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Galaxian trivia and gameplay

Galaxian is an arcade game that was released by Namco in 1979.

Description (from Wikipedia) Galaxian expanded on the formula pioneered by Space Invaders. Like that earlier game, Galaxian featured a horde of attacking alien armies that exchanged shots with the player. In contrast to Space Invaders, however, Galaxian added an element of drama by having the aliens periodically make kamikaze-like dives at the player's ship. What's the game about? The gameplay was relatively simple. Swarm after swarm of alien armies attacked the player (who controlled a ship which could only fire sparingly at best) along the bottom of the screen. The player would defeat one swarm, only to have it replaced by another more aggressive and challenging army in the next screen. A plain and repetitive starfield scrolled lazily in the background, nicely contrasting with the action of the game.

Galaxian Trivia
Galaxian was very successful for Namco. It was the first arcade game to feature true color. Previous arcade games only emulated color by projecting black and white images onto a colored background.

• Galaxian was so successful that it spawned several follow-up games. The most popular of these was its immediate successor, Galaga, which in a large part eclipsed its ancestor in popularity.
• The highest ever score in a game of Galaxian was achieved by Gary Whelan of Manchester, England on 13 August 2004 when he managed to amass a total of 399,290 points.