HSC18 Round 6: GALAXIAN

[STARBUG]

18,000

 

 

[mimo]

Mrs Mimo 13580

[AtariSphinx]

Tried out the 2600 version of Galaxian.   Played on level 1 which was easy at start but got more difficult midway.  There are 9 levels to start.   Good port.   At one point had 5-6 enemies coming down at me.

 

[+therealbountybob]

Improved to 21,010 round 9 ish!

Score for Silver Unicorn 3,180

[NamcoPlayer]

12,930

[carlsson]

So in my quest to not try to improve my HSC results, I moved onto the arch nemesis C64 tonight.

 

First we have Atarisoft's Galaxian. Everything moves in slow motion on this one, but at the same time enemies are flying all the time which I find makes it more difficult. Something that struck me that making the combo move to shoot two Hornets first and the Commander last (for 800 pts) is something you can obtain regularly on the C64 version, but very seldom on the A8 version. Maybe what is most odd about the C64 version is that you get an extra ship first at 7000 pts compared to 5000 pts in both the A8 and VIC versions. Honestly in comparison the A8 version feels like a proper arcade cabinet in comparison. I ended up with 10970 pts on this version.

 

 

Then I played a number of clones. Galaxions by John P. Shay is generally quite high rated at Lemon64, but in this game enemies fly in straight diagonals, a bit target seeking. On first level they fly one at a time, then two at a time, three at a time. It is like he wanted to make a clone of Galaxian but didn't like all the elements of it. I scored 8840 pts before I gave up. Different than Atarisoft's Galaxian, but not necessarily better.

 

 

I follwed up with Alien Attack, which turned out to be a cross between Space Invaders and Galaxian in that enemies move all the way to the end of the screen, but then build formations and attack. A bit interesting/annoying that the background changes colour every second level. I might play this a little more, at least to exceed 4990 pts in order to break the built-in highscore at 5000 pts.

 

 

Next in line was Invasor by Oliver Musolf, once part of an "Arcade Pack". Interesting move to have background music while playing, but to all intents this looks like a carbon copy of Shay's Galaxions. A bit more modern (1985 vs 1983) graphics but the gameplay with single attacking enemies etc almost makes me want to run a binary comparison on the two games, in case Musolf lifted routines from the older game and reskinned it. Also the game doesn't bother to show my last score and with a built-in high score very hard to obtain, there was no point for me to take a screenshot (I think I had a best score around 3600 pts).

 

Onto Swoop from Micro Power. In this game, all the enemies are birds, and there is an interesting addition in that if a bird reaches to the bottom of the screen, it poops which means you can't move into that direction for a little while until the poop is cleared. It makes the game harder to play, and to be honest I'm not sure if it makes it any more fun. Perhaps if you had a sideways poop cleaning laser that you could use X number of times per level instead of waiting for it to go away. I scored 2215 pts however.

 

 

Swooper by Frank Neuhaus has an unknown origin. Also it isn't really a Galaxian game, more like Space Invaders where enemies take a flight and stay at the bottom of the screen to annoy you. It is rather relaxing to play (however an action game can be relaxing) and with its high scoring system, I got 27530 pts without really trying too hard.

 

 

Tiradians by David Rees was a type-in program in Your Computer #1/1985. It is at least partly made in BASIC which becomes apparent from how slow it is. However it is a rather decent version of Galaxian. The graphics are fine, the attack waves are reasonable. If it was redone entirely in machine code, it probably could be a decent contender to the Atarisoft version. I ended up with 4840 pts and if it wasn't so sluggish, I'd play it again.

 

 

Finally we have Xerons by A. Trott, known for the nice Qix clone called Stix. In Xerons, all enemies are variations of the letter X. The first level is quite easy, the second level is significantly more intensive and the third level... well, I didn't get a chance to clear it. Definitely Galaxian inspired, but not my favorite of this crop. After 3790 pts, I had enough.

 

 

I know that I probably should play some of the A8 clones to compare, but it is safe to say that none of the Galaxian type games on the C64 really get close to the A8/5200 version of Galaxian IMHO.

