Galaga by Michael Kimball: Book Review
I’ve never actually beaten the original Galaga.
There was a version of the game on my copy of Namco Museum for Nintendo Gamecube that was Galaga-adjacent that my friend Kevin from high school and I played to completion, but that obviously didn’t count because at the time neither of us had touched a boob, and the game gave us the option to keep progressing after we died. It was also a weird new-retro game that gave Galaga a massive backstory and huge boss fights with giant insects that were trying to take over the galaxy or something. And that was cool but, let’s be real, nobody who plays the original Galaga expects that much. They’re playing the game because it’s fun, it’s a tough game the further along you go, it’s a game that was mentioned in the Avengers movie, there’s tattoos of it, there’s millions of dollars of merchandise about it, there’s porn about it (you heard me, Rule 34 my dudez), it’s been used in songs, it’s been used in clothing lines, and sometimes people play it because it helps them cope with abuse.
Speaking of which, I should probably get to the point.
Galaga by Michael Kimball is book number 4 in the series Boss Fight Books and I love it because it has hornets on the cover. My Dad was an exterminator and so I had tons of books about bugs growing up (still do). I thought it was really cool that my Dad went out and saw these creatures every day, and killed the “bad” ones like black widows, scorpions, flies, and, of course, hornets. This doesn’t have to do anything with Kimball’s book, but bugs and fathers are relevant to Galaga so I had to bring it up.
Thank you for indulging me.
Kimball’s book, like all the books in the series, is on the surface a book that reviews a video game, contextualizes it, and provides some general background information. But as I wrote in my review of Parappa the Rapper by Mike Sholars and Super Mario Bros 3 by ALyse Knorr, Boss Fight Books are never just about a video game. They are just as much about the people who play them and how those games left them with new perspectives.
Kimball’s book is unique because it isn’t written like the other books in the series, or, more accurately, it isn’t framed the same way. There are 255 “stages” of the book, mimicking the 255 stages of the game Galaga, and these are also the chapters of the book. Some of them are only three sentences, some of them may go on for a page or more. At only 119 pages, Galaga comes across as an approachable book, and Kimball’s writing style makes reading this book as enjoyable as it is informative.
In one passage he gives some general information about the game Galaga:
Stage 134.
The goal of Galaga is to accumulate as many points as possible and the way to do this is to shoot as many alien insects as possible. A player can achieve a high score, but never really wins. There are various ways to measure progress on Galaga high score numbers, stages, and shooting statistics. (61)
And in another passage he shares his research and knowledge about how the game Galaga, or any arcade video game, affects the player:
Stage 240.
We now know the rush from playing a video game is a neurochemical high but this wasn’t commonly known back in the early 1980s when I was spending almost all the money I had on arcade games. When Galaga gets super fast I am playing at the very limit of my hand coordination. All the more challenging a game is the more exuberant, the rushes when a player clears a difficult level, which intern makes the game even more addictive. Galaga was just hard enough that I could feel good about playing it really well, but never actually master the fastest stages. (111)
There’s lots of facts in Kimball’s book. Some are just dropped and read like interesting factoids. Some of them are outright lies, but Kimballs tells us it’s cool because he thinks it would be cool if those lies were true, which in my opinion is pretty cool. These facts Galaga show me the reader a side of Kimball’s personality and, dare I offer that dangerous poetic landmine, his soul. It’s clear that Kimball loves Galaga and has spent a lot of time playing the game.
Like any media, Galaga has left its impact on Kimball and the great joy of reading this book is seeing how this game gave him a sense of drive and purpose. In one later passage of the book he describes how the game was as much a respite for him as it was something fun to do. He says,
Stage 246.
Every time a Galaga game ends. I immediately want to slip another quarter into the coin slot and play again. That rush I received from playing Galaga made the rest of my life more tolerable. There was a satisfaction playing video games that I mostly only found with other games, especially sports like basketball, baseball and tennis. In retrospect, the daily doses of endorphins that I received from playing video games and playing sports helped keep my depression at bay for extended periods of time throughout my adolescence. After I dropped a quarter into the coin slot of a Galaga game, I lost myself. (113)
Videogames are media which have, since their creation, inspired human beings by their interactivity. Rather than passively watching images, or actively imagining scenes in works of prose, videogames employed the strength of unique visuals and the narrative of stories to create something truly powerful. Players have embraced video games because of the way they create a sense of agency. It’s the actions the player makes that results in real-time results that can create moments we never forget.
They are also a solace at times, and Kimball’s book shows this painfully clear as he describes the abuse that he suffered at the hands of his father and older brother. In one early passage he describes what this would look like:
Stage 35.
There’s a family story about my dad, choking my mom and another one about my dad, throwing my older brother down the stairs. These are the sort of things that happen before I became old enough for my dad to turn his bad intentions on me. I can’t remember a time of my dad being a good dad. There were lots of times my dad hit me or grabbed my arm so hard it pulled me off my feet. One time my dad grabbed me by my shoulders and shook me until my head went blank, a kind of tilt. It wasn’t until later that night line in bed that my brain rebooted, and I understood what had happened. (17)
Kimball includes several passages describing the physical and emotional abuse his father would perpetrate against him. These passages are hard to read, not simply because of the violence that he experienced, but because they are set against and inbetween the events and facts of Galaga. At first these moments seem totally alien, but as the reader continues through the book they begin to shape into a larger and beautiful narrative.
Kimball managed to endure and survive his abuse in no small part because he had videogames, because he had Galaga. It’s from the darkest periods of his life that the reader begins to see him finds friends, meet women, eventually overpower his father and leave him far behind in the past. In short, Kimball’s book about Galaga is about his struggle to fight and come away with an agency that allowed him to make his own life. Kimball is a author with many books to his name and, clearly, his initials in Galaga high score charts across the nation.
Galaga is a game about shooting insects in space. They fire lasers at the lone gunship that’s fighting them. They swoop down trying to collide with the player to blow the ship up. And some of them grab the ship with tractor’s beams and take them away confident in their victory. But Kimball shows the reader that that is not a victory for them, but an opportunity for the player to come back fighting and emerge even stronger.
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
10.21.2023
Like what you’re reading? Buy me a coffee & support my Patreon. Please and thank you.