Defender and Stargate – Cane and Rinse No.703

... And at the same time, you're just getting absolutely trusted by aliens that are kind of like coming out of nowhere because, you know, I mean, the defender's got about probably about 30 seconds worth of like, all right, you can sit there and we're not going to kill you. And after that, it's just like, now you're dead. So so like, you know, like, in terms of the learning curve, it's just like, it is like, I think I've called it the North face of the Everest or something like that. But whatever it is, I mean, it's…

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you might be able to get more out the machine. Right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I think it was like one of the first ever tips books. And it was basically it was like how to master the arcade games. And I had like, well, all the most popular arcade games of the time. And yeah, and I had a chat from defender. And yeah, it's kind of weird, because a lot of defender is actually you can't really explain how to play it's philosophical. So it actually had this kind of cool philosophical approach about sort of like…

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gonna say, I mean, for me, it's very, very difficult to play. defend that like not on an arcade game. And in fact, most of the compilations, I've got like the midway stuff, I won't play defender because it's just like, I can't do it. It feels like yes. F1 car with like a baby steering wheel. Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing was, it's funny, because when the like, you know, the first defender machines rolled in and you would start firing and because the buttons hadn't been worked in yet. Yeah, these massive…

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Yeah. Yeah. That became a little bit of a Williams and also Midway hallmark, those flashing letters and all that. And I think that sort of, sort of hints at their background as a pinball machine manufacturer as well. I think there's a lovely elegance as well to the, to the title screen and the track screen in Defender is it's, it's, it's kind of classy, but simple and it draws the eyes in and it's, I don't know, it just feels nice. But if you compare that to Stargate, which to my mind, does it, does it the…

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You wouldn't quite know how far you still had to go. So if you had a couple of, you know, like whole series of really bad lives, you'd be like, Oh, am I going to be able to start earning extra lives again? But sometimes you didn't just, you know, cause you had crap luck basically. So it's getting good at the event, a defender. Uh, is that like riding a bike? You'll you'll never unlearn it. You know, I can't, yeah, kind of. Cause the thing is like the last time I played defender, it was a, it was an E3 in the…

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about the differences between Japanese arcade games and Western arcade games and how Japanese arcade games are usually very iterative. And they never seem to really have ran with this concept over there, except for maybe one game, which very much has Defender DNA and that's a fantasy zone by Sega, of course. Yeah. Sega's Defender basically turned a lot easier, although still not super easy. Yeah. Definitely. The controls are a lot easier. Yeah. It's absolutely Defender isn't it? It's just cutified. Yeah. Yeah.…

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But now the pace of this is frighteningly fast. Yeah. Until you get used to it. And if you watch somebody good playing it, you it almost looks like it's the same way as when you watch a really good football or it's like the game slows down around them because they're so in control. If you watch a really good player defender, it almost appears like the game is less manic, less chaotic because they're in control. Right. Today, when I was putting in a considerable amount of time, at one point I noticed I wasn't…

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... Interestingly, I thought in Gamma Sutra's August 2007 article, so this is almost 20 years ago, John Harris called Defender the hardest significant game there is, remarking that such a demanding game seems unthinkable today. Although there are plenty of challenges in today's video games, few require the intense coordination and zen-like concentration necessary to achieve a high score in Defender. And I think it's interesting that I think the landscape has changed since then, particularly post Dark Souls, games…

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uh, creating these, uh, yeah, like, uh, several lines under and above each other of, of sort of this rainbow colored flashing like lasers. It's a, it's really cool stuff. Williams is always so good at kill counts, right? I mean, robotrons are saying, you know, you've got that thing thudding away and you're just like mowing down the robots and defenders kind of same thing. You got that laser. I think it does four, four at once if, if you hammer in it. Um, and, uh, you know, you can just absolutely side down…

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So I want to talk a little bit about some of the, uh, the versions. We won't go be able to go into massive amounts of detail. And there are so many, so many versions. Um, the first spinoffs that there were, of course, at the official Williams defender pinball table, uh, which I haven't seen, I don't know how rare and collectible and expensive it is. I do remember this existing, which is Milton Bradley's defender, the board game for your home. All the excitement of the arcade game for your home. Yeah. I guess…

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... I don't think we've ever mentioned it in 15 years of this podcast, but it existed and it had a version of defender among others. Uh, the same company also released a dedicated handheld called arcade defender. Um, which, you know, looks kind of cool in its, uh, sort of retro futurist aesthetic, but I'm not sure it's the version of defender that you'd want to play. Um, there was a Vic 20 version, Texas instruments, 99 C 64 Coleco vision and television Atari eight bit and 5,200 spectrum, Amstrad CPC, MS and MSX two…

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... I'll just give my quick summary, which is that, um, yeah, I'm also one of these people who isn't very good at defender. I've never mastered it. I've played it a lot over a long period of time, but never as much as I played some of its games that, uh, that it wasn't an inspiration for. Um, I don't think you can really think about the history of video games without thinking about defender. Um, as I say, it sounds have become kind of ubiquitous with the audio of what a video game sounds like. And the way it looks…

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but the vast majority of games play in a very similar way. So you almost instinctively, you know, you pick up a third person character action game, you almost instinctively know what each of the buttons are going to do. Whereas even now, you know, under on the occasions when I play Defender in arcade club or something like that, it takes it takes a while to kind of get back into Oh, yeah. And then, okay, so it's that, you know, it's that amount of thrust that you have to apply. And although you know what they do…

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everything off and it wouldn't have much to sort of like mop up. Um, cause if you did it wrong and you'd end up with millions of swimmers everywhere, you'd really have an uphill battle like finishing that level. Oh yeah. Yeah. And one of the things, one of the reasons it does slow down, I understand. So Defender has these, uh, incredible, uh, sort of pixel explosion. So you shoot a ship and again, this was one of the most striking things seeing it for the first time as a, as a 10 year old kid, seeing the enemies…

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but then, you know, what do you expect from the person that became mean yob? I mean, yeah, that's very true. But you're on a more serious note, if that's the way to put it, your prowess at Defender saw you as you alluded to become a representative for the UK in in international video game tournaments. I could be wrong about that. I think my, my friend, I think my friend, Dan, Dan Gilbert was one of your cohort back in the day at some point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, actually, I'm pretty sure he played with us…

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... The whole trusting thing. So what I find so fascinating is that it's, it's almost like it's little like in the history of video games, it's almost like it's sort of like kind of a genre almost onto its own with the defend defender has spawned and a few of its spiritual successors. And like, it's in contrast to something like Scramble, where you have like eight way movements. Basically, all you do in this game, instead, in terms of direct movement inputs is move up and down, right? Like everything else comes from…

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like watching other people play games, like particularly when they're exciting. It's like, oh, that's kind of cool and interesting. I would never have thought of that. I always thought video games was just like a personal experience. But yeah, you know, when you watch somebody play Defender and they're doing that, yeah, like you said earlier that, you know, it just looks really cool. It also kind of looks easy just because it's got a certain flow to it. When you know what's going on, it's like, wow, that is…

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to be able to do it. And even when I was younger, I don't think I would have had the patience, but as an achievement and as an influence and as a game that is so important to the medium that we all love, you know, I have an absolute ton of respect for Defender. I'm sure everybody listening to this has played it, but if, if, if you haven't head to your nearest arcade archive or arcade club and give it a go, because that's where it deserves to be played on an actual cap with the right environment, you know, you're…

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