{"id":27053,"date":"2025-03-06T08:03:40","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T13:03:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/?post_type=games&#038;p=27053"},"modified":"2025-05-13T09:01:45","modified_gmt":"2025-05-13T13:01:45","slug":"defender","status":"publish","type":"games","link":"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/games\/defender\/","title":{"rendered":"Defender"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Defender History\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UREi6meYgts?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:15px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Inducted: 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The conventional game design wisdom of the early 1980s suggested that many of the best video games were \u201ceasy to learn, but difficult to master.\u201d This seemed like sound advice then and now, particularly for engaging casual players who might drop their quarters into a different arcade game if the first proved too hard. Released in 1981, at the height of the arcade video game boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s, Williams\u2019s exceedingly difficult, horizontally scrolling space shooter&nbsp;<em>Defender<\/em>&nbsp;helped challenge that thinking.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/WVGHOF-Defender-wide-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"Atari Defender artifacts and magazines\" class=\"wp-image-27560\" style=\"width:510px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/WVGHOF-Defender-wide-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/WVGHOF-Defender-wide-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/WVGHOF-Defender-wide-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/WVGHOF-Defender-wide-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/WVGHOF-Defender-wide-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/05\/WVGHOF-Defender-wide-600x400.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p>Founded in 1943, Williams Manufacturing released hundreds of coin-operated game titles through the 1970s. By 1980 the company, now Williams Electronics, was best known for its innovative pinball machines such as Gorgar (1979), that used a speech synthesizer to make the game \u201ctalk.\u201d The company had little expertise in video games, having produced only a few&nbsp;<em>Pong<\/em>&nbsp;clones. But with hit video games like Taito\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Space Invaders<\/em>&nbsp;and Atari\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Asteroids<\/em>&nbsp;generating many millions of dollars for their companies, Williams couldn\u2019t ignore the rapidly growing video game market any longer. The firm began developing its own video game, and Eugene Jarvis, the same person who made Gorgar \u201ctalk,\u201d emerged to lead its efforts, which culminated in&nbsp;<em>Defender<\/em>, one of the most iconic arcade video games of all time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When&nbsp;<em>Defender<\/em>&nbsp;first appeared at the October 1980 Amusement &amp; Music Operators Association Expo, Jarvis and a team including programmers Larry DeMar, Sam Dicker, and Paul Dussault had worked for months to make the game feel familiar, but also entirely different from&nbsp;<em>Space Invaders&nbsp;<\/em>and&nbsp;<em>Asteroids<\/em>. Completed just hours before the show opened, the game\u2019s color graphics and physics-based explosion effects looked spectacular. But show attendees were skeptical.&nbsp;<em>Defender<\/em>&nbsp;asked players to fly around the screen blasting hordes of enemy aliens determined to capture humanoids and turn them into psychotic mutant attackers. Although, the gameplay sounded simple, it was anything but. Because the enemies always behaved in different ways, players couldn\u2019t just memorize patterns as they had on many previous games. The game was even more challenging due to its complex controls, which featured a two-way joystick that allowed players to move their ships up and down, and five buttons: one to thrust, another to reverse, and others to fire a laser, drop a \u201csmartbomb\u201d to clear the screen of enemies, and deploy \u201chyperspace\u201d to make the player\u2019s ship disappear and reappear in a random area of the screen.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Distributors and operators worried the typical player would last only a few seconds and then quit out of frustration. But that\u2019s not exactly what happened. Some players found the game way too hard, but many others loved the challenge. As Jarvis explained in a 2008&nbsp;<em>RetroGamer&nbsp;<\/em>interview, angry players would \u201cwant to put their foot through the glass, but then decide they were going to beat the game.