[chevymad]

Finally squeaked out another good one.

[AtariSphinx]

Galaxian: 29,070

 

Getting closer to 30k.  Liking this one a lot.

[Gury]

Micro-small improvement from me: 22780

 

[McKong]

10 hours ago, carlsson said:

So in my quest to not try to improve my HSC results, I moved onto the arch nemesis C64 tonight.

 

First we have Atarisoft's Galaxian. Everything moves in slow motion on this one, but at the same time enemies are flying all the time which I find makes it more difficult. Something that struck me that making the combo move to shoot two Hornets first and the Commander last (for 800 pts) is something you can obtain regularly on the C64 version, but very seldom on the A8 version. Maybe what is most odd about the C64 version is that you get an extra ship first at 7000 pts compared to 5000 pts in both the A8 and VIC versions. Honestly in comparison the A8 version feels like a proper arcade cabinet in comparison. I ended up with 10970 pts on this version.

 

 

Then I played a number of clones. Galaxions by John P. Shay is generally quite high rated at Lemon64, but in this game enemies fly in straight diagonals, a bit target seeking. On first level they fly one at a time, then two at a time, three at a time. It is like he wanted to make a clone of Galaxian but didn't like all the elements of it. I scored 8840 pts before I gave up. Different than Atarisoft's Galaxian, but not necessarily better.

 

 

I follwed up with Alien Attack, which turned out to be a cross between Space Invaders and Galaxian in that enemies move all the way to the end of the screen, but then build formations and attack. A bit interesting/annoying that the background changes colour every second level. I might play this a little more, at least to exceed 4990 pts in order to break the built-in highscore at 5000 pts.

 

 

Next in line was Invasor by Oliver Musolf, once part of an "Arcade Pack". Interesting move to have background music while playing, but to all intents this looks like a carbon copy of Shay's Galaxions. A bit more modern (1985 vs 1983) graphics but the gameplay with single attacking enemies etc almost makes me want to run a binary comparison on the two games, in case Musolf lifted routines from the older game and reskinned it. Also the game doesn't bother to show my last score and with a built-in high score very hard to obtain, there was no point for me to take a screenshot (I think I had a best score around 3600 pts).

 

Onto Swoop from Micro Power. In this game, all the enemies are birds, and there is an interesting addition in that if a bird reaches to the bottom of the screen, it poops which means you can't move into that direction for a little while until the poop is cleared. It makes the game harder to play, and to be honest I'm not sure if it makes it any more fun. Perhaps if you had a sideways poop cleaning laser that you could use X number of times per level instead of waiting for it to go away. I scored 2215 pts however.

 

 

Swooper by Frank Neuhaus has an unknown origin. Also it isn't really a Galaxian game, more like Space Invaders where enemies take a flight and stay at the bottom of the screen to annoy you. It is rather relaxing to play (however an action game can be relaxing) and with its high scoring system, I got 27530 pts without really trying too hard.

 

 

Tiradians by David Rees was a type-in program in Your Computer #1/1985. It is at least partly made in BASIC which becomes apparent from how slow it is. However it is a rather decent version of Galaxian. The graphics are fine, the attack waves are reasonable. If it was redone entirely in machine code, it probably could be a decent contender to the Atarisoft version. I ended up with 4840 pts and if it wasn't so sluggish, I'd play it again.

 

 

Finally we have Xerons by A. Trott, known for the nice Qix clone called Stix. In Xerons, all enemies are variations of the letter X. The first level is quite easy, the second level is significantly more intensive and the third level... well, I didn't get a chance to clear it. Definitely Galaxian inspired, but not my favorite of this crop. After 3790 pts, I had enough.

 

 

I know that I probably should play some of the A8 clones to compare, but it is safe to say that none of the Galaxian type games on the C64 really get close to the A8/5200 version of Galaxian IMHO.

Thanks for the report Carlsson, interesting to see all the different versions 

[Alicja - Caco's daughter]

2010

[Mister-VCS]

10,380

 

 

[+therealbountybob]

13 hours ago, AtariSphinx said:

Galaxian: 29,070

 

Getting closer to 30k.  Liking this one a lot.

