Arcade Cabs in the Wild - Galaxian

Galxian

Location: Buzz's Coin Laundry Sherman Oaks

I found this cab at a local laundramat. It's not in the best shape, but the control panel and marque are still looking great. I played rounds while I waited for my clothes to dry and the thing still plays like a dream.




The side panels are scratched and faded, but it's still pretty cool too see the original side are, so many cabs now a days are refirbs with generic side art.



The front panel art is in a little bit better shape. The cool "invader" design still enticing to drop in a few more quarters.



check out the old Midway logo on the coin box. This hardware must all be original. Incredible!




The Joystick and fire buttons are a little grimey, but they still worked fine.



Like the joystick, the instructions have about 30 years of grime built up, but it's fascinating to see the instructions, this might be the only time I've seen an intact galaxian instruction decal.




My favorite part of this cab is the "Start Game" font. I just think it look so cool



From the Galaxian wikipedia entry:

Galaxian expanded on the formula pioneered by Space Invaders. As in the earlier game, Galaxian featured a horde of attacking aliens 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.

The gameplay was relatively simple. Swarm after swarm of alien armies attacked the player's ship that moved left and right at the bottom of the screen. The ship could only fire sparingly by default, but rearmed instantly when an enemy was hit. 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 in the background.

Galaxian was very successful for Namco and introduced several "firsts". Although true color (as opposed to a color overlay for a game that was otherwise black and white) began appearing as early as 1975, Galaxian took graphics a step further with multi-colored animated sprites and explosions, a crude theme song, different colored fonts for the score and high score, more prominent background "music" and the scrolling starfield, and graphic icons that showed the number of ships left and how many rounds the player had completed. These elements combined to create a look/feel that would set the standard for many other 1980s arcade games such as Pac-Man.

The "official" highest 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.