Galaga Destination Earth is basically Galaga with some new tricks up its sleeves. In short it is blow the heck out of anything that moves in the galaxy. There are swarms of bug sized robots that have the ability to replicate themselves at alarming numbers and its up to you to save the universe.

The biggest change is the different attack patterns or views if you will. The first attack pattern, Gamma, is most like the original. The swarm comes buzzing in and you shoot them out of the universe while moving side to side to avoid dive-bombers and enemy fire. The graphics are little more 3D but the controls are not quite as precise as the coin op version.

The second attack pattern, Alpha is the most difficult to get through. More like a third person perspective it is truly 3D. This attack pattern is the hardest to play. If bugs were not bad enough there is floating debris that you cannot destroy but instead must avoid. This makes targeting all that much more difficult. Not to mention looking at the back of your ship, it's hard to line up the enemy. Not all bad though. For one, you actually have shields so if you get hit, you don't actually die right away. (Big change from the original). Plus you can actually fly into your starship's turret and start blasting away from a first person perspective. I thought that was the coolest part of the game.

The 3rd attack pattern, Delta is more of a 2D view. Now the ships come at you from the left and you move up and down to avoid the bad guys. For all you 80's coin op fans, it gives you a feel of the William's hit Defender. Speaking of Defender GDE even has a smart bomb to kill a lot of bad guys with the touch of one button.

What made Galaga so unique from its predecessor Galaxian? The ability for the aliens to capture one of your ships which you could in turn capture it back and gain dual firepower. Not only can you do this, but go one step further and now you can capture the enemy and use their firepower to give you double the damaging fire. That would have been sweet in the original. You can also gather shield power ups which is a big change from the one hit one life lost in the original. You still have the bonus stages, which you look forward to after intensive fire fights. Some of the same old sounds are present along with the wave icons.

Hasbro has taken a Classic and tried to modify it to bring it to a new market of gamers. Though I am a huge fan of Galaga the coin op, I'm sure younger gamers will find this title appealing and fun to play.

Installation: Easy.
A breeze to install.

Gameplay: 6
Not quite the original, but still has playability.

Graphics: 7
Graphics were very colorful but not exactly earth shattering.

Sound: 7
Some of the original sound effects are present but the annoying sounds of your ship engines can get on your nerves rather quickly.

Difficulty: 8
Some of the changing views add challenge to the game.

Concept: 7
Nice idea bringing an old classic in to Y2K

Overall: 6
Though the classic coin-op may not have been different from wave to wave, it was still a classic. The developers tried to enhance the new version, but took away from the original.