Author: by Staff

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.