You know that feeling when you discover a game mechanic that feels like a secret handshake? That's Galaga in a nutshell. Released by Namco in 1981, this space shooter didn't just ride the coattails of its predecessor Galaxian—it completely reinvented what an arcade game could be. The genius move? Letting enemies capture your fighter, then giving you a chance to rescue it and fly with double firepower. It was revolutionary, and players lined up around the block to master it.

Here's something wild: Galaga was designed by Shigeru Yokoyama, who intentionally made the game harder than Galaxian to keep players engaged longer. But he also added something sneaky—a bug on the first stage that, if you know the trick, won't fire at you if you don't shoot it. Hardcore players discovered this almost immediately and turned it into an art form, using that safe corner to rack up insane scores. Namco could've patched it out, but they left it in, recognizing that these player-discovered quirks were part of what made arcade culture special.

The game's challenging patterns weren't random chaos either. Each wave follows precise attack formations with names like "Bee," "Butterfly," and "Boss Galaga" (the blue guys who can snatch your ship with their tractor beam). Memorizing these patterns became a badge of honor in arcades. The absolute masters could play for hours on a single quarter, and arcade operators both loved and hated them for it. There's even a famous story about Billy Mitchell—yes, that Billy Mitchell from King of Kong—achieving one of the first documented perfect scores of 3,333,360 points in 1989, nearly a decade after the game's release.

What really cemented Galaga's legacy wasn't just the gameplay, though. It was one of the first games to track and display your hit-miss ratio at the end, turning every session into a personal challenge to improve your accuracy percentage. This tiny psychological hook kept players feeding quarters long after other shooters had been forgotten. Today, Galaga cabinets are still some of the most sought-after arcade machines for collectors, and you'll find the game hidden as an Easter egg in everything from Microsoft Edge to the PS4. Not bad for a game that started as "Galaxian, but better."