PixlBit

As you know, I've had a YouTube channel for a minute now. Although I've pasted what I thought were some of my cooler exploits on PS4 via the PS4's built in video capture software, I've recently been doing videos of old arcade games. As I explained before, I've generally stayed away from videos of well-known games like Pac-Man or Super Mario Bros, because most people know those games very well, and doing a video of scoring 70,000 points on Pac-Man is pointless when you could watch a video of someone getting to the "kill screen" or finding some new game-breaking bug in SMB. I've instead stuck with more obscure games. Today, here are two obscure games from well-known publishers, plus a bonus.

Gaplus (Namco, Arcade, 1984)

Gaplus is the next sequel to Namco's popular Galaxian and Galaga arcade games. In fact, in the US, Midway (which had the US rights to Galaga and Galaxian) released the game in the US as Galaga 3. I've seen a Galaga 3 machine in the wild, at Rhein Main Air Base near Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Since then, Gaplus has appeared at home as part of Namco Museum Volume 2 for the PS1 (along with Mappy and Super Pac-Man), as well as a Wii Virtual Console download. The version here is from Namco Museum Vol. 2, downloaded onto my Vita TV from PSN.

Released during the video game crash, it never really took off like Galaga did. And honestly, Galaga endures as a classic because it's better designed and polished than its sequel. Nevertheless, Gaplus is a fun shooter, albeit a very difficult one. The aliens are faster and more aggressive, and sometimes the amount of bombs, exploding stars, and such veer this game into bullet hell territory. It has several new power ups: one which gives your ship a fast double shot, Cyclone, which draws enemies into a line wherein they will be blown away, as well as the game's signature power-up, Phalanx. Phalanx turns the Galaga capture mechanism from the previous game on its head, allowing you to capture up to six aliens to fight alongside you until either you or they are killed (if your ship is hit, all aliens attached to it die). Phalanx is essential for big bonuses during Challenging Stages, where the object is to volley aliens back and forth with your shots. Gaplus also allows your ship to move through the lower two fifths of the screen, a la Atari's Centipede and Millipede games. All of the power-ups stack.

Gaplus doesn't quite live up to its legendary predecessor, and its difficulty level is brutal, but it's still a fun game worth trying out.

Donkey Kong 3 (Nintendo, NES, 1986)

Donkey Kong was a groundbreaking platforming megahit that gave us Mario, while Donkey Kong Junior continued the platforming fun with Mario as a bad guy. How did Nintendo follow up on these two games (well, besides Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros, and everything that came after)? By turning Donkey Kong into a shoot-em-up!

In Donkey Kong 3, which is a NES adaptation of an arcade game, DK has gotten loose in a greenhouse and is stirring up a bunch of bugs to eat the valuable flowers therein. So it's up to Mario... oh, wait, sorry. For some reason, Nintendo dismissed the idea of Mario as an exterminator and instead created Stanley the Bug Man as a protagonist. Stanley bears a certain resemblance to what would later be called "Mr. Game & Watch", but he certainly never achieved Mario's level of stardom.

Anyway, you guide Stanley across the platforms at the bottom of the screen with his bug sprayer. You have to watch both Donkey Kong, who is slowly descending, and the insects. The insects are  deadly to Stanley, their stings causing him to have a seizure (more gruesomely, when he dies in the arcade version, the bugs actually swarm on him and eat him, leaving only his sprayer behind). Donkey Kong will clobber Stanley if he's allowed to drop all the way to the bottom. At the start of each life, there is a can of super spray hanging on the vine which will fall if Donkey Kong is pushed high enough. This super spray allows you to demolish even the indestructible worms as well as rapidly push DK off the screen. Since it carries over into the next stage, you can usually clear 2-3 stages and rack up bonus points with one can of super spray.

There are two ways to clear a stage: either push Donkey Kong to the top of the screen by spraying him (in certain stages, this causes his head to get stuck in a beehive, which I guess is this game's equivalent of the rivet stage in the first game), or kill a certain number of bugs. There are bugs which split into shrapnel and bugs which will charge Stanley if they get on the same level as him, and indestructible worms which will protect DK. In later stages, DK will fling coconuts at Stanley.

This game likewise never caught on the way its original did, as its arcade version was likewise screwed by the crash. The NES version was the only official home version made. But honestly, although this is a fun little game, the original Donkey Kong is a classic for a reason, and there is a reason why the Super Mario games are platformers rather than shooters. DK3 is available pretty readily on Virtual Console on the Wii, Wii U, and 3DS.

Galaxy Invasion (TRS-80, Big Five Software, 1981)

Okay, so Big Five, a company started by a couple of Southern California teenagers (at the time) was never as big as Nintendo or Namco. But this game, another Galaxian clone, was one of the best-regarded games on the TRS-80, and Big Five was reasonably well known for its time, as their games were generally high quality. They went on to make a Donkey Kong style platformer called Miner 2049er on the Atari 8-bit computers. Bill Hogue and Jeff Konyu, the authors of this game and Miner, even set up a Big Five website where you still can download an emulated version of Miner.

In this game, you fight fleet after fleet of aliens that peel out of their formation and dive-bomb your ship, just like Galaxian. The big enemy in this game are the Flagships in the back row. Scoring for destroying them is similar to Galaxian, where you get more points for taking their escorts out first. The Flagships have one twist that wasn't in Galaxian: At increasingly frequent intervals as you progress, a "Flagship Attack Alert!" will flash on the screen. This alert will reset if you destroy a Flagship. If you fail to end the alert within 5-10 seconds, the Flagships will simultaneously fire undodgeable laser beams which destroy your ship instantly.

Honestly, this game is actually a more fun game than its original source material, Galaxian. The varied aliens and the Flagship gimmick added quite a bit to the original, though Galaga would replace Galaxian and its clones as the gold standard for early 80's shmups, and with good reason. Still, this was one of my earliest home games and it still holds up well for what it is.

One other thing:

These videos were recorded using my birthday present. My wife got me a capture box, the EZCap 280 and a microphone for my birthday. Before, I was using the PS4's built in capture feature for videos, which is good for what it is but has its limitations, including only being available for the games on the PS4 and only recording the last 15 minutes of gameplay. The EZCap allows me to record video from any HDMI or component console, including my Wii U (also allowing Wii games as well as Virtual Console games), PSTV (which would allow me to do videos of Vita, PSP, and PS1 classics available on PSTV's version of PSN), and Wii (which would allow Gamecube videos). The EZCap came with a ArcSoft's Showbiz editing software, the mic allows clearer voice overs. These videos still aren't the slickest productions, but they're better than the bare bones setup I had going on before.

Anyway, enjoy!