#0012 Defender

Well, for those who don’t remember, I’m in the process of attempting to play my way though video game history. Being a Nintendo Fanboy as an adolescent I missed out on a lot of really solid games, and I’m making up for that by playing every notable game from every generation, and then I come here and give it a short review. I used to do these maybe once a week, but with school and work, they’ve become less and less frequent. But enough of that, you want to know which fossil I’m playing tonight! Tonight it’s none other than the Willams Classic: Defender

This game actually seems rather ahead of it’s time. It’s a shoot em’ up, like we’ve seen with Space Invaders, and Galaxian, but rather than just playing the Space Invader Clone game, Williams decided to do something different with the genre. You play as a cool looking ship that flies around blows up green bloby aliens. Not much too it. But we’ve seen games where you play as a cool looking ship and blow up green blobby aliens. What Williams did differently was not the concept, was it’s execution. This game is not just a joystick and a fire button oh no! It’s a joystick and fire button and reverse button and thrust button and smart bomb button and hyperspace button. Yeah, this game doesn’t mess around and actually can get kind of convoluted. Not only does it have more options than the standard shoot em’ up, but it’s also the very first side scrolling shoot em’ up, and the first shoot em’ up to feature random enemy placement. Every game you play is different and makes for a unique experience.

Overall, not bad, it had me coming back at least five times after game over. I must commend this game for it’s learning curve though. It’s probably the deepest game I’ve played so far, and honestly seems like true strategy could be applied. I enjoyed it. Maybe not quite as much as Galaxian, because, let’s face it, it’s a little sloppy. Other than that though, it’s a solid game and I can honestly see why it’s such a classic.

Next up: Eamon (WTF is that?)