just know them if you keep playing:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3kEBWgv6c8

 

good luck,

 

later

-1

[VectorGamer]

Above average. Around 500K.

 

Can marathon fast shoot on easy difficulty.

[Trinity]

[Trinity]

I was never good at Galaga bitd, But I got a NES a few years ago and then I got the NES port and with practice I got to around 112000 points. That's great for me.

[Trinity]

Is the arcade version harder then the NES version?

[negative1]

Is the arcade version harder then the NES version?

not to me.

 

the NES version is harder, but i haven't played it as

much to get the timing down.

 

at some it can be marathoned also, score goes up to 9 million,

and it tracks tons of extra men also.

 

later

-1

[Trinity]

 

[Trinity]

Damn, I getting rusty. Best I could do today is 78,060.

 

Wargames is on Amazon Prime now by the way.

Edited May 13, 2019 by Trinity

[BydoEmpire]

I'm terrible, and I'm not really a big fan of the game. It seems more like a pattern/memorization game than a good shooter. Of course I'm in the minority there, the game is iconic and beloved. Different strokes and all that.

 

The 7800 version is my favorite because it has a smoother difficulty ramp and I feel like I can actually do okay at it. I like that version better than the arcade.

[Trinity]

I'm terrible, and I'm not really a big fan of the game. It seems more like a pattern/memorization game than a good shooter. Of course I'm in the minority there, the game is iconic and beloved. Different strokes and all that.

 

The 7800 version is my favorite because it has a smoother difficulty ramp and I feel like I can actually do okay at it. I like that version better than the arcade

 

 

I like the NES version.

[+FujiSkunk]

Best arcade score ever was 617,620. I made a point to remember it the day I got it. If I'm not mistaken it was on standard difficulty with the usual extra lives (20,000; 70,000; then every 70,000 after). That was back in college, and those days are long gone.

 

Last time I played an arcade machine, I think I got in the 150K range at the nearest retro arcade. Their machine doesn't give any extra lives, so I was pretty happy with the score.

[+save2600]

How good? So good at Galaga, that I never bother keeping score and always end up quitting after some time of playing.