2600 Defender - awesome alternative or heretical hackjob?

[+wongojack]

I think 2600 Defender is fine. I rarely want to play it though and would much rather play Empire Strikes Back or Chopper Command.

[Christophero Sly]

I like it.

[+Random Terrain]

. . . there wasn't much to dislike about the game.

Did the ship disappearing while shooting bother you?

[+thegoldenband]

I always enjoyed it as a kid, and along with Frogger and Q*bert, it was one of the arcade ports I played most on the VCS. The designers did a good job of figuring out a reasonable way to implement hyperspace and smart bombs.

[iesposta]

Did the ship disappearing while shooting bother you?

Only when I used the ship disappearing to avoid collision and that trick fails!

[Turbo-Torch]

2600 Defender is a masterpiece. If you gave me that game back in the day with no label, I'd know exactly what port it was from the moment I started playing.

Same goes for games like Space Invaders, Missile Command, Ms. Pacman, Moon Patrol, Joust, Battlezone, Berzerk and many others.

I actually find 2600 Defender more enjoyable than the real coin op. The skill level doesn't go from hard to insane and the controls make sense. And for what it's worth I own an all original coin op.

 

This also isn't some off the wall theory on favoring the 2600 because of nostalgia. Games like Donkey Kong and Crystal Castles are playable but pathetic. Games like Pacman and Zaxxon are abortions that should have never seen the light of day.

[+KaeruYojimbo]

I didn't play 2600 Defender until the 90's, after years of playing the arcade and C64 versions, so I didn't think much of it when I finally did play it. But just because there are better versions of Defender out there, that doesn't mean the 2600 port is bad. It gets the important things right and it's fun to play.

[davyK]

I can remember being very disappointed with it on first play through. The vanishing ship and the swarmers were the main things about it that I really didn't like. But you know what? I played the cart to death. I rolled the score and the wave counter on many occasions and on all the variations. I remember playing with my brother and cousins in 2 player for hours too. I found the wave 25 easter egg and thought I was the first in the world to find it (!!!!!). Gameplay wise it is a great port and that's what really matters. I wouldn't spend much time with it today though.

Edited April 7, 2016 by davyK

[VectorGamer]

Omega Race can be used with a ColecoVision controller. Is there someone willing to hack Defender Arcade and Stargate to support the ColecoVision controller?

[+Random Terrain]

Omega Race can be used with a ColecoVision controller. Is there someone willing to hack Defender Arcade and Stargate to support the ColecoVision controller?

 

PacManPlus made Defender Arcade and it was hacked by RevEng to have 2 button support with the Sega Genesis controller (buttons B and C). Here is that hacked version:

 

defarcad2b.bin

[marlowe221]

A few people have brought up the ship disappearing in the 2600 port.

 

I honestly thought that was pretty cool as a kid. I also really liked the jaggedy laser beam graphic too.

 

Maybe I'm one of the few who thinks the game holds up well today but I think it has nice, colorful graphics (flicker notwithstanding), controls pretty well, and is a pretty good example of what was great about the 2600.

 

I know it's tempting to compare it (unfavorably) to the arcade original but there are few 2600 arcade ports that could stand that comparison.

[+Cafeman]

I enjoyed Bob Polaro's 2600 Defender BITD. I didn't like the ship disappearing , but I'd use it to my advantage! I didn't mind the city vs the mountains of the coin-op. Smart Bombs weren't really all that adversely affected by dropping down to the city, but hyperspace was kind of pointless now. That was always a last-second effort to stay alive in the coin-op; having to fly to the top of the screen, pause before your ship disappeared above the sky, then press FIRE ... nope. I wonder why Atari / Bob didn't think of the 2-joysticks control idea back then - at least make it an option.

 

But to be honest, after playing the 5200 version, I never played the 2600 version again.

[78001987]

Stargate for 2600 completely negates Defender for the 2600.

[78001987]

double post. Wish there was a delete post button.

Edited April 8, 2016 by 78001987

[jaybird3rd]

Stargate for 2600 completely negates Defender for the 2600.

Stargate is an excellent 2600 port, but remember that it also came several years later and got twice as much ROM, so from a technical standpoint, it isn't exactly an apples-to-apples comparison.

