The Top 30 Vertical Shooters for the Atari 2600 #15

Galaxian
Atari

What?  #15?  Galaxian is the greatest vertical shooter ever.

Well.  It is certainly a classic, of that there is no doubt.  But Galaxian has one major problem:  it gets boring.  There.  I said it.  Galaxian can get pretty boring pretty quickly.  Before you brandish the pitchforks, hear me out.

Galaxian is a classic.  I said that.  It is the answer to the question: can we make a better Space Invaders?  Yes, we can .  Take Space Invaders and instead of marching the aliens down the screen, send them dive bombing at the player instead. There is more challenge, more danger, and faster-paced action.  Galaxian truly is a better Space Invaders.

Unfortunately, that is about all Galaxian is.  After the first few rounds you have seen pretty much all there is to see and you are left with a endurance challenge.  It's not that the difficulty doesn't ramp well, it does.  At first you are only dive bombed by a single enemy, then, as the levels increase, you are dive bombed by more and more until it feels like the entire fleet is dropping down upon you at once.  The screen gets really crowded!

But that's all Galaxian has to offer.  It's a very nice thing to offer, but it is what it is.  By my estimation if you deliver a really good vertical shooter with solid game play, good difficulty and reasonable graphics, but you don't do much more than that, you get the midway spot on this list.

I like Galaxian, but it doesn't get lots of play in my house because I don't find myself compelled to play it over and over.  It's an average shooter and therefore finds itself at the average spot on this list. 

My Top Galaxian Score: 18,430