Gaplus

Gaplus

North American arcade flyer
Developer(s) Namco
Digital Design
Publisher(s)
Platform(s) Arcade, Commodore 64, Sony PlayStation, Nintendo Wii, Virtual Console
Release date(s)

Arcade

  • JP: April 1984
  • NA: October 1984

Commodore 64

Wii Virtual Console

  • NA/EU: March 25, 2009
  • JP: March 26, 2009
Genre(s) Fixed shooter
Mode(s) Up to 2 players, alternating turns
Cabinet Upright, cabaret, and cocktail
Arcade system Namco Phozon
CPU 3x Motorola M6809 @ 1.536 MHz
Sound 1x Namco WSG @ 1.536 MHz,
Discrete
Display Vertical orientation, Raster, 224 x 288 resolution

Gaplus (ギャプラス Gyapurasu) is a fixed shooter arcade game that was released by Namco in 1984. It was the only other game to run on Namco Phozon hardware, and in the US, a modification kit was later released to change the name to Galaga 3, possibly to increase recognition among fans of the games even though there was no "Galaga 2".

There are few known ports of this game. It appears on some multi-game cartridges, which were released long after its arcade release. It was ported to the Sony PlayStation in 1996 as one of the games featured in Namco Museum Volume 2, using its original name, Gaplus. It was also released on mobile phones with its Galaga 3 title, and is also part of the Namco Museum Remix (2007) and Namco Museum Megamix (2010) for the Wii with its original title being used. The original version was later re-released under its original name for the Wii Virtual Console Arcade on March 25, 2009 in North America, at a cost of 600 Wii Points (500 Wii Points in Europe and Australia).

Along with Galaxian, Galaga, and Galaga '88, Gaplus was "redesigned and modernized"[1] for an iPhone app compilation called the Galaga 30th Anniversary Collection, released in commemoration of the event by Namco Bandai.

Galaga 3 arcade conversion kit marquee

Gameplay

Gaplus is a sequel to Galaga and has similar gameplay. The player controls a spaceship, that can now move vertically (limited to halfway up the screen, much like Atari's Centipede) as well as horizontally, and shoots at swarms of incoming insect-like aliens which fly in formation above it and swoop down to attack it in a kamikaze-like dive. In this sequel, the level starts over if the player gets killed before all the enemies have come in. When all enemies are killed, the player moves on to the next level. By obtaining certain powerups, it is possible to shoot sixty bullets per screen, the most any Galaxian-related game has.

The game differs from its predecessors in several ways (including the fact that the appearance of the enemies changes every ten levels):

Gaplus can be played by a single player or by two players (alternating turns). The factory settings start the player out with three lives, with a bonus life awarded at 30,000 points, 70,000 points and every 70,000 points thereafter on the easiest level of play. These settings, like those of every other 8-bit Namco title before it, can be changed via DIP switches on the game's motherboard.

References

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