 

I love 2600 Defender, although I wasn't especially good at it as a kid. I noticed the vanishing spaceship, but it didn't bother me at the time, and it still seems like a reasonable tradeoff to me: if you have only a limited number of objects to display, making the ship disappear while firing makes sense, since your eye is usually directed at your target while you're shooting at something, not necessarily at your own ship.

 

Defender is one of those 2600 arcade ports that somehow assumed its own distinctive personality during the conversion process, and it can still be enjoyed on its own merits, even though emulators give us easy access to the original. 2600 Defender was even immortalized on a postage stamp! I'm sure that must be a source of pride for Bob Polaro.

 

[+SpiceWare]

Stargate is an excellent 2600 port, but remember that it also came several years later and got twice as much ROM

 

and twice as much RAM

[NE146]

Yeah I have to say that when Stargate came out I hadn't touched my VCS in years and was generally surprised to even SEE a VCS game in the stores since the NES was so prominent by then. I saw it along with Jr. Pacman for $15 each and had to buy both out of the sheer novelty and thinking to myself that it must be much more advanced now, and they were

[+Cafeman]

By the time Stargate/ Defender II came out for the 2600, I had long since moved on. I've really never played it. I think I fired up the ROM once or twice just to see how well it was done. Needless to say, I'd have loved it back in the day!

 

I'm surprised there aren't more hacks of 2600 Defender, changing the city , color scheme, sounds, and enemies. Keeping the gameplay the same. For example, a War of the Worlds hack. Or Battlestar Galactica, or Star Wars hack.

[+save2600]

 

I'm surprised there aren't more hacks of 2600 Defender, changing the city , color scheme, sounds, and enemies. Keeping the gameplay the same. For example, a War of the Worlds hack. Or Battlestar Galactica, or Star Wars hack.

 

 

There is a War of the Worlds hack:

 

http://atariage.com/hack_page.php?SystemID=2600&SoftwareHackID=42

[Sharkham]

This sounds weird but I've always considered Defender and Missile Command as "companion games," even though they're extremely different, I can never think of one without thinking of the other. Maybe it's just long-standing association? Regardless, whenever I play one, the other is probably the next that's going in the console.

 

I'm a literal infant so I never got to play the coin-op arcade Defender, but I believe you guys that the VCS port has neutered difficulty. It's always felt too easy on standard settings. Still functional and fun, though, so I don't think it's a "heretical hackjob." Maybe not a masterpiece, but its does what it sets out to do and it does it well. So I think it's a good game.

 

Such neat sound design, too. So many space shooter games go "pew pew pew," but Defender's too cool for that. The ship in Defender sounds like a vacuum being thrust underwater and it's great.

Edited April 11, 2016 by Sharkham

[+swlovinist]

2600 Defender is still a fun game. Not arcade perfect, has some flickering issues, but is still a timeless classic to play on the console. I played this version alot back in the day, and I still enjoy it today.

[Mister-VCS]

Stargate for 2600 completely negates Defender for the 2600.

 

2600 Defender is a masterpiece. If you gave me that game back in the day with no label, I'd know exactly what port it was from the moment I started playing.

Same goes for games like Space Invaders, Missile Command, Ms. Pacman, Moon Patrol, Joust, Battlezone, Berzerk and many others.

I actually find 2600 Defender more enjoyable than the real coin op. The skill level doesn't go from hard to insane and the controls make sense. And for what it's worth I own an all original coin op.

 

This also isn't some off the wall theory on favoring the 2600 because of nostalgia. Games like Donkey Kong and Crystal Castles are playable but pathetic. Games like Pacman and Zaxxon are abortions that should have never seen the light of day.

 

@78001987: Defender is a 4K game from 1981 and Stagate from 1984 is 8K...

 

 

@Turbo-Torch: Crystal Castles is a masterpiece on the 2600 - you can't compare it with the 4K Donkey Kong port - which isn't bad for it limits.

[+Random Terrain]

@78001987: Defender is a 4K game from 1981 and Stargate from 1984 is 8K...

For anyone reading this in the future, Defender was released in May/June of 1982.

[Mister-VCS]

For anyone reading this in the future, Defender was released in May/June of 1982.

 

released 1982, but programmed between 1981 and 1982...

[+Random Terrain]

Released 1982, but programmed between 1981 and 1982...

Right, same for Pac-Man and other games.