Defender

[Mister VCS]

I often heard that the VCS Defender was a

dissapontment (not as bad as Pac Man, but

most Atari-fans think it could have been done

better).

I am a "fan" of VCS Defender! I like the blocky town more than the "vector" hills

in the original-game. It is more challenging

to defend people from a (blocky) city than

humanoids in the hills. I loved the imagination as a child. The bad thing is the

fact that your spacship dissapears when you

shoot. But I think it was well done for a

4k game (was it 4k)?

I know of course the superior update Stargate, but it was made 3 years later.

[Lemmi]

I love playing Defender and Defender 2(thanks stanjr), i dont care about the grafx, the game play is a pretty good translation.

 

Now i would love to get the game with the words Stargate on it just because i LOVE the Stargate show

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I know you probably don't want to do this...but look around on Ebay, Yahoo...etc. I see the Stargate logo Defender 2s all the time. In fact I got my Stargate cart with an 86 label I believe for 1.25 on Ebay...I was amazed that nobody even bid against me! Oh well...sweet game Stargate. I just hate having to use both controllers for full functions. Which speaking of ... I have it on good authority that one can actually just use the keypad controller from Star Raiders and the buttons will correspond to the various options like smart bombs, hyperspace...etc..

[StanJr]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mister VCS:

I The bad thing is the

fact that your spacship dissapears when you

shoot.

---

 

 

Actually this is a good thing. When you disappear the collision detection gets sloppy and you can fly through enemies and not die. Won't work if you just sit still though.

 

I love Defender.

 

Stan, Resident of Blocky City

[Lemmi]

I would use Ebay but after 6 emails sent and 0 replies im just going to give up on ebay, maybe someone here will have a extra stargate game, i could trade all my common doubles( about for 1 stargate game

[+Cafeman]

GIven what he had to work with, I thought Polaro did a great job. I sure played it to death, back in the day.

 

However, the one-button nature of the 2600 made it an entirely different kind of game from the arcade version.

[liveinabin]

Yeah, I'm with you on this. Defender is great, granted, it's a LOT more layed back than the original - but still captures the flavour. I do like the arcade version, but sometimes I'm not in the mood for that 'twitchy' a game. Atari Defender is like the 'easy listening' edition

[PeeknPoke]

although Ive never been a big Defender fan (Couldnt play the arcade game 'cause "only the hard kids played it" LoL), I did enjoy the 2600 version, I just love the sound Fx

 

Lee

[Atari-Jess]

one day I just got into some odd fix into the orignial VCS defender and played it for a few straight hours, i went past round 99 and played untill i fell asleep, i didn't even pay attention to my (which i know i rolled) score and the level i was now on, fun game that defender is, CX-2609, pretty early but a damn fun game, im gonna try that video touch pad thing on stargate...

[jahfish]

i got one of these strange controllers from marco, which are actually supposed to be like the original arcade ones. i'll have to try that one with defender ....

 

i'll report later ...

 

fish

[CosmicJoke]

I would like to say that as a kid I loved Defender! Unfortunately, at the time, Stargate(Defender 2) came out, I had already sold my original 2600 and bought an Intellivision. I do enjoy Stargate now though.

[mos6507]

Defender did quite a lot given the 2600's hardware, but with more space available and more collective experience about the hardware, Stargate trashes it.

 

Defender was a much more challenging game to port than Pac Man, so its failings are a bit easier to overlook.

 

All of the compromises made in Defender made sense other than the way hyperspace and smart bombs were triggered. Had they gone with a 2-joystick approach like Stargate then it would have meant it could only be a 1 player game as Stargate is.

 

The flicker used in Defender is "intelligent flicker" rather than the constant flicker in Pac Man. The blocky city was done with playfield in order to maximize the use of the available sprites.

 

The graphics, color, and sound were more faithful to the arcade than Pac Man was, at least you could tell there was an effort there.

[dwh]

Doh! Defender II uses BOTH controllers!No wonder I die when the planet blows up and I can't get the smart bombs to work.I'm getting that game out today....

[Yak]

IMO Defender 2 )Stargate) was one of the most outstanding bits of coding on the 2600. Considering how non-Defendery the original Defender 2600 was, Stargate was a very pleasant surprise, very well executed.

 

Ah, I miss my Stargate coin-op though . Sure, there's Mame, but it's just not the same .

 

 

(:-) - Yak

/

[+moycon]

Speaking of Defender fix. When Defender first came out I bought it at Xmas with my own money. It was up to that time the most expensive game the department store at the mall had. (Something like $45!!) I always liked the game it really was a decent effort even leaving in the hyper-space demon board when all you men were captured. Any ways years later I was in Ohio visiting my grandmother. I had my Atari with me but had only brought some games since by then I had so many. All of a sudden while at the mall I saw Defender for $1.99. I really hadnt been playing it much because it was by then an old game but I started remembering how fun it was and suddenly I had to play it. So even tho I had the game waiting at home. I had to buy it again to satisfy my Defender fix!

