About a year ago, Namco released Pac-Man Championship Edition, a re-imagining of the classic arcade game with several different modes and stylised retro graphics. The game was a hit with critics and audiences everywhere. Now it appears Namco is going to continue this trend with another one of its classic arcade properties: Galaga. The sequel to Namco’s 1979 smash hit Galaxian, Galaga was an evolution of the then-ridiculously popular shoot ‘em up genre, featuring new concepts such as multiple ship control and bonus stages. Now we have Galaga Legions, which builds on the foundation of the original game with some concepts and gameplay mechanics from more modern shooters.

Namco bills Galaga Legions as a “true sequel” to Galaga, wanting you to ignore the last three or four games they pushed out after Galaga’s 1982 release. The game’s premise is relatively unchanged in that you are a lone star fighter facing off against the hordes of Galaga, but the execution is different. Instead of whittling away at a group of fighters in each area, Galaga Legions constantly feeds in fighters from every direction on the screen, with lines tracing the path of the oncoming ships. You can play the game in two ways: try to destroy everything that moves and live another day, or hit the specific ship in each wave that will trigger a chain reaction, taking the rest of the ships with it and giving your score a healthy bonus.


That’s not all there is to it, however. One of the major new gameplay elements are satellites, two of which can be deployed from your fighter to fire independently, in one of four directions, from any part of the play area. Satellites are particularly helpful in the harder missions, where you can essentially use them to provide covering fire for you while you move your fighter out of harm’s way. Alternatively, you can opt not to deploy satellites, and benefit from a more full frontal attack.

The original Galaga had a curious gameplay mechanic which involved allowing the enemy to capture one of your ships in a valiant sacrificial effort, and then rescuing that fighter in order to join them together for twice the firepower. Galaga Legions has a bit of a twist on this idea; at a certain point in each level, a small vortex will appear. Shoot the vortex enough times and it will suck in sixteen enemy fighters, which will become your allies. With these enemies on your side, your firepower becomes devastating – but on top of that, they can be split off into groups of eight with your satellites for maximum effect. Unlike your satellites, the captured enemy fighters can be destroyed when they come into contact with other ships, so you have to be careful.

Galaga Legions offers two play modes: Championship and Adventure. Each mode has a set of five levels of varying difficulty and each level has its own unique set of enemy patterns. Unlike Pac-Man Championship Edition, there is not a whole lot of difference between the Championship and Adventure modes of Galaga Legions; the only notable difference is that Adventure lets you pick which stage you start from, while Championship requires linear progression. Galaga Legions is also an entirely solo affair, with the only real outside challenge coming from the game’s leaderboards, which makes it look particularly lacking when compared to Bizarre’s recently released Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, which featured some fantastic multiplayer options.


It can take a couple of plays before you get the hang of how Galaga Legions works. The game is somewhat deceptive in the way it presents its level of difficulty; you can blast your way through the first mission without breaking a sweat, and then be completely dominated by the second. The action is frantic and fun and rarely unfair, so one can feel encouraged to practice to become better at the game; something you will need to do a lot of if you want to have any chance of unlocking the game’s achievements.

Galaga Legions is pretty lush from a visual standpoint, with aesthetically pleasing backgrounds and some flashy effects. Due to the sheer number of enemies, the screen can get pretty crowded at times, dragging the frame rate down with it, but it’s never a major issue. The flashiness and slowdown can make the game seem busier than it actually is. A number of different skins are available for the ships, including classic Galaga and Galaxian models. The models for these older ships use the same distinct visual style used on the sprites from Pac-Man Championship Edition, which makes them look pretty cool.

Galaga Legions is an enjoyable update to a classic arcade game, but doesn’t seem like as much of a revelation as Pac-Man Championship Edition was a year ago. There’s some fun to be had here, but it doesn’t have the depth of play modes offered by other shooters available on the Xbox Live Arcade service.