Galaga is a Japanese fixed-shooter arcade game developed and published by Namco in Japan and by Midway in North America in 1981. It is the sequel to 1979's Galaxian and introduces new features from its predecessor.
Galaxian had been a leading arcade title, competing head-to-head with games like Pac-Man and Space Invaders. Galaga expanded on this success and became one of the popular games of the Golden Era of gaming. It is still often listed among the best games of all time.
Following its arcade success, Galaga recieved a number of home console ports. The 1985 port to Famicom and NES was praised for its faithfulness to the original arcade version.
NES Toaster
For its US release, Nintendo wanted to differentiate the NES from previous game consoles, which had developed a poor reputation following the video game crash of 1983.
The new design featured glossy plastic more reminiscent of modern A/V equipment, rather than the beige and wood-grain of previous consoles.
The NES featured a new front-loading system which was designed to resemble contemporary VCRs. The mechanism, which would later be known as the "toaster", used a so-called zero-insertion-force slot, which would theoretically reduce wear on the cartridge contacts.
Unfortunately, this mechanism proved unreliable. As the systems aged, connector failures became more frequent. For later consoles, Nintendo would return to top-loading slots with industry standard card-edge connecotrs.