Attack on Alpha Centauri is a fixed screen shoot 'em up similar to Galaxian. Alpha Centauri is being attacked by enormous wasps. They swarm over the planet while dropping devastating bombs onto it. The player has to try and kill as many as he can before his inevitable death. The game plays like other shoot em 'ups of the early eighties. The player moves his spacecraft left and right along the bottom of the screen while shooting at the rows of wasps above him. The wasps start in stationary positions at the top but as time goes they take turns and move down towards the player and drop bombs. When all the wasps has been killed off they are replaced with a new and harder wave and the game goes on until the player has lost all his three lives. Points are given for each killed enemy. Stationary enemies are worth ten points while the flying ones are worth a hundred.