\u201d By the Spring of 1981,&nbsp;<em>Defender<\/em>&nbsp;had surpassed&nbsp;<em>Asteroids<\/em>&nbsp;as the top earning arcade video game. Williams ultimately sold more than 55,000 units, making it one of the bestselling arcade video games ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Defender<\/em>\u2019s popularity prompted Williams to license the game to nearly every major home console or personal computer of the time, including the Atari 2600, Apple II, Commodore 64, Mattel Intellivision, and ZX Spectrum. Atari alone sold more than 3 million&nbsp;<em>Defender<\/em>&nbsp;cartridges for its 2600. Williams also released the sequel&nbsp;<em>Stargate<\/em>&nbsp;in 1981, while Midway introduced its indirect sequel&nbsp;<em>Strike Force<\/em>&nbsp;a decade later.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Defender<\/em>&nbsp;was also one of the first arcade video games to feature a scrolling world beyond the initial game screen\u2014made even more apparent by the game\u2019s innovative radar-like mini-map at the top of the screen. In addition, the game popularized the horizontally scrolling shooter, making possible a generation of side-scrolling arcade shooters, such as&nbsp;<em>Scramble&nbsp;<\/em>(1981),&nbsp;<em>Super Cobra<\/em>&nbsp;(1981),&nbsp;<em>Choplifter&nbsp;<\/em>(1982),&nbsp;<em>Gradius<\/em>&nbsp;(1985), and&nbsp;<em>R-Type<\/em>&nbsp;(1987).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the game\u2019s influence goes far beyond ports, copies, sequels, and genres. Its punishing gameplay raised the level of competition in arcades, and it was among the first games to truly separate casual players from more dedicated ones. As Jarvis told author Steve Bloom in&nbsp;<em>Video Invaders<\/em>&nbsp;(1982),&nbsp;<em>Defender&nbsp;<\/em>is \u201cnot for people who aren\u2019t as dedicated, who just want to have a good time. It\u2019s for game nuts like me.\u201d Those \u201cnuts,\u201d or hardcore players, became an important video game market for decades to come.By challenging conventional wisdom about game mastery and the idea that players would reject more complex arcade video games,&nbsp;<em>Defender<\/em>&nbsp;introduced new video game possibilities for developers and players alike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Did You Know?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Williams created a \u201cGolden\u201d\u00a0<em>Defender<\/em>\u00a0cabinet in 1981 to commemorate the company\u2019s 50,000th unit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Related Content<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/blog\/honoring-gaming-innovator-eugene-jarvis\/\">Honoring Gaming Innovator Eugene Jarvis<\/a><br><a href=\"https:\/\/museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Finding-Aid-to-the-Sam-Dicker-papers_031021.pdf?_gl=1*n2kzeg*_gcl_aw*R0NMLjE3Mzk1NDM5MTAuQ2p3S0NBaUE4THU5QmhBOEVpd0FhZzE2Yl9ZWmJrU2dWcGZmNDRHbjBBZ291X21tMWxWT2FDQ19kb2hzeXhyTWNEaWtnVDVGUWo3dnZob0M3aUVRQXZEX0J3RQ..*_gcl_au*ODkzNDM2MDg3LjE3MzgxNTg4NTcuMTA3Mjg5NjM2MS4xNzQzODg0NDQ4LjE3NDM4ODQ0NDg.*_ga*MTQxMTg4NTkxMi4xNzMwMzA5NjIz*_ga_NNDS4KF8SX*MTc0Mzg4NDQxMC40NjkuMS4xNzQzODg0NDU1LjE1LjAuMA..&amp;_ga=2.142241842.127172508.1743299502-1411885912.1730309623\">Finding Aid to the Sam Dicker Papers<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Inducted: 2025<\/strong><br \/>\nThe conventional game design wisdom of the early 1980s suggested that many of the best video games were \u201ceasy to learn, but difficult to master.\u201d This seemed like sound advice then and now, particularly for engaging casual players who might drop their quarters into a different arcade game if the first proved too hard. Released in 1981, at the height of the arcade video game boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s, Williams\u2019s exceedingly difficult, horizontally scrolling space [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":27559,"template":"","year_inducted":[513],"class_list":["post-27053","games","type-games","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","year_inducted-513","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Defender - The Strong National Museum of Play<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/games\/defender\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Defender - The Strong National Museum of Play\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Inducted: 2025 The conventional game design wisdom of the early 1980s suggested that many of the best video games were \u201ceasy to learn, but difficult to master.\u201d This seemed like sound advice then and now, particularly for engaging casual players who might drop their quarters into a different arcade game if the first proved too hard. 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