Galaxians

Galaxian is a space-themed fixed shooter video game. The player controls a starship called the "Galaxip", the objective being to clear each round of aliens. The enemies appear in formation towards the top of the screen, with two escort ships, labeled the "Galaxian Flagship" or "Galboss", which take a single shot to destroy. The aliens called "Galaga" will make a dive bomb towards the bottom of the screen while shooting projectiles in an attempt to hit the player.

The "Galaxip" can only fire a single shot at a time, and the player must wait for it to either hit an enemy or the top of the screen before being able to fire another, due to limitations of the hardware. The player loses a life when colliding with either an enemy or their projectile; the game ends when all lives are lost.

Galaxian was designed by Kazunori Sawano, who had previously worked on many of Namco's electro-mechanical shooting gallery arcade games, notably Shoot Away (1977). Early in development, Taito had released Space Invaders in Japan, which swept the country by storm and helped turn the video game industry into a highly-profitable business. To help capitalize on the game's success, Namco president Masaya Nakamura ordered Sawano to make the best "post-Invaders" game they could, which put pressure on the development team. Although development of the game lasted six months, Sawano had made several ideas half a year before production began.

Sawano and his team set out to make a game anybody could play, using a "simple is best" motto during production; this helped trim away large-scale ideas in favor of a game that could loop endlessly and be able to use only two enemy types. Alongside Space Invaders, a large portion of the game was inspired by Star Wars, specifically its large-scale space battles. Sawano had wanted to replicate the feeling of a space battle, specifically with the sound effects. Several back-and-forth sound effects were made, many being rejected by Sawano for not matching his vision. The game was Namco's first arcade game to be composed with a synthesizer.

Galaxian was a critical and commercial success upon release. In Japan, it was the second highest-earning arcade game of 1979, below Space Invaders. The following year, Galaxian outperformed Pac-Man for a while, before the year ended with Galaxian again being the second highest-earning arcade game of 1980, below Pac-Man. Galaxian was later the 18th highest-grossing arcade video game of 1981, tied with Defender and Turbo. The game continued to see success in Japan throughout the early 1980s; Game Machine reported that it was still performing well as late as August 1983.

In the United States, Galaxian was also the second highest-grossing arcade game of 1980, below Asteroids, according to Play Meter and Cash Box. Galaxian had sold 40,000 arcade units in the United States by 1981, and 50,000 units in the US as of 1982.

The Galaxian arcade hardware had a significant influence on the hardware design of Nintendo's later arcade and console systems, including the arcade hardware for Radar Scope (1980) and Donkey Kong (1981) as well as the Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment System. According to Nintendo R&D2 lead engineer Masayuki Uemura, Galaxian replaced the more intensive bitmap rendering system of Space Invaders with a hardware sprite rendering system that animated sprites over a scrolling background, allowing more detailed graphics, faster gameplay and a scrolling animated starfield background. This provided the basis for Nintendo's Radar Scope arcade hardware, which improved on Galaxian with technology such as high-speed emitter-coupled logic integrated circuit chips and memory on a 50 MHz printed circuit board. Following the commercial failure of Radar Scope, the game's arcade hardware was converted for use with Donkey Kong, which became a major arcade hit.

Home systems at the time were not powerful enough to handle an accurate port of Donkey Kong, so Nintendo wanted to create a system that allowed a fully accurate conversion of Donkey Kong to be played in homes, leading to the development of the Famicom. The Galaxian Flagship appears as the 6th fruit in Pac-Man and has had a recurring appearance throughout the Pac-Man franchise. With Pac-Man's appearance in the Super Smash Bros. series, the Galaxian can be thrown by Pac-Man where it will fly in a shuttle loop and play sounds from the arcade game.