Topic: Pac-man & Galaga Dimensions - "Galaga" Control Issue

I finally found a used copy of this game, but I'm having trouble with classic Galaga. In the actual arcade game, my ship will shoot every time I press the fire button, but I can't get it to work here. I can only fire off two rounds until there's a pause before it starts shooting again. Is there any way around this? If not, this is a pretty broken port considering the kind of game Galaga is, and I'm surprised the issue wasn't brought up in the review.

I'm a bit confused as to your question... I experienced no issues with the game at all; it seemed to control just fine for me. I believe X is for auto fire...? Is that what you're asking about?

It's been a while since I played the 3DS version, but I think that's just how firing works. If you hold down the fire button, it's a burst shot of two bullets every second or so. I think if you tap the fire button it goes slightly faster.

The autofire is better (which strangely wasn't mentioned in the manual), but it's still not working right. I did figure out the problem, though: the game will only allow you to have two shots on screen at a time (meaning it will fire faster when you're destroying charging enemies), unlike the actual arcade game where the only limit is how fast you can press the button. How in the world did Namco screw up so badly porting a 30 year old (or something like that) arcade game to superior hardware?

As far as I can remember, the arcade game has a two shot limit as well... I've had tons of ports of Galaga, too, (GBA, DS, etc.), and there's always a two fire limit...

Those are all ports as well. I have access to an actual arcade cabinet of Galaga (as part of a compilation of several older games on one machine) at a nearby pizza place, and it doesn't have that limit.

@BulbasaurusRex: Well, arcade games have different settings that can be changed manually inside the machine; like in Pac-Man you can modify Pac-Man's speed, etc. Maybe you can turn off the two-shot limit, and the machine you're playing has it turned off? That'd be my guess.

I played Galaga a lot. In fact, I'm in the Top 100. Last time I time I checked, I'm #70 something which was a couple of months ago. I might be #120 by now, though. I think that the control is absolutely fine. I agree with you where I did have rapid fire when I played the actual arcade cabinet. I think that Namco made it more "fair" in their later ports when remaking Galaga. The two shots seem a little more challenging and keeps all of those noobs off of the leaderboard!

@Obito_Tennyson
Sounds like the leaderboards are good. I've been interested in this game for a while, and I wanted the leaderboards to be worthwhile in keeping me interested. Would you recommend this game?

There is a limit of two shots onscreen at a time (four if you have the double ship upgrade). I have played Namco's Class of 1981 enough times to know that. I also own the NES version which has the same limitation.

I would back then. Now, if you'd just want to play the NES Pac Man or Galaga, then you could play it on the Virtual Console (well, Galaga not yet in the US until Namco finally decides that Japan isn't the only country on Earth) only without the leaderboards. The leaderboards all have very close scores to each other and I'm pretty sure that the only ones who made it past 300,000 were the top 10 who I believe are hackers when the 3DS first came out. Reasons? Well, they're in 400,000s, 500,000s, no one's in the 600Ks, and I believe that one or two managed to get 999,998 / 999,999. That's just impossible unless you spent five hours straight being ProAsHecks.

Although, there is also the Galaga Legions which is pretty fun and also the Pac Man Championship games which are pretty fun. The last two are Pac Man Tilt, which takes advantage of the 3DS's gyrospere causing you to tilt the screen to progress in the platformer, and also this Galaga 3D game where you're in a first-person view shooting aliens that come close, it's very similar to Face Raiders only with epic music and... well... Galaga! They also have achievements to earn.

Therefore, it is worth picking up a copy if you don't mind, but if you would get a copy, just get one for about $10 to $20 since I wouldn't say it is the most addictive game, with the exception of Galaga, Pac Man, and Pac Man Championships. Galaga Legions is really fun, but wears down after a while and just gets boring unless you're really good at games like Recca and could get very far in games where enemies are coming in every direction.

@C-Olimar: I would recommend the game if you're a fan of Pac-Man & Galaga (like me); for fans of the games it's a great addition to have on 3DS. I had some fun with both Pac-Man Tilt and Galaga 3D Impact, too, even though they aren't the best games I've ever played. All in all, I'd say go for it of you like Pac-Man and Galaga at all. And @Obito_Tennyson: I didn't find Legions boring at all! It's really frickin' intense, is what it is! And I love the two little helper ships that you can strategically place. It's a lot of fun. One of the best scrolling shooters I've played, to date. Namco really knows what they're doing when it comes to scrolling shooters; they basically invented the genre with Galaxian.

Thanks for the advice! I love Pacman and have yet to try Championship Edition! I also like Galaga, so it sounds like a good collection. I can get it for around £13 used on Amazon, so the price is right. I'll pick it up soon!

The original Arcade machine definitely had the two-shot limitation as well. Maybe the compilation machine you're playing at has some kind of hack running (much like Street Fighter II Rainbow and such) or there really is an official setting that removes the limit, but I've played the original on numerous arcade machines in my life, and none of them allowed for more than two shots at once. And fortunately so, as otherwise you would be merely blasting away, removing any semblance of tactics.

I did some reasearch on this. The original arcade game does indeed have a two shot limit, but many arcade cabinets out there somehow have the limit removed. I can't find any information as to what causes this, as the operator settings have an autofire option but not one for removing the shot limit.

Anyway, I like it better without the shot limit, as the style of the game encourages you to button mash most of the time, anyway. The skill comes from timing your movement to pick off the enemies as efficiently as you can while dodging their shots and charges. Without the shot limit, the game has a more reasonable difficulty level while making it possible to actually shoot down a decent number of enemies in the challenging stages after the first one.

@BulbasaurusRex: More reasonable difficulty? The difficulty has always been reasonable for me... just use a double ship on the challenging stages, and know where the Galaga are going to appear! ...of course, I've been playing Galaga for years (since I was little), so I know the game inside and out at this point.