Can you remix the same game multiple ways? After Namco Bandai created
Pac-Man: Championship Edition for XBLA, its frenetic take on
Galaga Legions debuted.
However, the team tells Gamasutra that the design focus on the simplicity of Xbox Live Arcade title
Galaga Legions' core mechanics means many promising ideas were left unexplored -- enough, perhaps, for a new take on the game.
In particular, the team notes that "...there are a lot of
Gaplus [aka
Galaga 3] fans on the core team", leading to
Galaga Legions, a remake that is more inspired by the 'special stages' of the original
Galaga than its
Space Invaders-inspired original gameplay.
And with the lessons learned from
Pac-Man: CE's less complicated design process, producer Nobutaka Nakajima and director Tadashi Iguchi say they'd like to have another go at
Galaga, to incorporate some of the ideas that didn't make it through in the process of creating
Legions.
"Because there are so many different ways of taking the
Galaga franchise and many different aspects that could be created into the core fundamentals of the game, we do want to look at
Galaga again," Nakajima says, speaking as part of
an in-depth Gamasutra feature.
Nakajima and Iguchi say a focus on
Pac-Man: CE's fundamental core mechanics is what makes it successful, and they aimed to bring that same simplified approach to
Galaga: Legions -- "that's where the fun lies, in the simplicity," Nakajima says. But, he adds, says there are still so many choices left to explore.
"We could create a different sort of
Galaga with a different spin or twist on the game mechanics and the core fundamental aspect of the game, and possibly in the future bring a different sort of
Galaga to the players," he says.