 

PS the fact that the ship dissapears never bothered me and in fact like Stan Jr said ...helps out sometimes.

[Atari-Jess]

I actualy never noticed it until someone said it was there!

[AtariDude]

Defender is a great game for the Atari 2600. It was a lot more fun to play than the arcade counterpart. The arcade game was faster and much harder and I could never get the hang of it.

 

By the way, the post office has a stamp with 2 kids playing on an Atari 2600 and the game that they are playing is Defender. I think it is part of the 80s collection of stamps.

[The Night Phantom]

quote:

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Originally posted by AtariDude:

By the way, the post office has a stamp with 2 kids playing on an Atari 2600 and the game that they are playing is Defender. I think it is part of the 80s collection of stamps.

---

 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lemmi:

Really? humm i wonder if they still have some, i want one for my tiny little stamp collection

---

 

The USPS' online Postal Store does show the Defender stamp in its catalog, albeit not all by itself. Unfortunately I'm not sure I can provide direct links to the specific products, but here's how to find them. You should see a series of links on the left-hand side; some will be grouped under “Browse Store”. Under “Stamps by Subject”, look for “Celebrate the Century”. This should lead you to the first of three pages of Celebrate the Century products. On page 2 you should find the stamps you want. For $4.95 you can have a pane of fifteen 1980s stamps (item #554840), which includes the video games stamp featuring Defender; or if you really want to go all out, shell out $34.95 for the 1980s heirloom book (item #554872), which will come with the aforementioned pane.

[+Cafeman]

I had long since sold my 2600 by the time Stargate had come out for it -- in fact, I didn't know it existed until a year or two, found it as a ROM for Stella, and I was pretty blown away at how good it was!

 

As good as Defender was, given the 2600 limitations & memory issues, it never satisfied me. That's why I played the dickens out of 5200 Defender (Stever Baker did that version), which is one of my all-time favorite 5200 games.

 

I can remember when the arcade-perfect compilations started to come out -- my first one was for Sega Saturn, the Williams collection, and I JOYOUSLY played Defender and the rest for months and months. I thought to myself "okay Defender, I got you at home now -- NOW, I will become your master!!!". Well, I never did master Defender even at home ... guess I suck at it.

 

Either that or its insanely difficult!

[Lemmi]

quote:

---

Originally posted by AtariDude:

By the way, the post office has a stamp with 2 kids playing on an Atari 2600 and the game that they are playing is Defender. I think it is part of the 80s collection of stamps.

---

 

Really? humm i wonder if they still have some, i want one for my tiny little stamp collection

[Adrian M]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lemmi:

Really? humm i wonder if they still have some, i want one for my tiny little stamp collection

---

 

 

They sell these stamps in most post office locations. In fact, I saw it on Saturday morning. It's sold in a package called "the 80's" or something like that. It definitely didn't sell for $35 though.

[NE146]

The arcade Defender was and still is a real PRO's game. Even today, even the best players will have a hard time with it. Having said that, although I was never too good at it, at my height I could avg around 30-60,000 pts which was good enough for me. (p.s. 30-60k isn't that good)

 

Anyway as far as the 2600 version of Defender goes. I got it, instantly realized it wasn't exactly "arcade perfect" *cough*, then played the bejeezus out of it because lets face it, back then ANY game you could play on your tv was excellent, and the Defender game was one of the best available for home play. I don't think I was dissapointed because it was pretty much the norm thinking that the home version would always be less than arcade perfect.

 

As far as those stamps go, yeah they've been around for a while. I saw some at the post office a couple of months ago... didn't buy them but thought they were pretty nifty.

[Albert]

Well, I missed the bulk of this discussion, but I feel compelled to put my two cents in as well. I'm a huge fan of the arcade Defender and even more so Stargate. I remember playing Defender for the 2600 and being pretty disappointed with it. Granted, back then I didn't really know what it took to program 2600 games or what the system's capabilities were. All that I knew is it was a far cry from the arcade game and clumsily controlled with 2600 controllers. Part of what makes Defender and Stargate great are the wonderful controllers. Like some of Williams' other titles, these are "zone" games where you become one with the machine when you get good enough.

 

I also had gotten rid of my 2600 long before Stargate was released. I only saw it for the first time a few years ago and was amazed at how improved it was over Defender. Many of Atari's later coin-op conversions are pretty damn good. Certainly the 2600's hardware engineers never envisioned that games of that caliber could ever be delivered on the 2600.

 

..Al