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Deluxe Galage; for those of you who don't know already; is an updated clone of the classic Atari original Space Invaders. It’s also free to try with the option of sending a small donation to the author. The game is easily installed on any hard drive, and files can simply be dragged and dropped to their location without the hassle of an installation
Deluxe Galaga was first released in the early 1990's as a public domain title, and was continually developed and updated up until October of 1995. The game is available for both ECS and AGA Amigas - which are virtually identical - and runs on the minimum memory and CPU requirements. .
Players can still experience Deluxe Galaga for free by downloading the latest archive from Aminet: (http://aminet.net/game/shoot).
As we run the game for the first time, the program automatically detects your system configuration and throws up a handy options screen to allow players to customise their gaming experience. At this stage it is advisable to make sure everything is turned on before clicking OK to save these options. The game title sequence then kicks in (with different music depending on which version you have). Pressing a key takes us to the in-game configuration screen where we can choose our level of difficulty with the '1', '2' or '3' keys, swap between music and SFX with the 'M' and the 'E' keys, and also choose the number of players with the keys F1-F3. One great feature from the get-go is the ability to have two players playing as competitors (each player takes it in turns) or as team-mates (playing together in the same screen). This adds to the game significantly - and can be a real blast to have both players fighting for supremacy at the same time.
Having satisfied ourselves with the options, a click of the trigger powers the game into action and we see our hero heading into the battle zone at warp speed...
Having warped, a squadron of enemy drones soon appears from the top of the screen - sweeping past the player - before taking position in almost classic Invaders style. The objective is to knock these drones out as quickly as possible - and as one wave is cleared another quickly follows. To begin with we find ourselves with three slow ships and a weedy pop-pop gun; not the easiest way to win a war. But before we get a chance to consider our fate the enemy drones quickly go into full-on attack - swinging out left and right, dodging, rotating, and generally being a nuisance while raining a snow blizzard of bullets our way. By destroying the drones we can collect whatever they may drop - and in no time things start to become much more interesting.
The dropped items come in a vast array of forms; from speed upgrades, bullet upgrades, letters (which spell out EXTRA for an extra life), score multipliers, auto fire, and of course weapons upgrades a plenty. From our single shot standard weapon we can acquire: double shoot, triple shoot, quad fire, a 'super' triple shooter, a powerful fireball, a plasma weapon and several beyond that - each noticeably cranking up our destructive potential. If you lose a life you will only drop down a single level of speed and weaponry - meaning players rarely have to go back to the pop-gun unless they lose all their lives and choose to use a continue token.
Some drops will automatically complete the level. For example, sometimes a bomb will appear which will destroy all the foes on screen, replacing them with gemstones. A 'Warp' icon may appear which will take us further into the game. A memory maze icon will present the player with a grid of squares - behind each lies a symbol; which the player can grab by finding a matching pair. Sometimes the player finds an asteroid icon which takes the player on to the next level by navigating a furious meteor storm (which also contains extra points and money).
Money is one of the more crucial drops you pick up. Silver coins are worth 10 credits, Gold are worth 20, Green coins are worth 50, and Blue coins give you 100 credits each - which can be saved or spent as necessary in a shop which appears before every 5th level. Other drops include: ship shields, ship armour, hologram (a holo-ship mirrors your actions), money multipliers, extra lives and a 'scoop'. The scoop acts like a tractor beam - pulling in any drones which happen to wander within range - and attaches them to the side of the ship. This is great for two reasons. Firstly, if you get hit while carrying one or more drones you will only lose the drone, not your life! Secondly, while you have drones attached they will fire at the other drones as you do - effectively adding extra fire-power to your ship.
Having upgraded our ship it becomes much easier to dispatch those pesky drones, but if only life was so easy! Each section of the game is split into four stages. The first two are standard wave attacks but on the third level we encounter a larger mother ship - more effective in our demise thanks to targetable laser balls. The tip here is to keep moving so that by the time the balls fly through to our location we are already well away from them. Mother ships also drop rank markers, of which six are required to get yourself a new rank in the game (which does nothing incidentally, except to increase your own prestige). Having dispensed with the mother(s) we find a kamikaze level in which drones attack in straight waves, or we find a bonus wave which sees drones attacking without firing. At the end of these four levels we get to peruse the shop; and to afford all those wonderful toys. Then we warp on towards the next set of four levels and do it all over again, - if we don't get stopped that is!
