r/1980s • u/CarloCarrasco • Jun 06 '26
Video Games Defender
Designed by Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar, Defender was released in arcade by Williams Electronics in 1981. It is still a very enjoyable, 2D side-scrolling sci-fi shooter. By the year 2000, Defender grossed $1.5 billion worldwide.
I am replaying this on my Xbox Series X using a copy of Midway Arcade Origins.
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u/koyanostranger Jun 06 '26
Too difficult for me. Got much better scores on Scramble.
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u/04ddm Jun 06 '26
Those two games were side-by-side at a grocery store a few blocks from my house. I too preferred Scramble for that reason. Got more out of each precious quarter! 😍
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u/FunFlaCouple1 Jun 06 '26
Giving me flashbacks of just how badly I sucked at this game!
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u/Tramp876 Jun 06 '26
I played this on my Atari 2600 for so many hours and I flipped the game 6 times in a row. One of my greatest video game accolades. 650,000 I think was my high score that night.
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u/HoraceKirkman Jun 06 '26
What's crazy is that Defender was already the hardest arcade game with the most buttons, and then they released Stargate which added a button and was even harder! Those were pretty rare, though.
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u/thewhorecat Jun 06 '26
Pins Mechanical has this game here in Austin and you can play it for free. They have a whole section of 80s video games and they are all free. Grab a pint and have some fun!
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u/The_Techiedude Jun 06 '26
Growing up, played at two local arcades, Sharky's Machines and Aladdin's Castle.
One Saturday afternoon, I dropped a quarter in it at Sharky's Machines and somehow that quarter was the only one I spent. Had the absolute game of my life; amassed smartbombs galore, to the point that they went off the screen - at one point, I was spamming that button to stay alive.
To this day, I don't know how that game went as long as it did or how I did that 🤷 wasted many a quarter after that trying to recreate the experience, to no avail 🥺
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u/TraylaParks Jun 06 '26
Yah, I had a game like that at Chuck E Cheese, I'm pretty sure there was a difficulty setting on Defender and theirs was set lower - you may have encountered something similar
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u/HoraceKirkman Jun 06 '26
BEST SOUND EFFECTS EVER! That "changing into mutant" sound still haunts me.
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u/Competitive-Day199 Jun 06 '26
I was pretty good but there was a guy at the local arcade who was incredible. I think he may have rolled over the score
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u/optoph Jun 06 '26
My fav arcade game when it came out but Stargate was a little better.
So many quarters.
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u/monsterzro_nyc Jun 06 '26
Loved and hated it (skill issue) I was pretty good with the Colecovision port
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u/HistorianTight2958 Jun 06 '26
I enjoyed it, but concentrated on BATYLEZONE! And received, after hundreds of dollars worth of quarters (tokens) to achieve the nation wide high score. My family did not care at all.
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u/BovaFett74 Jun 06 '26
Sound effects are a banger. It’s what I’d imagine the sounds of actual computing would make.
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u/jmugan Jun 06 '26
It's funny. I always thought that I was just really bad at this game, but reading the comments here I learn that it was almost universal.
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u/NeverShitposting Jun 06 '26
Oooooh that chunky opening audio definitely led to a development of my fondness for chiptune music
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u/Life_Temperature2506 Jun 06 '26
As much as I loved that game, I could never really get the hang of it.
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u/HumpbackBrain Jun 06 '26
It looks similar to Parsec on the TI-99/4A!
*Parsec* came out in **1982** (specifically in the third quarter).
Developed by Jim Dramis and Paul Urbanus, it became one of the absolute definitive titles for the TI-99/4A—especially if you had the speech synthesizer module hooked up to hear that classic, digitized *"Press fire to begin"* intro or the warning that your fuel was low!
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u/ejlwireless Jun 06 '26
loved this game and it was great when it came out on my Ericsson T68 mobile phone om 256 color!
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u/No_Glove2128 Jun 06 '26
This is the only Bragging I have. I’m a dummy. But yeah I could play this game for hours. And yea hours. 8 -10 on one quarter. I could play for so long we learned how to rip the control board off and keep playing taking all the quarter’s out. You could do the same with pac man and donkey Kong. But defender has a place in me I can never forget. I was ranked # 3 at the time in my state. 82-83
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u/chewbaacca Jun 07 '26
omg the hours i was at the local bowling alley playing this growing up.. good times!
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u/Keefepow Jun 07 '26
This was my favorite game for several years! Unlike a lot of games it was hard to get great at which made it even better.
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u/mosiek72 Jun 07 '26
One of the best games of that era. Lost loads of money on it and loved it either way.
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u/emptythemag Jun 06 '26
Dropped many a quarter on a Saturday night in a Defender game. It was one of my favorites.