One of the first Nihon Falcom titles, Galactic Wars is an early strategy game with real-time elements, a precursor to the real-time strategy genre. Galactic Wars is a space-themed real-time strategy game. It takes place in the year 2432 somewhere in the Milky Way galaxy and depicts a battle between the Galactic Alliance and an alien fleet, revolving around the strategically important planet M23. The game puts the player in control of a starfleet commander who has two spacecraft at his disposal: the Falcon and the Unicon. The entire game is controlled with menu commands. The player can change the course as well as offensive and defensive manoeuvres of the spaceships, and deploy fighters on the planet itself. The game proceeds in real time: if the player fails to choose a menu command within a short period of time his turn will be over and the enemies will execute their own manoeuvres.