Defender: Together Retro Discussion

[racketboy]

Good choice for a first game. This is exactly why I joined the club, to try games that I would never play on my own, and this is definitely one of those cases. The Atari 2600 port is also a little trip down memory lane. I usually consider the Saturn as being my first console, but the truth is before that I had an Atari 2600 clone, one of those that comes with tons of games built-in, and playing Defender on an emulator really brings back memories, special the sound effects that are so characteristic of the system.

By the way, I'm pretty sure that you've said this already, but how long are we going to play this game before moving on to the next? I hope it's not too long, because this is a pretty straightforward one.

It will be two weeks give or take. Part of that is to allow people to get their game set up since we didn't give much prior notice.

[Mozgus]

I feel guilty for not getting in on this yet. Maybe I'll have time soon. It's a shame my atari and defender are in another city now. I'll have to just MAME it I guess.

[racketboy]

Just an FYI to everyone, I started playing on the Midway site with the "simplified" controls.
But I have moved on to MAME with a Saturn pad for my controls.
I feel like I'm getting better at it, but my scores seem to be lower on MAME.

Defender makes many modern game pale in comparison in terms of reflexes and difficulty.

But I'll tell you what, having this group thing and trying to even come close to other people's scores is what keeps me going.
Just playing it isn't necessarily the greatest, but doing it this way brings back what made those games great -- it was all about the scores.

[marurun]

The complicated control scheme of the original does lower scores for beginners. I've read that the real experts can do things with the harder control scheme, though, that can't be done by noobs :)

I suspect the 2 weeks we have here won't transform many of us into super experts, but I'd love to be proven wrong. I'm going to try the easier controls for a while, though.

[wyatt]

I am loving this game! The difficulty is so good, and it is addiciting. Previous to this, Ms. Pac Man was the only retro arcade game I put a lot of time into. I can definately understand how games like these caused quarter shortages in their time.

I am doing strictly MAME, on xbox with a smaller Mad Catz controller. My scores are constantly improving overall. I hope to top 25k by the time we move on to the next game. I would like to get an arcade stick for the xbox to further emulate it as authentically as I can, I will see what that does to my score (lower it I'm guessing).

[Doctor Fugue]

I'm using the 360 DOA4 stick and trying to get good at the original controls. I've never tried it before with thrust/reverse buttons. It's definitely difficult to adapt to it. I find myself just flying right all the time no matter what.

There are a lot of points available to get on the 3rd wave (like those purple squares worth 1000 each). There are also lots of ways to die.

Edit: purple stars NOT squares

[racketboy]

I'm using the 360 DOA4 stick and trying to get good at the original controls. I've never tried it before with thrust/reverse buttons. It's definitely difficult to adapt to it. I find myself just flying right all the time no matter what.

There are a lot of points available to get on the 3rd wave (like those purple squares worth 1000 each). There are also lots of ways to die.

Edit: purple stars NOT squares

I'm not sure if I would like a full joystick more than a Saturn controller for this game. I'm starting to get a good handle on the controls with the gamepad (not that I'm very good still).

I don't mind turning with the reverse button too terribly much once you get used to it, but every now and then I will hit the wrong button.
I was also surprised that you don't crash by running into the mountains.

[leaphion]

I was also surprised that you don't crash by running into the mountains.

Yeah, me too. Helped out a BIT when noticed that you can do that.
Although now I just seem to accidentally kill those dear human beings I'm trying to defend.

But yeah, gotta admit that it's great fun. And extremely addictive!!

[Niode]

I was also surprised that you don't crash by running into the mountains.

Haha yeah me too! I kept avoiding the mountains at first then I accidentally went through it... The landers seem to avoid the mountains, but nothing else avoids them...


I picked the controls up quite quickly. They're transparent to me. I'm just trying to improve on reflexes now. Not dying in the first 2 waves helps considerably.


Here's a cheap and dirty trick for scoring high. Leave the motherships until the bombers fly into the same screen. Ub3r points if you get everything. Sometimes the pods escape the blast though .

Mutants are easier to deal with in reverse. Fly really quick in one direction, press reverse button then wiggle up and down and hammer the fire button and 9/10 they'll fly into your barrage of lasers . I've taken out 4 mutants at once without taking a hit that way. Plus it's the only way to survive when the world ends.

[Ack]

So it would seem the majority of us are playing the Red Label Defender on Mame. Does anybody know if there's a major difference between Red, White, and Green Label?