Galaga is a fixed-shooter arcade game where you pilot a starfighter along the bottom of the screen, blasting swarms of insect-like aliens that dive and fire at you. You can shoot multiple bullets at once—a step up from earlier games in its lineage—and survival hinges on dodging enemy fire and collisions. Every few stages, a Challenging Stage appears: enemies fly in set patterns without attacking, and clearing all of them nets a big point bonus. The twist? Boss aliens can snag your ship with a tractor beam. Your captured fighter joins the enemy formation and shoots back at you. Destroy the boss mid-flight and you'll reclaim it, doubling your firepower but also your hitbox. The game tracks your hit-miss ratio and ends when you're out of lives. A coding quirk lets attackers stop firing under certain conditions, and the counter resets at level 255.