Warp malfunctions are random and uncommon, but when they strike we are faced with a brand new threat - a screen full of mother ships! There can be any number of mothers on screen from 1 to 6; all firing their targeted laser balls in our path; and a good weapon is needed here to get those mothers off your back. The levels themselves are not immune to alternative attacks either. First off, each level is timed; meaning each screen must be cleared within the time limit or a 'hunter' ship appears to ensure we get on with it. These can be real mean suckers in that they fire targeted homing missiles - which can seriously damage your day. Sometimes another odd sound is heard above the usual fighting mêlée heralding another ship - the destroyer - which will fire particle beams down like a demigod! If all that wasn't enough to chew on there are also pirate ships; which will sneakily hover down and steal all the money we have managed to cobble together. A ferocious weapon is needed to knock one of these out of action, but doing so will release a very bankable hoard indeed!
However, after every 25 levels we get to meet an even greater challenge in the shape of a Super Mother ship. Super Mothers are three or four times larger than standard mother drones and pack a huge punch using their unique laser mine barrage (each one the size of our lowly ship) - requiring power and skill to navigate around. These beasts will then drop 6 or 7 rank markers in their wake.
As the levels progress the drones become increasingly more difficult to knock out. Some have outer-skins; which means you have to beat them down to their final skin before they can be destroyed. On earlier levels it is often quite easy to find a place somewhere which seems invulnerable to the first wave attacks. On later levels this quirk is removed - meaning the player has to use their wits to survive. Finally, at the end of the games 75 levels, we move up a level of difficulty: from easy to normal, to hard - and the game loops to give the player an almost endlessly increasing challenge.
As you may have guessed already with this review, I have admired this little gem since it's 90's inception. There are many things to like about it. The variety of the item drops means you never know how each play will progress. Sometimes it's all too easy to get the big meaty weapons - often just as easy to have them stripped away; leaving the player battling to keep a pace with the drones. The graphics are great in their hi-resness, and really stand out as bold, well defined and fluid sprites. The controls are also smooth and accurate, enabling players to navigate the frantic meteor storms and the relentless rain of enemy fire with appropriate skill. In fact there is so much going on that even veterans find themselves coming back time and again.
Another great feature is a speech effect which vocalises the fact that a drop has been collected. In earlier incarnations of the game these were robotic voice-overs, but by the end of the games' run these had been refurbished with female vocals. Similarly, much of the SFX in the game depends on which version you have. Some (v2.51 for example) have meaty and brash SFX, while others (v2.6c for example) have softer, more delicate tones on offer. The music changes with each version too - why? Who knows.
On the downside: sometimes the action gets so hectic that players often run into a hail of bullets while trying to evade an attack coming from the other direction. This isn't so much an undesirable issue - rather a frustration. Adding lots of speed to our ship can also mean the vessel becomes almost unplayable - having the player careering from one side of the screen to the other; which really works in the meteor storm levels but not so well with micro bullets flying everywhere. Finally, each version saves your high score data as a file, but it is often no possible to have old high scores transferred if you happen to upgrade to a newer version.
Overall, a truly amazing game. Lots of random things going on means the levels rarely get boring, and the array of weapons means the game can be a real blast. Recommended!
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It's hard to imagine how much better the little Invaders sprites could ever get. The graphics seem polished and fluid in every detail - only the poorly defined Mother ships let this one down.
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Highly functional but different depending on which version of the game you have - some are much better than others. (The v2.6c on Aminet seems a bit poor on the SFX front to me).
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Sometimes the player dies simply because they are too slow or too weedy to be effective, sometimes they die because they're flying too fast to avoid trouble! In general though everything works really quite well.
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| A top notch PD game - still as bright and colourful, still as easy to get into, still as fun as ever. A real winner! |
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Get Amiga Forever with pre-installed Workbench, games, applications, and much more.
It also contains the original Amiga ROM-files, 100% legally!
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