Gaplus

Gaplus, is far more commonly known as Galaga 3 and is a fixed shooter arcade game that was released by Namco in Japan and licenced to Bally/Midway in the U.S in 1984. It runs on Namco Phozon hardware and was only known as Gaplus in Japan. (although the game was released under both titles in North America). The "Fixed Shooter" style of game can be traced back to Space Invaders (1978) which introduced the arcades to the concept of fending off attacks of aliens with a ship that fires upward and moves horizontally at the bottom of the screen. Galaxian (1979) which was clearly influenced by Space Invaders expanded on the concept by having the invaders break off from the formation and attack independently. Gaplus is the third installment in the Galaxian series of games, (Galaxian-1979, Galaga-1981, Gaplus-1984, Galaga 88-1987, Galaxian 3-1990, and Attack of the Zolgear-1994) and is considered a sequel in itself to Galaga.

Gaplus is a tricked up but nevertheless very entertaining sequel to Galaga, (one of the greatest shooters of all time) and is similar in game play. It has the same look and feel as the original Galaga with the exception that the "bees" were redesigned to look a little more modern. It is also faster and much harder in game play and it adds a number of new elements to the series. Including eight-direction control, smarter more varied enemies, and a beam that enables players to capture up to six enemies at once for multiple firepower. The player controls a spaceship, that can now move vertically as well as horizontally, and shoots at swarms of incoming insect-like aliens which fly in formation above it and swoop down to bomb it in a kamikaze-like dive. In this sequel, the level starts over if the player is killed before all the enemies have come in. When all enemies are destroyed, the player moves on to the next level. By shooting at a star that occasionally appears, the player can get a ship with new graphics that can have three shots on screen instead of two. After this, shooting the star will make a special flag appear from the Namco game Rally-X that awards an extra life when collected. There are two special types of stages besides the normal levels called parsecs. These are levels where the starfield reverses and enemies come in waves then leave. After this, a small force comes in like a normal stage. The "king" alien on different stages drops several types of powerups when destroyed. The red powerup captures enemies with a tractor beam where each one provides another shot. The blue powerup gives wider and faster shots. The green powerup captures enemies in a tractor beam that can then be shot for bonus points. The purple powerup changes the screen to a vertical orientation. It may also carry a third of a ship that will be kept track of at the lower-right of the screen between games. An extra life is awarded when all three are collected. Other power-ups include decreased enemy speed, increased fighter and missile speed, and the ability to control the direction of fired missiles.

Challenge stages have returned, yet are much different in that it's now necessary to "juggle" the enemies back and forth as you shoot them, trying to keep them on screen as long as possible. Enemies are juggled by shots, each hit slowly spelling out "Bonus", "Gaplus", "Double" or "Triple" for a bonus and additional hits scoring 200 points each. It is most effective to use the red and blue power ups to repeatedly hit them.
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An attractive dedicated cabinet with a basic black background and colorful rainbow stripes that run from the sides converging in a "V" shape on the front panel. The game has matching sideart with a Gaplus logo and a scene of a space ranger pointing at a Gaplus "bee" ala Starship Troopers (film). The cabinet has red T-molding and its control panel overlay is generic with no labeling or logos. The Monitor is a Vertical, Raster Standard Resolution, Color CRT. ImageShack.us" /

It is assumed that the name Gaplus is short for Galaga Plus. Oddly enough, while Gaplus is also known as Galaga 3, there was no official "Galaga 2". While the Galaga 3 modification changed the game's title, one of the challenging stages still spells out "GAPLUS." As previously noted, each third of a bonus ship captured is displayed in the bottom right portion of the screen. Intrestingly, as long as the machine is not turned off, any remaining parts will persist between games. This was a somewhat unprecedented feature that could possibly give some repeat players an advantage over those who only played once when competing for the high score. Only the Japanese Namco Gaplus CPU board had the unique blood type feature. This allowed the player to enter his blood type along with his name, and age when achieving a high score.
In the 23 years since the release of Gaplus into the arcades, the game itself has only been ported to a home version twice. The first was in 1988 for the Comadore 64 home computer, it was published by Mastertronic and was released on a tape cassette format. The second was in 1996 on The Sony PlayStation. It was published by Namco and featured as one of the games on the Namco Museum volume 2, which was released on a CD format. It should be noted that Gaplus is available for MAME and can be down loaded onto PC's.

Many factors can be credited for Gaplus’s downfall. To start some say that “Timing is everything” this statement couldn’t be any truer when it comes to the Video Game industry. Gaplus was released into the arcades in 1984 this was a very bad year in itself. The gaming industry was still suffering from what is now called the "Video Game Crash of 1983". This was a year long crash of the video game market and the bankruptcy of a number of companies producing home computers and video game consoles in North America in late 1983 and early 1984. This period is sometimes referred to as the "video game crash of 1984", because that was the year the full effects of the crash became obvious to consumers. Hundreds of games were in development for 1983 release, most of which ended up in bargain bins. But few games were developed in 1983 for release the following year, resulting in a drought of new video games in 1984. Not even arcades were immune to the effect, all though not directly responsible for the present situation, the ripples of this crash would begin the slow decent and the end of the true Arcades. With in a decade many would be forced to close their doors forever, while others restructured their style to survive. Consumers in 1984 turned their backs on an over bloated market of home console game systems and games and at the same time deemed Arcades a "bad Place for kids". Sales dropped across the board and it seems that the only one to benefit from all of this was the sales of Home Computers, which. Poor marketing didn’t help Gaplus any either in an industry where names are everything and consumers always rely on recognition, this especially holds true to sequels of popular games. The name Gaplus just seemed to alienate the game from its predecessors and this must have been realized by Bally and Namco, when arcade operators reported low revenue for the game. They attempted to correct this problem by releasing a modification kit, this allowed the operators to change the title screen and marquee from Gaplus to Galaga 3, in hopes to increase recognition among fans of the Galaga series and boost sales. This was indeed a valiant effort on their part, but it was a little too late and didn’t help the fact that many gamers found Gaplus to be way too hard. Possibly the finale explanation of it’s lack of success in the arcades was that it becomes extremely difficult after Parsec 4 or 5, Games end quickly. In the end Gaplus and the other games that followed in the series would all fall into arcade obscurity never achieving the recognition, success, or popularity of Galaga and the Galaxian legacies.
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