racketboy.com

Hey, after taking a good look, the Shockwave version linked by someone else here (http://midwayarcade.com/classic.php) is a nice compromise between the Atari 2600 version and the arcade. It has more 2600-style controls but the original graphics, sound, and, alas, challenge of the original :)

Ack wrote: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?

Not sure, but it appears that Red is the one that Midway has chosen to use for the various re-release collections on Xbox and such. In the middle of this page:

http://caesar.logiqx.com/php/game_group ... er#defendg

Green is the Taito version - so stay away from that
It is believed that White is the original version, while Red is the more common and considered harder version. This stems from the fact that the flyers for the white version introduce the game some, while the red ones boast the sales. Now this all may be hooey, but it sounds good enough for me.

Hello chaps.

I'm all Defender'd up at the moment. Gald to be along for the ride

Welcome to the experience. I hope the ride continues to be enjoyable.

Oh jeez is this game hard. As a frequent player of shmups, it's nice to go back to one of the granddaddies of the genre. I've never played Defender before, so I'm using the Shockwave port that's on the Midway website, but boy, is it hard! I keep on forgetting that pressing left turns me AROUND. I guess I'm just used to regular horizontal-scrolling shmups where left simple moves your ship backwards. And controlling that thrust... jeez, I don't even know where to start.

I can't score more than 2500.

Oh man, I'm late to the show!
I've been looking up info to mod my xbox so that I can play these games on my tv instead of my computer that I forgot to check racketboy.com for updates! A fellow racketboy member pointed my to:
http://lifehacker.com/software/geek-to- ... 299809.php
where they have a step-by-step instructions on how to softmod your old xbox1.
I think I'll do this over the weekend.
In the mean while, I have the xbox version of Midway classics that I might give a spin. As for right now, I'm off to give the shockwave version a try!

Happy retro gaming everyone!

I was just talking to some friends about the idea of something like "a book club, but for video games!" when I came across your post. Perfect timing!

I've gotten back into retro gaming in a serious way this year, and just happened to plug in the 2600 last weekend. I'll fire up Defender and dig in.

Well, at a first glance, it's a pretty decent game. The controls are surprisingly very comfortable, compared to many other games of it's time. It's got a large variety of enemies and it's extremely challenging. What more could one ask for? It's sort of like Asteroids with the movement but not as frustrating.

There are some nifty tactics I've found as well. If you let the aliens snatch the humans, shoot them, catch the people in mid-air and safely land them, you can rack up some major points. I tried version 2 as well although there if you use two coins you get heaps more lives and bombs which allow you to really get some points.

I was playing the midway online version and using my gamepad's analog stick I was able to get at least somewhat of the original feel.

I guess I need to start focusing on my catching skills....