Galaxian in the context of "Taito"

The golden age of arcade video games was the period of rapid growth, technological development, and cultural influence of arcade video games from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. The release of Space Invaders in 1978 led to a wave of shoot-'em-up games such as Galaxian and the vector graphics-based Asteroids in 1979, made possible by new computing technology that had greater power and lower costs. Arcade video games switched from black-and-white to color, with titles such as Frogger and Centipede taking advantage of the visual opportunities of bright palettes.

Video game arcades became a part of popular culture and a primary channel for new games. Video game genres were still being established, but included space-themed shooter games such as Defender and Galaga, maze chase games that followed the design established by Pac-Man, driving and racing games which more frequently used 3D perspectives such as Turbo and Pole Position, character action games such as Pac-Man and Frogger, and the beginning of what would later be called platform games touched off by Donkey Kong. Games began starring named player characters, such as Pac-Man, Mario, and Q*bert, and some of these characters crossed over into other media including songs, cartoons, and movies. The 1982 film Tron was closely tied to an arcade game of the same name.

Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups or STGs) are a subgenre of action games. There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain types of character movement, while others allow a broader definition including characters on foot and a variety of perspectives.

The genre's roots can be traced back to earlier shooting games, including target shooting electro-mechanical games of the mid-20th-century, but did not receive a video game release until Spacewar! (1962). The shoot 'em up genre was established by the hit arcade game Space Invaders, which popularised and set the general template for the genre in 1978, and has spawned many clones. The genre was then further developed by arcade hits such as Asteroids and Galaxian in 1979. Shoot 'em ups were popular throughout the 1980s to early 1990s, diversifying into a variety of subgenres such as scrolling shooters, run and gun games and rail shooters. In the mid-1990s, shoot 'em ups became a niche genre based on design conventions established in the 1980s, and increasingly catered to specialist enthusiasts, particularly in Japan. "Bullet hell" games are a subgenre of shooters that features overwhelming numbers of enemy projectiles, often in visually impressive formations.

Galaga is a 1981 fixed shooter video game developed and published by Namco for Japanese and European arcades; it was distributed by Midway Manufacturing in North America. It is the sequel to 1979's Galaxian, and the second game in the Galaxian series. Controlling a starship, the player is tasked with destroying the Galaga forces in each stage while avoiding enemies and projectiles. Some enemies can capture a player's ship via a tractor beam, which can be rescued by another ship to give the player a "dual fighter" with additional firepower.

Shigeru Yokoyama led development with a small team. Initial planning took about two months to finish. Originally developed for the Namco Galaxian arcade board, it was instead shifted to a new system as suggested by Namco's Research and Development division. Inspiration for the dual fighter mechanic was taken from a film that Yokoyama had seen prior to development, where a ship was captured using a large circular beam. The project became immensely popular around the company, with Namco's president Masaya Nakamura even taking interest.

Midway Games Inc. (formerly Midway Manufacturing and Bally Midway, and commonly known simply as Midway) was an American video game company that existed from 1958 to 2010. Midway's franchises included Mortal Kombat, Rampage, Spy Hunter, NBA Jam, Cruis'n and NFL Blitz. Midway also acquired the rights to video games that were originally developed by WMS Industries and Atari Games, such as Defender, Joust, Robotron: 2084, Gauntlet and the Rush series.

The company was founded as Midway Manufacturing in 1958, as an amusement game manufacturer. The company was then purchased by Bally Manufacturing in 1969. In 1973, Midway moved into the interactive entertainment industry, developing and publishing arcade video games. The company scored its first mainstream hit with the U.S. distribution of Taito's Space Invaders in 1978, which it followed up by licensing Namco games such as Galaxian (1979), Pac-Man (1980), and Galaga (1981). Bally then consolidated its pinball division with Midway in 1982, which was renamed Bally Midway. In 1988, Bally Manufacturing sold its amusement games operations to WMS Industries, the former Williams Electronics, which used the plain Midway name for video games while using the Bally and Williams names for pinball.

Namco Limited (formerly known as Nakamura Seisakusho, Nakamura Manufacturing Company and Nakamura Amusement Machine Company) was a Japanese multinational video game and entertainment company founded in 1955. It operated video arcades and amusement parks globally, and produced video games, films, toys, and arcade cabinets. Namco was one of the most influential companies in the coin-op and arcade game industry, producing multi-million-selling game franchises such as Pac-Man, Galaxian, Tekken, Soulcalibur, Tales, Ridge Racer, and Ace Combat.

The name Namco comes from Nakamura Manufacturing Company, derived from Namco's founder, Masaya Nakamura. In the 1960s, Nakamura Manufacturing built electro-mechanical arcade games such as the 1965 hit Periscope. It entered the video game industry after acquiring the struggling Japanese division of Atari in 1974, distributing games such as Breakout in Japan. The company renamed itself Namco in 1977 and published Gee Bee, its first original video game, a year later. Among Namco's first major hits was the fixed shooter Galaxian in 1979, followed by Pac-Man in 1980. Namco prospered during the golden age of arcade video games in the early 1980s, releasing popular games such as Galaga, Xevious, and Pole Position.

Radar Scope is a 1980 shoot 'em up video game developed and published by Nintendo for arcades. The player controls the Sonic Spaceport starship, which must wipe out formations of an enemy race known as the Gamma Raiders before they destroy the player's space station. The gameplay is similar to Space Invaders and Galaxian, albeit viewed from a three-dimensional perspective.

Radar Scope was a commercial failure, and created a financial crisis for the subsidiary Nintendo of America. Its president, Minoru Arakawa, pleaded for his father-in-law, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, to send him a new game that could convert and salvage thousands of unsold Radar Scope machines, leading to the creation of Donkey Kong. Radar Scope is one of the first video game projects for artist Shigeru Miyamoto and composer Hirokazu Tanaka.

Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc., 863 F.Supp.2d 394 (D.N.J. 2012), was a 2012 American legal case related to copyright of video games, confirming that a game's look and feel can be protected under copyright law. Tetris Holding is a company that holds the copyright to the original Tetris game from 1985 and licenses those rights to game developers. Xio Interactive is a game developer that released Mino in 2009, a mobile game based on the gameplay of Tetris. Mino was downloaded millions of times, and Tetris Holding filed a DMCA notice and eventually a lawsuit against Xio for copyright infringement.

The earliest video game case law had protected the designs in Galaxian and Pac-Man. But later cases such as Data East USA, Inc. v. Epyx, Inc. found that it is permissible to make a video game clone with similar ideas and principles as another game, since copyright does not protect an idea, only the specific expression of that idea. A trial occurred in 2012, the first case in a long time to proceed to trial on this issue. The district court ruled for Tetris Holding, with Judge Wolfson applying the Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison test to determine if any infringement occurred. Although standard gameplay ideas are not copyrightable, Mino was still substantially similar to Tetris in terms of its art style, and those elements are in fact protected by copyright. This case has since been applied in other copyright disputes to offer broader protection to the look and feel of video games.