Third star journey for the Galaxian series.
Many video game fans are aware of Namco’s shmup classic Galaxyseveral still know of its legendary successor Galaga, but far fewer people ever refer to space shmup’s second successor, Gaplus. Well, the renaissance is here as the formative shmup has joined the ranks of Hamster’s Arcade Archives on PS4 and Nintendo Switch.
Released for arcades in 1984, and lost in the bog of video game crashes, Gaplus retains the vertically rolling shmup action from its predecessor, but introduces a brand new scoring system as well as a selection of cool power-ups and alternative weapons. While the player guides a brave vessel and shoots down waves of enemies, they can collect flags to get score bonuses and unleash a powerful arsenal of pick-ups, including a tractor bar and a huge, drill-like pendant.
Watch the action in the video below, courtesy of YouTuber Old Classic Retro Gaming.
While Gaplus was well received by critics and experienced some success in Japan, the western release suffered due to the wave of arcade center shutdowns and a general movement towards home games. In North America, Gaplus was renamed to Galaga 3 in an attempt to attract more eyes to its heritage. Gaplus would not receive a lot of home ports, even though a version for Commodore 64 was released. The Arcade version would not receive an official home port until it was re-released on the Wii Virtual Console in 2009.
Gaplus is available for download now on PS4 and Nintendo Switch, at a price of around $ 8.
Chris Moyse
Senior Editor – Chris has been playing video games since the 1980s. Former Saturday Night Slam Master. Graduated from Galaxy High with honors. Twitter: @ChrisxMoyse