Defender

Released in 1981
Atari 2600

My oh my. As a kid, I never had the chance to experience the original arcade version of Defender. All I knew of Defender, was this sham on the Atari 2600. I hated it, and barely ever played it. It was much more entertaining to play Chopper Command, since the enemies and escorted trucks didn't have a habit of blinking in and out of existence as I played. Chopper Command also didn't try and cram a 3 button control setup onto a 1 button controller. These are my main problems with this port of Defender.
The concept of Defender is pretty simple, but I guess in 1981, it was video game brain surgery. You have a ship, and you have to stop aliens from killing you, or abducting humans. You have a radar at the top showing you locations of enemies, and you fly around shooting various alien craft out of the sky. Some of the enemies leave mines, others split into faster enemies when you destroy them, and some try to abduct humans. Humans, of course, are lovingly rendered as a single white flashing dot.
I cannot stress enough how poor this arcade conversion is. The original arcade Defender is still fantastic, even in the bizarro future world we live in today. But this crap...

It's often difficult to see enemies on screen since they suffer from major flashing glitches. In order to use your smart bomb, you must actually fly into the ground, and to use your "hyperspeed" you must fly off the top of the screen. These were special abilities in the arcade version that you could use where your survival relied on a split second decision. Due to the fact the 2600 had only 1 button on it's controller, you had to spend a few seconds putting your ship into position to use these fundamental actions.

The real draw of the original Defender was it's animation and sound effects. The game used vector graphics to animate some of the best looking explosions in a game of it's time. It was fast paced and was notoriously challenging. This version, sadly, has none of what made the original great. I hated it when I was a kid, and I still hate it now.

But I would still recommend checking out the original arcade version. You should be able to find some videos of it on youtube. It's still great.
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