Defender

A one paragraph summary of game. Short and basic summary. What kind of game? When was it played? etc.

Also:

- Published by: Williams Electronics
- Developed by: Williams Electronics
- Designer: Eugene Jarvis
- Platform: Arcade
- Year Released:1980
- Significant Contributors to Game Development: Larry Demar, Sam Dicker, Paul Dussault
- Genre: Scrolling Shooter
- Other Games in Series: Stargate/Defender II (published by VidKids), Defender 2000 (Atari), and Defender (released in 2002 by Midway Games)

History

The game was developed by a company that produced pinball machines (Williams Electronics) in response to the loss of market share due to the rise of arcade-style video games in 1979. While Defender was not the first game made by Williams Electronics (its first was a pong clone), it was the first game by Williams Electronics to be considered a "new" one. Defender sold over 55,000 units, and was Williams Electronics best selling arcade game. It has since been considered to be one of the most classic arcade games, because Defender is one of the first titles to provide the player with multiple goals (attack invaders, while simultaneously saving humanoids) and therefore several methods of play. Also, defender is considered to be the first horizontally scrolling shooting game, and helped to remove design limitations associated with the screen.

Game Design Elements

Gameplay

Defender is a two-dimensional, side-scrolling shooting game. The player controls a space ship as it navigates the field of play, flying either to the left or right. The object is to destroy alien invaders, while protecting humanoids on the ground from abduction. Humans that are successfully abducted by the aliens return as mutants to attack the player's ship. The player is armed only with a relatively slow-to-fire, edge-of-screen-length laser, a limited number of screen-clearing smart bombs, and an the ability to disappear into hyperspace and to reappear in another section of the map. Fortunately, tracking the astronauts was easy with the "mini-map" at the top of the screen. In some cases, if an alien dragging an humanoid is shot far from the ground, the player has to "catch" the falling humanoid or it will die.

The scoring system works like this:

- Killing an alien: 150 points for lander, 150 points for mutant, 200 for baiter, 250 for bomber, 1000 for pod, 150 for swarmer
- Humanoid falling back to the ground without dying: 250 points
- Catching a falling humanoid: 500 points
- Returning a humanoid to the ground: 500 points
- Humanoid surviving the level: 100 points per humanoid, increasing by 100 each wave until wave 5, then 500 per humanoid every following wave.

The player receives an extra life and an extra smart bomb every 10000 points on the game's default settings, although this can be changed by the operator.

Defeating the aliens allows the player to progress to the next level. Players are allotted three chances (lives) to progress through the game and are able to earn more by reaching certain scoring benchmarks. A life is lost if the ship comes into contact with an enemy or its projectiles. After exhausting all lives, the game ends.

Controls

A joystick controls the ship's elevation, and five buttons control its horizontal direction and weapons.The majority of games in this era featured only a few buttons and a controller. The fact that Defender had five buttons and a joystick is a testament to the level of complexity and difficulty of the game.

Plot

There is no established narrative, the player is only told that he needs to save the humanoids from abduction. The game is set on the surface of an unnamed planet. Surviving the waves of mutants results in the restoration of the planet.Failing to protect the humanoids, however, causes the planet to explode and the level to become populated with mutants. In this scenario, "all but the best players were unable to survive for more than a few seconds."(Barton)

Characters

The player's character is a simple spaceship which slightly resembles a fighter jet. There are six types of alien invaders, including the Lander, Mutant, Baiter, Bomber, Pod, and Swarmer. The astronauts resemble humans wearing pink space-suits. The sprites for these characters are displayed in the image below, with the player's ship in the top-left, and the humanoid sprite in the bottom-right corner of the screen.

Art

Visual

As shown in the image above the art in the game consisted of 16-bit pixel sprites, and was played on a CRT moniter. A Motorola 6809 central processing unit handles the graphics and gameplay. The ground plane was simple a jagged pixel line to simulate rough terrain. This was set on top of a black background to simulate outer-space. The graphics could be considered functional in that they were in keeping with the hardware's limitations. There are many instances of text constantly shifting colors, and the beam-like bullets that the player's ship fires quickly change colors as time progresses, creating a wonderfully decorative visual spectacle.

Here is a link to original gameplay footage to see this spectacle in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pgh8pf5xzA.

Sound

A Motorola 6800 microprocessor handled the audio. There is no music or environmental sound, due to the fact that there are sounds for every time the player fires, which is nearly constantly. There are sounds for explosions, as well as a sound that lets the player know that a humanoid is being abducted, which helps counter the fact that the player can not see all objects on the screen at once.There are also sounds for when the player catches a falling humanoid, and for when the player sets the humanoid back on the ground. All of these sounds (along with the intense nature of gameplay) help to immerse the player in the experience.

References

Barton, Matt, and Bill Loguidice. "The History of Defender: The Joys of Difficult Games." Gamasutra. 14 July 2009. Web. <http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4078/the_history_of_defender_the_joys_.php?page=2>.

Sellers, John (August 2001). Arcade Fever: The Fan's Guide to The Golden Age of Video Games. Running Press. pp. 50–53