Galaxian for Mega Drive / Genesis
A downloadable game
The Galaxian arcade game was released by Namco in 1979. It was a fixed shoot 'em up that iterated on the Space Invaders idea by adding enemies that charged at you with vivid animation. The charging enemies are worth considerably more points, making for a fun risk-reward mechanic.
This port was made using static translation, meaning the original arcade game logic is running unchanged under the hood, translated from the original Z80 processor to run on the MC68000 of the Mega Drive/Genesis.
Graphics is imported directly from the arcade ROM, and carefully cropped from the vertical aspect ratio to fully preserve the gameplay. The audio is replicated as faithfully as possible given the difference in audio hardware.
An auto-fire button (B) has been added for convenience.
Play using any Sega Mega Drive/Genesis emulator, such as RetroArch or mednafen. Tested on MiSTer FPGA.
Features
- Unaltered arcade gameplay
- Hiscore saving
- Auto-fire on B
- Pause menu
Controls
- D-pad - move your 'Galaxip'
- A - fire bullet
- B - hold to auto-fire
- Start - start game / pause
Credits
- Namco - original 1979 arcade game
- Nameless Algorithm - Sega Mega Drive/Genesis port - see https://namelessalgorithm.com/genesis/blog/galaxian/ for more information
The port was developed using Claude Code. All trademarks belong to Bandai Namco - this is a fan project.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Great conversion challenge looks great!
Nice conversion! Our German-language review can be found at 03:25:52. English subtitles are also available. Subscription to our YouTube and Twitch channel is welcome. 🙂
Thank you for checking it out!
Great port. "Galaga" would be great on the Mega Drive too, by the way. Unfortunately, there’s no official release for it, on that console. Or "Galaga '88", that would be really awesome on MD. There are good ports of this game for the Game-Gear and the PC-Engine called "Galaga '90", sadly no MD version exists so far, but having that game on the Mega-Drive would be fantastic, too.
I agree, I was just playing Galaga 88/90 on TurboGrafx (MiSTer), it's super cool. And it should be able to run fine on a Mega Drive. There was a even port for the Game Gear.
I have always loved this Game and I have left a small contribución. Thanks
Thank you!
Why the hell did you use AI for this port?
This is a truly wonderful game. I feel that it recreates the original to a degree that is hard to believe is possible on the Mega Drive. The fact that I find it more difficult than the original must be because I've grown older.
Thank you, that was what I was going for. Yeah, it should be the same difficulty as the original.
Very nice!
https://www.indieretronews.com/2026/08/galaxian-brilliant-arcade-classic-by.html featured!
Thank you! I'm happy to see it on one of my favorite websites 😊 . I recorded a video here:
Awesome man :) - Also sooo cool to hear that! Keep up the great work
Would you be able to port bosconian?
and another question, is there a way to compile multiple games into one? So it could work like an old school namco museum compilation?
It is not impossible, although the Galaga hardware that Bosconian runs on has a triple CPU setup that might prove more tricky than Galaxians single Z80. Compiling multiple games into one shouldn't be a problem, if it's done the same way as e.g. '6-Pak' where there is a boot menu and you have to reset to get back to it.
thank you for the reply
Play tested this yesterday on retroarch on iphone using genesis plus gx, is there a way to display the hud arcade perfect? Otherwise this is basically spot on minus the title screen missing
Showing the HUD like the arcade game requires a few more vertical lines of resolution than the Genesis has. The only option would be to display the whole game rotated 90 degrees. It may be possible to do, but I think it has too limited a use case to be worth it.
The attract mode (Game Over/We are The Galaxians) should be the same as the arcade game, what is missing?
Awesome! Thank you so much! I hope you can continue porting arcade games to the Sega Mega Drive. I can suggest some if you're interested 🙏
Thank you, have fun with the port. Let me know if you find any bugs. I'm not planning on porting anything right now, but who knows what might happen in the future...