Defender
- $9.99
- Regular price
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$11.99 - Sale price
- $9.99
- Unit price
- per
The cartridge or disc on its own, cleaned and tested — no box or manual. Game condition guide →
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Item Condition
Game only: the cartridge in a protective holder, no box or manual. The photos are of this exact cartridge — look them over closely for its condition, packaging and details. Every cartridge's shell, label and board are checked for authenticity when it comes into the store, and it's tested before it's listed. It ships in a collector's bag or a hard plastic case.
Item Description
Defender was the arcade game that separated casual players from the obsessives, and squeezing Eugene Jarvis's frantic Williams shooter onto the Atari 2600 was one of the boldest conversions of its era. You pilot a lone ship over a scrolling landscape, racing back and forth to blast alien Landers before they abduct the humanoids standing on the ground below. Let a Lander carry one away and it becomes a Mutant, faster and far more aggressive than before.
The 2600 version reimagines the arcade's rugged planet surface as a sprawling city skyline, and it finds clever answers to the hardware's limits. With only one fire button, smart bombs are triggered by diving below the buildings and firing, wiping out every enemy on screen, while hyperspace is reached by pushing up against the top of the play area until the ship vanishes and then pressing fire. Its most famous quirk is that the ship disappears from view while its shot is on screen, a technical compromise that skilled players learned to use to their advantage.
Defender was a huge hit on the console, a fixture of early-'80s living rooms, and every humanoid you save or lose keeps the stakes personal. The arcade original created the horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up, and the 2600 conversion carried that blueprint into living rooms across the country.
It is fast, unforgiving and endlessly replayable, and for a great many players it was the first Defender they ever owned. Few 2600 shooters pack as much tension into every minute.
Fast factsgame data via IGDB
- Released
- 1982
- Publisher
- Atari
- Developer
- Williams Electronics
- Genre
- Shooter
- Players
- Single player
About the game
Defender is a 1981 horizontally scrolling shooter video game developed by Williams Electronics for arcades. The game is set on either an unnamed planet or city (depending on platform) where the player must defeat waves of invading aliens while protecting astronauts. Development was led by Eugene Jarvis, a pinball programmer at Williams; Defender was Jarvis's first video game project and drew inspiration from Space Invaders and Asteroids. Defender was demonstrated in late 1980 and was released in March 1981. It was distributed in Japan by Taito. Defender was one of the most important titles of the golden age of arcade video games, selling over 55,000 units to become the company's best-selling game and one of the highest-grossing arcade games ever. Praise among critics focused on the game's audio-visuals and gameplay. It is frequently listed as one of Jarvis's best contributions to the video game industry and one of the most difficult video games. Though not the first game to scroll horizontally, it created the genre of horizontal scrolling shoot 'em ups. It inspired the development of other games and was followed by sequels and many imitations.
Summary from the IGDB community database — the condition and contents of this listing are described above and in the photos.Watch gameplayDefender on Atari 2600
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Atari 2600
Defender
$9.99
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Atari 2600
Defender
$9.99
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