Once a wave has been completed a red flag is added to the bottom of the screen. The maximum is 800 points if the two reds are destroyed first. The yellow ships attack in a formation with two red ships, the order these three are destroyed determines the points awarded for destroying the yellow. With a minor exception that one yellow ship may disappear after a bombing run and will appear as an extra yellow ship in the following wave. The player must destroy all ships in a wave to complete it. There are 4 different types of enemy ship, each type behaves differently on its attacking run. At regular intervals enemy ships on the sides of the formation swoop down and shoot at the player. The enemy ships are arranged in a formation at the top of the screen. The objective is destroy endless 'waves' of enemies. These elements combine to create a look and feel that would set the standard for arcade games in the 1980s such as Pac-Man. It also features a crude theme song and more prominent background music/sound effects. Although not the first color video game, Galaxian took RGB color graphics a step further with multi-colored animated sprites and explosions, different colored fonts for the score and high score, the vertical scrolling starfield, and graphic icons that show the number of lives left and how many stages the player had completed.

Galaxian was very successful for Namco and introduced several 'firsts'. The game's plot consists of a title screen that displayed the message 'WE ARE THE GALAXIANS / MISSION: DESTROY ALIENS'. This made it the first game to feature enemies with individual personalities. In contrast to Space Invaders, Galaxianadded an element of drama by having the aliens periodically make kamikaze-like dives at the player's ship, the Galaxip. As in the earlier game, Galaxian features a horde of attacking aliens that exchanged shots with the player. Galaxian expanded on the formula pioneered by Space Invaders. Along with its immediate sequel, it was one of the most popular games during the golden age of Arcade video games. It spawned a successful sequel, Galaga, in 1981, and the lesser known Gaplus and Galaga '88 in 19 respectively, as well as many later ports and adaptations. It was ported to the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, ColecoVision, Bally Astrocade, Nintendo Famicom, and home computers. The game was a big hit for Namco upon its release, and has been a focus of competitive gaming ever since. A vertical scrolling shooter game in which the player controls a spaceship at the bottom of the screen, and shoots enemies descending in various directions, it was designed to compete with Taito's successful earlier game Space Invaders (which was released in the previous year, and also imported to the US by Midway). It was published by Namco in Japan and imported to North America by Midway that December. Galaxian (ギャラクシアン) is an Arcade game that was developed by Namco and released in October 1979.

Galaxian sprites