Gaplus

This is Mike's favorite game in the Galaga series! It is a much faster paced game than Galaga. It has many kinds of power ups...

Power Up	Function
Hidden Ship	Sleeker looking ship with faster firepower. This is the bottom ship on the title screen. If you do it right, you also get a free ship - you have to sacrifice a ship to get the hidden one.
Red Fighter	"Beam" = Capture enemies and make them work for you
Blue Fighter	Double wide shots
Green Fighter	"Corkscrew" = Capture enemies and shot them in a row for big bonus points
Purple Fighter	Horizontal scrolling playfield that really messes up the enemies. Some stars scroll left, others right.
Parts Ships	Collect all 3 pieces of your ship from the enemies and get an extra ship. Works between games (just like some pinball machines)
Free Ship Flag	Gives a free ship. The flag is given if certain enemies are shot first or if you shoot the shooting star 10 times.
Bonus screens	"Bounce" the enemies to spell "Bonus", "Gaplus", "Double", "Triple", etc. for big bonuses.

The style of the enemies changes drastically on each "Parsec" that ends with 1. For instance, Parsecs 1 through 10 look like modernized Galaga characters. 11 through 20 look like spiders. 21 through 30 look like the bonus bugs from earlier levels. Some of these can be seen in the pictures below.

If you are destroyed on some parsecs, the parsec starts over. On others, you are dropped in right where you left off. It is really disorienting. Especially if your ship is destroyed while a part of the ship is dropping. Sometimes you will get the part. Sometimes the parts ship will reappear at the top with the next piece. Sometimes the parts ship will reappear with the same piece. Sometimes the parts ship will not reappear.

Some parsecs scroll up, others scroll down, others don't scroll at all. The music that accompanies each level matches the playfield in a cool way too. For instance, in parsec 4, the playfield slows, stops, then scrolls backwards with an almost "Jaws" bass tune playing. The first few times I played this, I didn't get past this level because of the effect of everything moving backwards.

Some of the parsecs in the teens provide a "Tofu attack" whereby the enemies drop dangerous "Tofu" glowing blocks when they are destroyed. Some parsecs don't start the attacks until the enemies form up. Other parsecs have only certain enemies drop tofu.

Galaga 3 is the same game hacked to change the title screens. It also appears that the hidden ship was removed. So far I haven't found a way to make it appear on the Galaga 3 version. The second bonus level still has you spell "GAPLUS", however. So, if you have a choice, get the Gaplus version.

Here is our little girl playing Gaplus on our mini cabinet while the monitor for the full upright was being repaired. She can get to Parsec 2 all on her own!