Defender (game)

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Defender is a horizontally-scrolling shoot 'em up arcade game created by Williams Electronics in 1980. It was designed and programmed by Eugene Jarvis (who later formed Vid Kidz and made more of Williams' hits), Larry DeMar, Sam Dicker, and Paul Dussault. This game was a hit when it was released and remained popular throughout the 1980s.

Contents

1 Development history
2 Gameplay

2.1 Aliens
2.2 Humans
2.3 Scoring
2.4 Controls
2.5 Bugs

3 Legacy

3.1 Games inspired by ''Defender''

4 Ports and platforms
5 Songs
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

Development history

At the time Eugene Jarvis first came to the company, Williams was just about to make their move into the fledgling video game market. Eventually, Jarvis was given the job of developing the project. As the project progressed, he eventually got other people involved in the game's development (including Larry DeMar, with whom he would later co-found their company, Vid Kidz). Defender was developed using the "Exorcisor", a computer from Motorola that Jarvis describes as "the most bloated, overpriced computer ever created". When the time came for the game to make its debut at the AMOA trade show, the game still wasn't complete. The game had everything: its complex controls, its cabinet graphics, and the Defender marquee. However, it was missing one important thing: the ROM chip that actually contained the game.

When the game was finally finished, the machine wouldn't come on the first time the ROM chips were inserted, however when the ROMs were "burned" (the method of transferring the game from the development computer to the arcade machine's ROM chips) a second time, it did come on. Unfortunately, nobody would play the game; because of its complex controls, many of the showgoers felt that the game was too complicated to play. In the end it was believed that this game, along with Pac-Man, would fail, and that Rally-X would be the top money earner. The game went on to sell more than 60,000 units—more than disproving these projections—and cemented its place in video game history.Midway Arcade Treasures Bonus Material

Gameplay

The player flies a small spaceship above a long, mountainous landscape (in all versions, except the Atari 2600 edition due to memory limitations; in that case, the landscape consisted of a city represented by buildings). The land is inhabited by a small number of humans. The landscape wraps around, so flying constantly in one direction will eventually bring the player back to their starting point. The players ship can fly through the landscape without being destroyed.

A number of flying aliens reside in the air above the landscape. The player's responsibilities are twofold:

Destroy all aliens
Protect the humans from being captured

The player is armed with a beam-like weapon which can be fired rapidly in a long horizontal line ahead of the spaceship, and also has a limited supply of smart bombs (three, to begin with), which can destroy every enemy on the screen.

At the top of the screen is a radar-like scanner, which displays the positions of all aliens and humans on the landscape.

Aliens

Defender's attract mode shows the various types of aliens featured in the game.

There are six types of aliens in total:

Lander - The primary enemy on every level. Landers teleport into the level in staggered waves. They attempt to capture humans by descending upon them and dragging them into the air; if they make it to the top of the screen with a human, the two fuse together into a more dangerous Mutant. Landers can fire projectiles at the player.
Mutant - A mutated Lander. Mutants home in on the player at constant speed, firing projectiles. They move erratically, making them difficult to shoot.
Baiter - A flat, iridescent spacecraft that teleports in if the player is taking too long to complete a level. Homes in on the player and attempts to match their speed, whilst firing accurate projectiles. A difficult opponent due to its unbeatable speed and tiny vertical cross-section, which makes it very hard to shoot.
Bomber - A box-shaped alien that lays stationary mines in the air.
Pod - A star-like alien that bursts into a number of Swarmers when shot.
Swarmer - A tiny teardrop-shaped alien that moves very quickly in an undulating fashion. Difficult to shoot.

Once all aliens (except Baiters) are destroyed, the player progresses to the next level.

Humans

The game starts with ten humans inhabiting the land. Landers will attempt to capture and fuse with these during play.

To rescue a human from capture, the player must shoot the Lander holding it while it is in the air, causing the human to drop back to the ground. At low height humans can survive the drop on their own, but if the Lander is killed at too high an altitude, the player must catch the human with their own ship and return them to the ground, otherwise the human will not survive the drop.

The humans can be killed by the player's weapon just as easily as the aliens can, so careful aim is required when firing near them.

If all humans are killed, the entire planet explodes, leaving the player in empty space. This also has the unfortunate effect of turning every Lander into a Mutant, making the player's job very difficult.

Scoring

As well as the points gained by killing aliens, scores are also awarded for the following:

Human falling back to the ground without dying: 250 points
Catching a falling human: 500 points
Returning a human to the ground: 500 points
Human surviving the level: 100 points per human, (in some versions, but not the arcade version, this was increased by 100 each wave until wav 5, then 500 per human every following wave.)

The player receives an extra life and an extra smart bomb every 10000 points.

A lesser-known bonus is that when a player reaches 1000000 points, the game awards 100 smart bombs and 100 lives.

