Gaplus (ギャプラス, Gyapurasu?), also known as Galaga 3 is a shoot-em-up arcade game by Namco and released in 1984. It was the only other game that ran on Namco's Phozon hardware, three Motorola M6809 processors running at 1.536 MHz and is the second sequel to Galaxian (after Galaga). In the US, a conversion kit that changed the title to Galaga 3 was released (even though there is no official "Galaga 2") to have more recognition amongst fans.
Gameplay[]
The player controls a starfighter that can now move up to halfway of the screen (much like Atari's Centipede) and must destroy all of the insect-like invaders to complete a stage.
The Boss Galaga and Galaxian Flagship are replaced with the Queen Gaplus (also known as the King Gaplus) that carries a "blaster head" at the top. If the player shoots the enemy while it is diving down, the player will earn the blaster head (the effects of them will be shown below) and gives the player a limited power. When all of the aliens are killed, the player goes to the next stage (labeled in this game as "parsecs"). The third and every fourth level is a bonus stage that has the player juggle enemies to spell out a word. A bonus is recieved when the entire word is spelled out.
Ports[]
Gaplus was ported to the following consoles:
- Playstation (Namco Museum Volume 2)
- Mobile Phones (Renamed Galaga 3 in this version)
- Wii (Namco Museum Remix)
- Wii Virtual Console Arcade
- iPhone (Galaga 30th Anniversary Collection)
- Commodore 64
- Nintendo Entertainment System (Namco Museum Archives: Vol. 2)