In 1981, Williams Electronics released a horizontal shooter game by Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar that took the arcades by storm. That game was Defender. In this game the player controls the
Defender to protect humanoids, who have been stranded in some planet, from their alien abductors. Though the premise is simple, the execution is anything but. The ship is controlled with a joystick and a series of buttons on the cabinet.
The joystick is only used to control the ship’s elevation while the buttons provide control for weapons and for reversing the ship’s direction. One button is used to activate a “smart bomb,” capable of destroying all enemies in view, while another button activates the hyperspace function, a feature that may save or doom you (something similar to what happens in Asteroids).
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