Controls

The control system of the Defender arcade game is quite unusual compared to that of most shooters. Instead of the standard 'Up, Down, Left, Right' system, it has a joystick to move up and down, a 'Reverse' button to toggle the player's horizontal direction, and a 'Thrust' button to move in that direction. There is also a Fire button for shooting, a button to activate a smart bomb, and a hyperspace button which teleports the player to a random position in the level, at a risk of either exploding upon rematerialization, or materializing onto an enemy or enemy projectile.

In practice, the layout of the controls was uncomfortable for some players. The thrust, fire and smart bomb buttons layout tended to cause cramping of the right hand, and the left hand was uncomfortable also. The hyperspace button was placed in the middle between the two hands, and in practice was very difficult to reach quickly.

Bugs

The game had some notable bugs and features:

the reverse key was polled by the software- it was possible to briefly push the reverse button and the software would occasionally ignore it
the 6809 processor used was not really up to the job of running the game, when a lot of objects are on the screen simultaneously the game starts to run much more slowly, to minimise this effect, the game randomly teleports aliens away from the player; in addition important game play items like fire work only intermittently
related to the previous bug, if the player manages to pick up all the humans, if the player repeatedly fires, redrawing the humans and firing consumes enough processor power that all the enemies all get teleported away, and the game basically stops
once the score reaches 900,000 killing landers gives a new life each time

Legacy

Defender 3D

After the success of Defender, there was a successful sequel called Stargate made in 1982, of which 26,000 units were made. After Stargate came Strike Force in 1991. It was one of the first games on WMS's (Bally Midway and Williams Electronics merged in 1986 to form WMS Industries, but kept the Bally, Williams, and Midway labels) new T-Unit arcade hardware.

In 1995, Jeff Minter created Defender 2000 for the Atari Jaguar video game console, published by Williams Electronics.

In 2002, Midway published a 3D remake of Defender for Sony's PlayStation 2 video game console as well as the Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo GameCube. Also in 2002, Midway published a 2D remake of Defender for the Game Boy Advance. An IGN reviewer said of this game, "I haven't seen a worse classic remake since Atari botched Pac-Man on the 2600 more than two decades ago."

Later ports of Stargate were relabeled Defender II since Midway no longer had the rights to use the name.

Defender is listed as one of the "Top 100 Videogames" of all time by the Killer List of Videogames (KLOV).

Games inspired by Defender

Defender inspired numerous similar games, including Attack of the Mutant Camels, Repton and Drop Zone for 8-bit home computers; Datastorm, Overkill, Star Ray and Guardian for the Amiga; and Protector II for the TRS-80 Color Computer and Atari 400/800.

In 1982, Williams Electronics, the pinball division, released a pinball table based upon Defender. The three-flippered table featured drop targets representing colonies and invaders and used all the sounds featured in the arcade coin-op. Coincidentally, many of the pinball tables created at the time by Williams Electronics used the same sound chips.

Ports and platforms

Defender has been ported to most video game consoles of the early 1980s. More recently Defender was included in Midway Arcade Treasures, a compilation available for the Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox consoles. Defender will be released on the Xbox Live Arcade for the Xbox 360 in 2006. There is a related 3D shooting game for the same consoles which uses similar sounds but is otherwise not the same game.

Most ports at the time lacked the multiple buttons needed to truly run the game, and so the "reverse" button is often left off and reversals of the joystick direction serve to turn the ship around. This can radically alter the gameplay and make certain strategies impossible on the console ports.

Image:A2600_Defender.png|Atari 2600 Screenshot Image:A5200_Defender.png|Atari 5200 Screenshot Image:Coleco_Defender.png|ColecoVision Screenshot Image:C64_Defender.png|C64 Screenshot Image:GB_Defender.png|Game Boy Screenshot (as Defender / Joust) Image:SAM_Coupé_Defender.png|SAM Coupé Screenshot

The SAM Coupé version is notable because it was ported in the summer of 1998, before the current retrogaming mania, by one individual, Chris Pile. The conversion was very faithful to the original despite the differences in hardware.

In July 2000, Midway licensed Defender, along with other Williams Electronics games, to Shockwave for use in an online applet to demonstrate the power of their web content platform, entitled Shockwave Arcade Collection. The conversion was created by Digital Eclipse.

Most recently the game "Defender" was released for the PS2.

Defender also runs under MAME. This can be legally used by people who own a Defender board from the original arcade machine.

Songs

In 1982, Buckner and Garcia recorded a song titled "The Defender", using sound effects from the game, and released it on the album Pac-Man Fever.

In the same year, R. Cade and the Video Victims recorded a song titled "Defender Contender", and released it on the album "Get Victimized!", a lesser-known video game song album.

Also in 1982, Manilla Road included a song titled "Defender" on their second album Metal, with its lyrics based on the game.

The Beastie Boys have also rapped about the game and featured Defender sound effects in their tracks. In their song Body Movin' (from Hello Nasty, 1998) the lyrics are "And if you play defender I could be your hyper space", referring to helping the active player by being ready to press the difficult-to-reach hyperspace button when the game gets too difficult.

References

External links

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