Who Made the Defender Game?
- Gaming
- February 16, 2023
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Defender was one of the first major hits in arcades during the golden age of video games. It sold more than 55,000 cabinets and became the highest-grossing arcade game of all time.
The boldness of the design, combined with a steep learning curve and challenging shooting action, quickly made it stand out from other Space Invaders clones. In fact, the game sparked the development of an entire genre of horizontal scrolling shooters.
Eugene Jarvis
Defender was created by Eugene Jarvis, a pinball programmer at Williams Electronics. It was one of the first major hits in arcades during the golden age of video games and it still remains popular today.
The game is a horizontally scrolling shoot ’em up, with the player’s ship flying around a 2D plain battling waves of aliens and protecting astronauts. Each level is harder than the last, with players losing a life on coming in contact with an alien or its projectile. The aliens come in different shapes, and can also move differently.
Unlike most of the other games in this genre, it also had a two-joystick control system. This allowed the player to maneuver his or her ship and fire bullets in a way that wasn’t possible in most other games.
This control scheme was later used by many other arcade shooters, such as Robotron 2084 and Geometry Wars. It’s also used in a wide variety of downloadable and indie games.
As a result, it’s a very popular and widely-used control scheme. It’s still used in a lot of arcade games and is also a popular control scheme on the Xbox Live Arcade.
In addition to the defender game, Jarvis has directed several other arcade hit games, including Cruis’n USA and the NARC series. He’s a renowned designer and entrepreneur, and is currently president of Raw Thrills in Skokie, Illinois.
The company has been in business for over 22 years, making racing and arcade games. It’s an old-school operation, with a squat building in a gray suburb.
Inside the office, it’s a mess of paper and ancient magazines. There are about three dozen employees and their cubicles are stacked with boxes and old posters.
There’s an awe-inspiring amount of history in this squat building, and it’s a testament to the fact that this is where the industry started – and grew. The game world, however, has changed a lot in the last few decades.
Now, most arcades are more about ticket-winning than video games. That’s why there aren’t as many traditional games in the market. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for them in the arcade scene.
Larry DeMar
Larry DeMar was a pinball and video game designer and programmer who co-designed the Defender arcade game with Eugene Jarvis. He has since founded his own company, Leading Edge Design (LED), which creates gaming concepts for the casino industry.
The company has a number of patents for casino games, and has designed games for land-based casinos, online sites and The Norsk Tipping Lottery in Norway. The team has also worked on casino slot-machine games, and has a track record of success.
During the doldrums of the 1980’s, when video games and pinball were on their downswings, Larry Demar left Williams to start up a company with his friend Eugene Jarvis. Their first game, the twin-stick shooter Robotron 2084 was a huge hit in its day, but their next game, Defender, was less successful.
Although it did not attract the same attention as Space Invaders, Defender is considered one of the most difficult pinball games ever made. It requires intense coordination, concentration and Zen-like focus to score well.
It also had sophisticated “particle effects” that could fill the screen with colorful, intricate explosions. Its field of stars, scrolling at half the speed of the ship, created a sense of depth that was missing in Space Invaders.
Defender also featured a more unusual control system than other shooters of the time. Instead of the ‘Up, Down, Left, Right’ system found in many games, Defender had a joystick to move up and down, a ‘Reverse’ button that toggled the player’s horizontal direction, and a ‘Thrust’ button which allowed players to tilt their ship backwards to get behind enemies or projectiles.
In addition, there was a Fire button for shooting and a Hyperspace button which teleported the player to a random position in the level. The risk was that the player would be teleported onto an enemy or projectile and explode.
Defender was released in 1981 and sold a significant amount of machines. According to Supercade, a website that tracks pinball sales, the game generated $1.5 billion in its lifetime, selling over 60,000 machines. This is a staggering sum in the world of video games.
Williams Electronics
The Williams company, which traces its roots back to 1943, was one of the first pinball manufacturers and became a leading manufacturer of coin-op video games in the late 1980s. By the late 1990s, the company’s video game division was absorbed into Midway Manufacturing Company and renamed Midway Home Entertainment, Inc. In 1998, Midway sold its pinball division to Williams Electronics Games and its arcade video games division to WMS Industries.
During its heyday, Williams was known for making pinball machines that were the envy of every arcade in the world. But in the 1970s, as a result of Pong’s popularity, Williams started to realize that it needed to break into the video game market as well.
In 1973, Williams made a tentative attempt at creating an arcade game called Paddle Ball. While it had the appearance of a pinball machine, it was very much like Space Invaders. It was created by a young programmer named Eugene Jarvis.
He had already programmed some video game titles, but he was determined to create something that would immerse players in a way that the Asteroids and Space Invaders titles didn’t. In the end, he created Defender.
It was a huge success, earning the company an incredible amount of revenue in its lifetime. But it also proved to be a highly challenging game. Some experts consider it to be one of the hardest video games ever created.
However, if you’re a skilled player and can navigate the game properly, it is extremely rewarding. Unlike other video games of the time, it has very complex and deep strategies.
There are many ways to defeat the enemy, and each has a distinct advantage. For instance, you can shoot an alien abducting a human so that they fall to their death, or you can fly your ship in hyperspace. This moves your ship exactly halfway across the planet (or the scrolling playfield).
The Stargate is another key feature of the game, and it can transport you to anywhere on the screen – including directly to a humanoid that is being abducted by an alien. The game has several other abilities, too, such as a warp whistle that allows you to skip to any location in the game.
Atari
The first video game console to connect to a television, the Atari system was created by Nolan Bushnell and a team of designers in 1977. It was a revolutionary home gaming device that would come to dominate the industry. It was initially offered bundled with two joysticks and paddle controllers. The console was later sold at Sears department stores under the name “Sears Video Arcade”.
Designed by Eugene Jarvis, Defender is a horizontally scrolling space shooter arcade game. It was a huge success when it was released in 1980 and remains popular today.
It features a beautiful horizontal world, making it unique among other space shooters. It also has a scanner that shows the positions of enemies outside of the screen.
The game’s main weapon is a laser-like weapon that can be fired rapidly in a long line ahead of the player’s space ship. There is also a limited supply of smart bombs, an Asteroids-style hyperspace ability and a radar-like scanner that tracks out-of-range enemies.
However, the game can be difficult to play. One look at the game’s controls will send many players in search of a simpler game, but those who have tried it will tell you that it is a challenging, addictive and richly rewarding experience.
For those who are not familiar with the game, you play as a small, aerodynamic space ship that travels above a long, mountainous landscape populated by a limited number of humans. Your task is to destroy all aliens and protect the humans.
You control the ship with an up-down stick, a thrust button, a fire button and a reverse button. You can also use a smart bomb button to wipe out everything on the screen and an Asteroids-style hyperspace button to escape from enemy ships.
There are six types of aliens to attack including the Phreds, Big Reds and Munchers. These enemies resemble square versions of Pac-Man and can be spawned from fast and short baiters.
The game is a great game for any video game fan and will definitely hold a place in your heart. It is a classic for the Atari 2600 and is a must-have for any Atari owner or collector.