Defender
North American arcade flyer, showcasing upright and cocktail cabinets.
Developer(s)	Williams Electronics
Publisher(s)	Williams Electronics
Designer(s)	Eugene Jarvis, Larry DeMar
Platform(s)	Arcade
Release date(s)	1980
Genre(s)	Scrolling shooter
Mode(s)	Up to 2 players, alternating turns
Input methods	Joystick; 5 buttons
Cabinet	Standard and cocktail
Display	Raster, standard resolution 292(Horizontal) x 240(Vertical) Colors 16

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 slow to become a hit when it was released as many thought it was too difficult due to its control configuration of five buttons and a joystick. It ultimately gained many fans and remained popular throughout the 1980s. Defender has been described as "quite possibly, the hardest significant game there is".^[1]

Contents 1 Gameplay 2 Development 3 Legacy 3.1 Games inspired by Defender 4 Ports and platforms 5 Songs 6 References 7 External links 7.1 Media

[edit] Gameplay

The level of difficulty of Defender is very high, according to Gamasutra, a video game industry publication.^[1]

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 humanoids. The landscape wraps around, so flying constantly in one direction will eventually bring the player back to their starting point. The player's ship can fly through the landscape without being harmed by it.

A number of flying aliens reside in the air above the landscape. 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 humanoids on the landscape.

[edit] Development

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 "Exorciser", a computer from Motorola that Jarvis describes as "the most bloated, overpriced computer ever created".

Jarvis initially worked on the game on his own, added the scrolling land, and added some humanoids on the land, but lacked a narrative. One night while falling asleep he dreamt of the aliens following the land and picking up the humanoids and carrying them off and then turning into mutants, with the player trying to stop them. He had his game.

Initially the game was too easy, like flying in a tank of water, but the gameplay picked up considerably when 'baiters' were added which appeared after a set time period. The baiters kept the player under constant time pressure to finish the level, significantly increasing the intensity of the game.

At one point, when the game was nearly complete, the highest score anyone had ever managed was 60,000 points, and many people thought that this was a fluke. Indeed, the development team almost didn't add extra levels, as they believed that no one would be able to reach them.

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, they accidentally plugged them in upside-down and destroyed the chips in the process, 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.^[2]

[edit] Legacy

After the success of Defender, there was a successful sequel called Stargate made in 1981, 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 the Nintendo GameCube video game console as well as the Xbox and PlayStation 2. Also in 2002, Midway published a 2D remake of Defender for the Game Boy Advance. An IGN reviewer said of the latter, "I haven't seen a worse classic remake since Atari botched Pac-Man on the 2600 more than two decades ago."^[3]

Today there are ports available for several platforms, such as mobile phones.

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).

[edit] Games inspired by Defender

Defender inspired numerous similar games, including Orbiter, Attack of the Mutant Camels, Repton and Dropzone for 8-bit home computers; Datastorm, Overkill, Star Ray and Guardian for the Amiga, as well as Provocator on the Acorn Archimedes; Eliminator for the TRS-80 Color Computer; Protector II for the TRS-80, Atari 400/800, and Commodore 64; and Planet Raiders for the TRS-80. It was also the inspiration for Chopper Command for the Atari 2600.^[4]

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.

[edit] 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 was also released on the Xbox Live Arcade for the Xbox 360 in 2006.

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.

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.^[5]

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 PlayStation 2.

Defender also runs under MAME.

In the UK, Acornsoft published an unofficial clone of Defender for the BBC Micro using the original name without permission. After a few months on sale, it was deleted and re-released as Planetoid (although the game itself was still identical). It was also later released for the Acorn Electron.

Perhaps the most obscure and rare port of Defender is the version produced for the Entex Adventure Vision in 1982.

[edit] 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.

Toronto garage rock band The Weirdies released "(I Wanna Play) Defender" on their debut CD in 2008.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Defender at the Killer List of Videogames
• Defender guide at StrategyWiki
• Article at The Dot Eaters, featuring Jarvis, DeMar, Defender and other Williams games
• High Score Rankings for Defender from Twin Galaxies
• The History of Defender: The Joys of Difficult Games from Gamasutra
• The Internet Pinball Database entry on the Defender Table
• The Defender Pinball Serial Number Project
• Prototype/Pilot Defender arcade game research
• Make a Mess, Clean it Up! - Details the unique strategy of early Apple Computer employee Burrell Smith
• Defender's Extra Life Bonanza - very technical description of 990000 points bug
• Defender handheld game by Entex

[edit] Media

• Video of the BBC Micro version of Defender / Planetoid from YouTube
• Video of the SAM Coupé version of Defender from YouTube
• Video from the C64 Version on archive.org