Great selection. A true classic!
Some comments:
115u2 runs awful slow
133 runs fine, but I never did get bezels/layout artwork to work with d3d video mode & 133, but this game runs fast enough with ddraw video mode & artwork, so I'm game.
Oy, I had to reprogram my front end batch file. Gorf not only taunts me during during the game but also when I'm setting up to play it properly!
hiscore patch on 133 doesn't save high scores =(
I think I got about 16k after a couple of games, but I can probably repeat or better that. Don't count that score for the competition.
Thinking back on this game now, this is very strange: take Midway's licensed Space Invaders by Taito & tweak it & rename it, take Midway's licensed Galaxian by Namco & tweak it, make 3 more simple games, throw it in a cool cabinet & make it talk, & you've got a new game. I can't see that working today--back then, with copyrights & with the fledgling video game industry, it was probably easier to get away with appropriation. I wonder what the licensing agreement was like (if there even was one) to be able to take 2 manufacturer's games/graphics/etc & combine them into another game. I read that the Galaxians stage was removed from all home console ports.
The 2nd & 3rd time around, Galaxians provides a bit of a bullet hell environment--I like it!
Any tips for squeezing more points out of the game? There are certainly ways to get a few more points (shoot upper ships in Astro Battles, shoot Galaxians only when they're attacking, etc. You seem to get 20 points for knocking off each piece of the flagship. That will take a while to add up, but you can get several hundred that way. As a kid, I remember being amused that you can shoot off part of the ship's wing but the disconnected end of the wing stays with the ship instead of falling off. :]
Thanks,
-Jason