Galaga, the 1980s arcade game, is being turned into a TV show.
We’ll pause a moment to let that sink in.
Production company The Nuttery Entertainment is taking the 8-bit quarter-gobbler, where players exterminated an endless stream of aliens (and which had absolutely no plot), and turning it into an animated series and looking for other ways to extend the 35-year-old brand, reports Variety.
The show, called Galaga Chronicles, will introduce a new backstory for the space bugs and the long ship that fights them. The studio did not announce where the show would air.
Galaga is just the latest game to make a jump from the arcade to the TV/movie world. World of Warcraft, Tomb Raider, and Resident Evil have all received big screen adaptation. Candy Crush Saga is a prime-time game show airing this summer. And a cartoon about a teenage Pac-Man called Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures began airing in 2013.
The move to bring Galaga to a new medium comes as the retro gaming phase is once again red hot. Nintendo’s NES Classic Edition sold 2.3 million units in five months, and could have easily sold twice that, given demand. The company will follow that up this holiday with the SNES Classic Edition, which immediately sold out when pre-orders began this past weekend.