Good going AtariSphix but can you hold off the pack of challengers until Sunday to claim your first HSC win?!!!

 

On 3/31/2021 at 10:36 PM, mimo said:

Not got round to buying the upgrade parts yet, but it's a nice stick. Liking it more the more I use it

So you have the new stick! What does the upgrade kit do?!

 

Votes please EVERYONE! >>>  Round 7 POLL OPEN

 

 

latest table

Galaxian

  1st   AtariSphinx                    29,070  12pts
  2nd   McKong                      25,410  11pts
  3rd   tompateus                   23,010  10pts
  4th   Gury                           22,780  9pts
  5th   chevymad                    21,460  9pts
  6th   jdh                             21,140  9pts
  7th   therealbountybob          21,010  8pts
  8th   Gazzabass                   20,140  8pts
  9th   Caco                          19,000  8pts
 10th   Starbug                     18,000  7pts
 11th   Deteacher                  17,180  7pts
 12th   Mr Trust                    16,530  7pts
 13th   carlsson                     14,400  6pts
 14th   pusakat                     14,150  6pts
 15th   mimo                         14,150  6pts
 16th   Sikor                         13,710  5pts
 17th   Mrs Mimo                    13,580  5pts
 18th   NamcoPlayer               12,930  5pts
 19th   slx                            12,310  5pts
 20th   graywest                    12,310  4pts
 21st   8BIT 1337                   12,060  4pts
 22nd   Yautja                       10,620  3pts
 23rd   Mister-VCS                  10,380  3pts
 24th   Benighted                    9,260  3pts
 25th   RedThunder                 9,030  2pts
 26th   jblenkle                       7,040  2pts
 27th   Alicja (Caco Jr)             2,010  2pts

#bonus point for top NTSC score

[mimo]

40 minutes ago, therealbountybob said:

So you have the new stick! What does the upgrade kit do?!

Yes, it's really nice. I'm doing some mods rather than upgrades just to make it more to my taste. Updated spring to require more force to move the stick and a different actuator to reduce the throw.

[Sikor]

[tompateus]

25910 pts

Made it to 22220 pts without loosing any life, but then it went really fast.

Seems to be some bugs in this game, sometimes a life is lost without being hit by a bombdrop that i see..?!

And a coupple times when the game is over, all scoore is gone before i can take a picture, no numbers, no roundflags, only the aliens left flying around. That happend a coupple of days ago when i hit 25810 (i think)

Luckely i beat that score now.

 

Anyone else that have similar experience..?

Edited April 6, 2021 by tompateus

[zylon]

17,340

[AtariSphinx]

1 hour ago, tompateus said:

 

Seems to be some bugs in this game, sometimes a life is lost without being hit by a bombdrop that i see..?!

And a coupple times when the game is over, all scoore is gone before i can take a picture, no numbers, no roundflags, only the aliens left flying around.

Never lost a life that way but did  one time see the game go almost immediately into attract mode after game over.  You don't see the score or flags as you describe but if you start a new game the high score was still shown in the bottom left (at least for me).  This only happened to me on my first post of score but never again.   

[McKong]

7 hours ago, tompateus said:

25910 pts

Made it to 22220 pts without loosing any life, but then it went really fast.

Seems to be some bugs in this game, sometimes a life is lost without being hit by a bombdrop that i see..?!

And a coupple times when the game is over, all scoore is gone before i can take a picture, no numbers, no roundflags, only the aliens left flying around. That happend a coupple of days ago when i hit 25810 (i think)

Luckely i beat that score now.

 

Anyone else that have similar experience..?

Yep, a few times I've lost a life that way.

 

I've also seen shots go through the enemies and my ship before

Edited April 7, 2021 by McKong

[STARBUG]

21,600 NTSC

[Sikor]

very small improvement:

 

[VW]

7510 in case pic gets cropped weird. My timing was all off from being used to arcade Galaga.

[VW]

15850 getting better but still a long way from the top.

[Sikor]

[Gazzabass]

21410