The colors of the game brought it alive the multi-colored aliens, the background of colorful stars, and the iconic Galaxian flagship created a stunning visual array. This was the first game to use attack formations- a feature that would be used in many games thereafter. Instead of only attacking from their neat rows, enemy ships would occasionally break formation and swoop down upon your ship. The major innovation of Galaxian was how the aliens attacked. The objective was the same: destroy attacking aliens before they destroyed you. Galaxian was based on Space Invaders, but with several modifications that increased the difficulty of the game. It became one of the most successful games at the time, but did not come near to the success of Space Invaders. Midway released Galaxian in America in 1979. Midway began working with Namco- the former Atari distributor- after Taito's Space Invader success allowed them to create their own U.S. The game was originally developed by Namco and released in Japan. The game alternates between drawing even ID lasers and odd ID lasers each frame.Galaxian was the first video game to use full-color graphics. To support the new laser limit, code was added to the laser drawing routine to flicker the lasers. In newer sets, each alien can shoot up to three lasers at a time. In older sets, each alien can only shoot two lasers at a time.

Only the older Namco set and the Taito set let the player start with 5 lives.

In Namco Set 1, the 'BONUS GALAXIP FOR' text was shifted to the left 8 pixels, and the string is now properly centered.

In Midway Set 1, the score value and the 'PTS' graphic were shifted to the right 8 pixels, potentially putting the 'PTS' graphic in the overscan area of the monitor.

The higher score values meant that the 'BONUS GALAXIP' string had to be readjusted.

In newer sets, there are four extra life settings, and all of the scores are higher than in previous sets.

In Midway Set 2 only, the extra life settings are lower.

In the oldest sets, there are three extra life settings, and one setting that disables the extra life feature entirely.

This is the only difference between the Taito set and Namco set 2.

Of course, each publisher has a different logo on the title screen. They seem to follow the chronology below:

Galaxian game arcade