Better Galaxian

tkarner · October 6, 2010

I've been away from Atariage for a few months so I didn't know that Nukey and Kevinmos3 were also working on Galaxian, but here's my version. My hack is less ambitious than theirs. I simply tried to create the most arcade authentic version by only altering sprites and colors. I hope I succeeded. Perhaps down the road some of my changes could be incorporated into their version for the ultimate 2600 Galaxian.

I started with the Atari version and first removed the orange border. Then I borrowed the Galaxian sprites and score font from Jess Ragan's Galaxian Arcade because he did a fine job with those. But then I took it couple of steps further. Galaxian Arcade, and most other previous hacks only changed the sprite of the ships in convoy formation but kept the original Atari sprites when the ships were in attack mode. I made them both consistent. I also changed the colors of the ships to better match the arcade. I also made the colors consistent between the convoy mode and attack mode. The convoy sprites are still multicolored and the attack sprites are still monochrome but at least the base colors match. Also, I made the movement of the ships in formation a bit less jittery.

The score was changed to red because that's what the arcade used.

I changed the player's ship a bit. It always bothered me that it was assymetrical, it fired off center. I also changed the reserve ship graphic a bit.

And finally I replaced the Atari copyright with a Namco logo just for kicks.

You may have noticed that the player's ship is now a pale yellow. This is a problem with the original program. The byte that governs the player's ship color is shared by the Galaxian flagship in attack mode. Therefore both must be the same color. It's probably why in the original Atari verson the flagships were white instead of their iconic yellow. I decided I really wanted them yellow so I have to deal with a yellow player ship.

Enjoy...

GalaxianTK.bin

Edited October 7, 2010 by tkarner