Taking out the "yellow borders" may have made it look more like the arcade version, but what I liked was the less blinking of the galaxians diving down on you. The graphic are much better and the gameplay smoother. Definitely five stars!

Galaxian Arcade takes Atari's Galaxian and gives it several graphics tweaks to make it look more like the arcade original. First, the yellow borders have been removed, which have always been an odd-looking distraction; then the sprites have been altered to more closely resemble the arcade game's. What's particularly impressive is that through a clever use of animation, the sprites bob up and down slightly, similar to the arcade version, which is something Atari's version never did.

The graphics' improvements look very good, although a couple of things have been overlooked - some of the dive-bombing sprites don't match the new designs, and when the top two rows of aliens dive-bomb, their colors are wrong (the yellow aliens turn white, and the red aliens turn yellow). The player's ship could probably match the arcade version better, but it has been improved some.

Galaxian Arcade is a solid effort at making a more arcade-like Galaxian on the 2600. While not perfect, just the removal of the yellow border by itself may be a compelling enough reason to pick this up.

I'd always assumed that the designers of the original Atari 2600 Galaxian left the border in place because the 2600 wasn't capable of the scrolling starfield background that the arcade version had. By putting a border around the playfield, they effectively removed, more or less, the "travelling through space" aspect that the coin-op version conveyed, since the 2600 couldn't hope to reproduce the moving stars. I have to admit, having seen this remake, that I like the borderless version better, though I still prefer the original designs of the Galaxians and your ship. Oh well, win some, lose some...