Galaga Fever: the Mother of Video Games Returns as an Immersive Experience in Bandai Namco’s VR Arcades

This guest post was written by Jikhan Jung, founder and CEO at Subdream Studios, a social VR game studio founded in January 2017 by gaming industry veterans with experience in PC, mobile and VR. Ever since, Subdream have been making multiplayer VR games such as Mega Overload, Hell Dimensions etc.

Galaga is the unforgettable game for people in their 40ties who spent their childhood at the golden age of arcade game centers. So did I. It was my dream project to make that game return with the newest cool technology in VR.

Galaga into VR

Right before we released our first, Galaga inspired game Mega Overload, we approached Bandai Namco whether they want to develop something using their Galaga IP combined with our game mechanics.

After some discussions, and since they operate nice VR arcades in Japan, they counter proposed us to make a VR game using the Galaga IP and our engine for their VR Zone, a VR arcade in Tokyo.

Initial Concept art of the project : Multiplayer VR Games defending earth from Galaga Attack

Development for Offline Arcades

We ship this game to an VR arcade offline environment where two players can connect directly without internet and we found out Photon Unity Networking (PUN) is the perfect tool for that. With the help of Photon, we don’t need to have any networking engineers and we can focus on making the game itself fun.

Game instruction card in VR Zone arcade