Galaxian’s 1979 Alien Sprites on a Bushiroad Clear Card

Bushiroad Clear Collection Retro Game Art — Galaxian No.16

A Transparent Card Built for Display and Collecting

This is card No.16 from Bushiroad’s Clear Collection Retro Game Art series — a hard, transparent plastic collectible printed with pixel art from Namco’s classic arcade game Galaxian. The card slots into an included clear stand so it can be displayed upright on a shelf or desk. A Pac-Man logo appears at the bottom of the card, positioning it within a broader Bandai Namco-licensed retro game collectible line. The No.16 numbering confirms this belongs to a larger numbered run across multiple cards, and the Retro Game Art label identifies it as a dedicated sub-series within the wider Clear Collection range that Bushiroad produces across several IP licenses.

The pixel art depicts one of Galaxian’s alien enemies rendered in the game’s distinctive red, yellow, and blue color scheme — hues associated with the game’s higher-ranking enemy types, though which specific tier this card represents is difficult to confirm from the image alone. The three-color palette is among the most recognizable visual signatures of the game itself.

Galaxian: The Arcade Game That Preceded Pac-Man

Namco released Galaxian in 1979, a full year before Pac-Man arrived to become one of the most recognized video game properties on earth. Galaxian was itself a technical landmark: it was among the first arcade games to display fully multi-colored enemy sprites in motion, making the dive-bombing alien fleet feel genuinely kinetic in a way earlier fixed-shooter hardware could not achieve. The game spread quickly from Japan to arcades worldwide and was subsequently ported to the NES, Atari platforms, and a wide range of home computers.

For licensing purposes, Galaxian falls under the Pac-Man IP umbrella managed by Bandai Namco Entertainment, the successor company to the original Namco. Grouping the classic late-1970s and early-1980s Namco arcade catalog under the globally recognized Pac-Man brand is a common approach when reaching international audiences — which explains why both logos appear together on this card. The two games are frequently cited alongside each other as the twin pillars of Namco’s earliest era.

Where This Card Sits in Japanese Collectible Culture

Bushiroad, founded in 2007, built its reputation on trading card games including Cardfight!! Vanguard and Weiss Schwarz. More recently, the company has expanded into a broader range of collectible merchandise, with the Clear Collection line representing its entry into the transparent card format — acrylic-type material with character or game art printed directly onto it, designed for display rather than play.

Clear-format collectibles became a significant part of Japanese fan merchandise culture during the 2010s and into the 2020s, sitting alongside acrylic keychains and character sleeves as a recognizable category of officially licensed goods. They are typically distributed through anime specialty retailers such as Animate and Gamers, as well as through Bushiroad’s own trading card retail network — channels that serve a domestic Japanese audience. The release date of this specific card cannot be confirmed from available information, but the Clear Collection line is a product of Bushiroad’s 2020s collectible expansion.

For collectors outside Japan, the appeal operates across several axes at once: the pixel art faithfully reproduces a game that global retro gaming communities have followed since 1979, the transparent format is a distinctly Japanese retail category not widely replicated in Western markets, and the series structure — with its numbered cards — naturally invites interest in the rest of the run.